Banks (Page 18)

In the 2016 Bollywood hit Pink, a field introducing Amitabh Bachchan’s personality shows the artist emerging from his house on a spring morning into Delhi’s smog-filled roads, wearing a helmet.

Other scenes of the movie have the helmet and Delhi’s hazy air, but they have little to do with the plot.

Yet, it is one of the rare examples of mainstream Indian films taking notice of the deadly air that makes many parts of India dangerous to live in every year.

The toxic air pollution and recurrent winter smog in Indian capital Delhi and other parts of northern India frequently makes headlines, becoming a matter of public concern, political debate and legal censure. But unlike disasters such as the devastating floods in Uttarakhand in 2013, Kerala in 2018 and Mumbai city in 2005 – each of which have inspired films – air pollution is largely missing from Indian pop culture.

Siddharth Singh, author of The Great Smog of India, a book on pollution, says that it is a “big loss” that air pollution is not a prevalent tale in India’s books and film.

He points out that the majority of writing on waste in India is still written in the field of education and medical expertise.

” When you say PM2.5 or NOx or SO2 ( all pollutants ), what are these words? They mean nothing to]ordinary ] people”.

In his 2016 text, The Great Derangement, artist Amitav Ghosh, who has written extensively about climate change, observed that such tales were missing from modern literature.

“People are weirdly normal about climate change,” he said in a 2022 interview.

The author described being in India during a heat wave.

The most disconcerting thing he said was the sensation that everything seemed to be standard. It seems as though we have now learned to adapt to these changes.

Ghosh described culture shift as” a slow crime,” which made it challenging to write about.

That is undoubtedly true of pollution; it can have long-lasting negative effects on people’s health, but it is not suitable for serious visuals.

The subject has, however, been explored in documentaries like Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, which was nominated for the Oscars in 2022.

Through the story of two sons who treated wounded black kite that fell from the state’s smoke-filled stars, Sen explored climate change, pollution, and the connected character of human-animal connections in Delhi’s ecosystem in the movie.

Sen claims he was interested in learning about climate change and” anything as big as the Anthropocene,” a term used to describe the current state of humankind’s profound influence on the life and real world.

The two boys are seen in a scene in the movie argue. Then, one of them turns to the sky and says,” Yeh sab jo hamare beech mein ho beloved hai, ye is sab ki galti hai ( What’s happening between us is the problem of all of this )” and then points to themselves.

“]The effects of climate change ] basically pervade through every aspect of our life”, Sen says. ” And the task of picture, be it film or poetry, is to provide it that kind of resilience in its representation”.

Economic films that are pretentious, restrictive, or keep audiences by the neck to make them feel poor do more disservice than great, he says.

The best movies, in my opinion, are those that are Trojan horses that can infect thoughts without the viewer realizing it.

Filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda, whose work on climate change and setting spans more than 70 pictures, believes arts can make a change.

Panda, who began telling tales on climate change in 2005 with his film Climate’s First Orphan, turned to more mainstream film for the information to achieve wider people.

The director moved to Delhi in 1995 after growing up in the Kalahandi Balangir Koraput area of the eastern state of Odisha, which was sensitive to droughts and floods.

” It amazed me that I was living in a world where I could see four months and immediately guzzle water from the river. Normal wealth is complimentary to us- atmosphere, water, fire, everything. And I come to Delhi where you buy anything. I buy ocean, I buy atmosphere. Every place has an atmosphere filter”.

In 2019, Panda made a short film for an anthology in which he explored the theme of Delhi’s pollution through a courtroom drama about a couple getting a divorce because they couldn’t agree on whether to continue living in the capital.

” You can’t just make anything which is not entertaining and show]it ]”, Panda says.

Additionally, authors face the difficulty of humanizing challenging stories.

Singh, whose 2018 guide looked at India’s air pollution problems, says he struggled to find the individuals behind the data while writing it.

” We often read the news stories about a million or two million people per year passing away from waste,” the source said. But where are these folks? Where are their reports”?

While Nilanjana S Roy’s crime fiction Black River frequently includes environmental themes, many modern English artists, including Ghosh, have also highlighted the subject. Delhi’s Bhalswa rubbish dump functions. In Gigi Ganguly’s Biopeculiar and Janice Pariat’s Everything the Light Touches, the writers explore our relationship with the natural environment.

But there is still a long way to go.

According to Singh, one of the causes of the relative lack of these stories may be that the authors are “insulated” because of their privilege.

” They are not the people who are by the bank of the]polluted ] Yamuna river, who see the poem in it or write about the stories along its banks”.

He claims that memes and photos on social media these days have been the most effective at capturing the gravity of air pollution.

Sheikh Hasina, the exiled Bangladesh PM who is now in Delhi, was mentioned in a meme that was popular a few days ago. However, the accompanying photo was completely gray because the joke was that the air pollution prevented people from seeing her.

The writer hopes that those who can actually make a difference will eventually find the momentum to” trigger a response.”

” I think that’s what we lack at the moment”, he says.

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When the pictures on television suddenly changed and 19-year-old Chang was watching the demonstrations in Georgia on Tuesday night’s information when Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s leader, declared martial law, immediately the limelight was on his nation.

” I don’t believe what I was seeing”, said the 19-year-old pupil, who wished to be identified solely by his title.

By Wednesday afternoon, he was one of the activists standing before the National Assembly who was still stunned by what had transpired the night before.

Hwang remarked,” It’s essential for me to be here to show that what Yoon tried to do was not done.”

