As our relationship with nature continues to fall apart and the number of climate refugees grow, artists and writers provide empathy to make sense of these times.
Mid-June World Refugee Week 2022 came with the theme: “Whoever. Wherever. Whenever. Everyone has the right to seek safety.” We went through those seven days. They did remind us that the number of people now rendered homeless has swelled to 89.3 million. This annual dedicatory date, June 20, a tribute to their resilience, too passed on by, quietly, stealthily, as most refugees must.
In these dramatic times, the homeless or stateless learn to travel light. Primarily living in the lap of Earth, our shared home, they recognise her as a living being—Mother Nature or Dharti Ma. There is an awareness of her maternal, giving nature. Other well-nested ones may have lost close contact with her. Perhaps, during transit to places of concrete, they misplaced their specific thread within the web of relationships with other earth species, soil, water, air and sunlight.
Three decades ago, scientist-philosopher Carl Sagan shared a perspective of Earth from an image of our planet shot by a camera onboard a NASA spacecraft—nothing beyond a mere “pale blue dot”. The visual revealed the insignificance of our planet within the infinite limitlessness of space. Sagan deconstructed the image in human terms. “Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
A misplaced sense of superiority of our species has led to memory lapses. Natural disasters, droughts, and other unpredictable weather upheavals, were not bolts from the blue. Over decades, environmentalists have echoed the fragility of this pale blue dot. David Suzuki has been reminding us it is we, humans, who are embedded in the natural world. What we do to our surroundings, we do to ourselves. Dr Vandana Shiva, Alternate Nobel Prize winner, recalls: “We have known that destroying the Earth’s biodiversity and shifting to fossil fuels would violate ecological limits and planetary boundaries, disrupt the Earth climate systems and lead to climate chaos. The 1992 Rio Climate Treaty and the Biodiversity Treaty were an opportunity to avoid that hazardous path, pushing us to climate catastrophe. As the treaties were undermined, the climate emergency continues to deepen.”
Vulnerability and resistance are both perceived as positive personality traits in human beings, but not within geographical regions. The Indian subcontinent is the most fragile land mass prone to climate disasters. Extreme floods, droughts, melting of glaciers, sea-level rise that drowns top soil and hurricanes are maladies created by neglected symptoms that led to cyclones in 1999, Amphan and more recently, Fani. Severe waterlogging around the Bay of Bengal forces populations to flee from these protesting winds and waters battering the Indo-Bangladesh coastlines. The pale blue dot splashes its colour, now muddy, over the tinier greens, turning food growers into landless refugees. As our relationship with nature continues to pull apart, economists, data collectors and enumerators provide us the numbers of climate refugees, growing day by day. “But we are not data. I am human, not a number,” says Nujeen Mustafa, a student, now a detention camp resident. “We had it all: homes, schools, and fields. Our world was not to last.”
Invitations for wheelchair-bound Mustafa to share her 4,000-km journey from Aleppo to the UK continue to pour in, including from the UN Security Council. Clearly, messages communicated in first-person have higher recall than dry figures. The wounds of words seep deeper into memory, propelling inspiration and courage to the fellowships of refugees.
Creative artists and writers have the ease and empathy to pierce through statistics, locating the commonalities we share. Extracts from Javed Akhtar’s nazm Ghar Wapsi (translated as Dead Man Walking), evokes images expressing the plight of those categorised as “migrant labour”, laid off overnight during the Ides of March 2000.
“The two of them on the burning streets
Melting in the heat
Of the scorching sun
Upon their shoulders a bundle
Knotted up of hunger and of thirst…
… They have walked side by side down the ages
And been burnt equally by the fire that rages.”
Today, two years on, the poet’s verses may well conjure the present-day helter-skelter scattering of refugees. Some escaping territorial war, and others the ongoing wars between the elements of nature.
In another poem Beghar (Homeless), Akhtar takes us to that in-between time, neither day nor night. Despite the shadowy forms imagined during dusk, the verses retain clarity, leaving the reader with a tinge of anguish. How we wish we had an answer to his last question, a road map to guide the beghar towards shelter, before the approaching nightfall.
“The evening draws in; the red sun begins to hide behind the sea.
There, a fleet of birds, in line formation, fly off to those forests,
To those trees, where they have woven their nests.
These birds return to their place, to rest and repose.
We feel dismayed that among this forest of houses
We have no place to call our own.
As evening draws close, where shall we go?”
Directionless, yes. Yet, on reading, one feels a sense of solidarity. Says Akhtar, “Songs of hope and heartache cannot bring about revolutions, but they can create a language for movements and sensitise people. It is like a whisper in the dark, while others remain silent.”
Gulzar Sahib paints a portrait of Climate, disguised as a gypsy.
“Banjarey lagtey hain mausam
Mausam beghar hone lagain hain
Cheel cheel key chaal zameen ki
Tukda tukda baant rahey hain”
“Climate appears to be a gypsy now.
It too is becoming homeless.
Stripping earth of its skin,
Layer by layer, its fragments up for sale.”
This verse reverses the trope of the use of mausam (weather) as we know it in our films, where weather conditions are usually suhana (beautiful), especially created for romancing, be it in Kashmir or Switzerland. Within these lines, written on inspiration from a film Kadvi Hawa about climate change, there is no mention of tulips or roses. It’s just man and nature, both equally anguished. Over time, a verse can become particularly rousing, uplifting or identifiable with a cause. It transforms into an anthem much like the poetry of Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Following release from imprisonment for an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the existing government, Faiz sought refuge in Beirut. Living in self-exile, within a mélange of cultures, the longing for home remained his companion. Dil-e-man, Musaafir-e-Man (My Heart, My Fellow Traveller), is his metaphorical confession for his longing for home, Lahore.
“Mere dil, Mere musaafir
Hua phir se hukm saadir
Ki watan-b-dar ho hum tum…
Har ek ajnabi se poochein
Jo pata tha apne ghar ka…”
“My heart, my fellow traveller,
It has been decreed again
That you and I be exiled…
….We request every stranger
For the road back to home…”
In their literary art, poets express an intense search for belonging from the perspective of a seeker of refuge. Who is seeking a new sense of identity for their uprooted psyche? Who is searching for a lost love, be it a person or place? Who longs for escape from an oppressive regime? Who continues to have faith that together, a new community can be created, a pale blue dot made brighter?
(This appeared in the print edition as "Climate is a Refugee")
(Views expressed are personal)
Meera Dewan an award-winning filmmaker