After legislators scrambled to prevent it, Yoon was forced to walk back in less than six hours after making his surprise news.

But those were turbulent days, sparking demonstrations, fear and uncertainty in the country that had elected him.

On Tuesday night, at 23: 00 local time ( 14: 00 GMT ) President Yoon, seated in front of blue creaseless curtains, made an unexpected address to the nation.

He claimed that he would enact military rules to shield the nation from “anti-state” militias that sympathized with North Korea. The tumultuous chief is impassed over a budget bill, which has been plagued by bribery scandals and inquiries into his cabinet members.

What followed was a day of snooze for Seoul.

Shortly after Yoon’s statement, authorities lined the light copper gates outside the National Assembly tower in the center of Seoul, the tower that the government’s tourism authorities have framed as” the sign of Asian democracy”.

The military finally declared that all political business was prohibited under martial law. However, neither that nor the extensive protection presence prevented thousands from gathered in worry and rage in front of the assembly.

It is easy to overlook that authoritarianism only came into existence in 1987 under military rule, making South Korea, a lively democracy, have its final resemblance to authoritarianism in the not-too-distant past. The final martial law was in place in 1979.

Juye Hong, a pupil at Seoul’s BBC World Service’s OS program, described this as” a walk I never anticipated in the 21st century in South Korea.”

Shortly after Yoon’s impact statement, the opponent’s Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, hosted a life supply urging people to arrange at the National Assembly and opposition it.

He also requested that his own lawmakers demonstrate their opposition to the order before the council.

Thousands of South Koreans responded.

As a lake of icy, black coats of winter pushed up against police wearing neon overcoats, chanting” no to military law” quickly, tensions grew.

And as military cars arrived, audiences resisted them. One lady sat obtrusively between the tyres of a car.

In stark comparison, there was a façade of civility across the rest of Seoul. However, confusion enveloped the town.

” The roadways look standard, people here are truly bewildered”, John Nilsson-Wright, an associate professor at the University of Cambridge, told BBC World Service from Seoul.

The officer he spoke to was” when bewildered as I am”, he added.

Some people had a hard day of sleep. ” At first I was excited at the thought of not going to college today”, 15-year-old Kwon Hoo told the BBC in Seoul on Wednesday. ” But therefore increasingly the sense of fear settled in, that kept me awake all night.”

A South Korean who did not want to be identified told BBC OS,” No words can express how frightened I am that things might turn out like North Korea for our people.”

However, expression was spreading that particular troops had been deployed to the council building. Before getting on the roof of the parliament, planes were audible above the air.

Investigators scurried away with their devices as they ran into the group outside the gates.

Journalists in Seoul kept in touch with one another and exchanged tips on how to stay healthy as worries grew about the government’s plans to restrain the press.

Ahn Gwi-ryeong, the 35-year-old director for the opposition Democratic Party found herself facing down men at guns. A picture of the time, where she is tugging at the chamber of a soldier’s shotgun, has since gone popular.

” I wasn’t thinking about something philosophical or moral, I was just like,’ We have to prevent this, if we don’t quit this, there’s nothing else,” she told the BBC.

” To be honest, I was a bit scared at first when I first saw the martial law forces. I thought,’ Is this something that may arise in 21st centuries Korea, especially in the National Assembly?”

” After quite a surprise next day, it was hard to get back to reality,” she added, recalling the preceding day”. I perceived that story was going to reverse itself.

The clock was ticking for opposition politicians as Ahn confronted the men, who rushed to the council to halt the purchase. When that happened, the leader would have to remove it.

But first, Members and their assistants had to get in. Some desperately clambered over fences and walls, while another shoved and screamed at military soldiers.

Lee Seong-yoon of the Democratic Party told the BBC that he had to climb a 1.5 meter ( 4. 9 ft ) high fence to enter the building, with the police blocking him despite having provided evidence that he was a lawmaker.

Hong Keewon, a different opposition MP, claimed activists had aided in hoisting him over the roof. When Yoon made the announcement, he was drowsy when he awoke his family and raced to parliament.

” Democracy is powerful around,” Hong said”. The defense wants to listen to us, to the law, and not to the chairman.”

Only somewhat calmer than the people around, the lawmakers who made it into the tower huddled together. Hurriedly, they barricaded the doors with whatever they could get: cushioned seats, long tables, sofas.

Some attempted to entice men who had entered the assembly tower.

By 01: 00 regional time, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-sik submitted a resolution requesting military rules to be lifted.

With that, less than two days after Yoon’s impact declaration, 190 politicians who gathered, including some from Yoon’s group, voted unanimously to prevent it.

Following the vote, opposition leader Lee stated to investigators that this was” a significant opportunity to break the vicious cycle and return to normal world.”

By 04: 30, Yoon was again on Television, in front of the same blue curtains, saying he would withdraw martial law. He claimed that this would only become official when enough members of his case may be assembled to pull the order.

The news was met with cheers outside the assembly. In the hours before dawn, more people emerged from the building, from behind the barricades they had haphazardly put together.

The stately structure already has the scars of the night when South Koreans defended their politics, with broken windows and cracked doors.

On Wednesday night, banks, local businesses, and schools all opened up as usual, and flights remained unaffected in South Korea’s buzzing money.

However, the political consequences and public outcry were not used.

As the sun rose on Wednesday, dozens gathered to visit for Yoon’s withdrawal. The leader is also facing prosecution trials.

” We are a powerful democracy… But Asian people want to be secure- President Yoon must resign or get impeached,” Yang Bu-nam, a Democratic Party legislator, told the BBC.