the inside man

              

Heroes are not hard to find ,when you work for an organization like Greenpeace.People who put themselves between a whale and a harpoon. People who hang a banner from a 1000 ft height. People who , at a grave risk of personal injury, decide to draw a line somewhere, for the planet.

3 days ago , I found yet another kind. 

The photo above was taken in Agra , where searing temperatures reach 45 degrees celsius in the afternoon.

In a false fur covered polar bear suit , you can comfortably add another 20 degrees to it. 65 degrees. It is not that far from being in a furnace. 

 The young man in the suit is Chirag, who is one of our new volunteers, He is 20 years old and an engineering student. He has been with Greenpeace for the whole of 2 weeks. I met him for the first time on 17th June, around midnight and the first question he asked me was whether he could wear the polar bear suit. I warned him , explaining how hot the Polar bear suit could get . He insisted , And I am so glad he did. 

   Over the course of the 3 days that it took to get those photos that you see sprawled across social media today, Chirag must have worn that suit 30 times. In the middle of a field. On the rooftop of a village house. In front of the Taj Mahal. In the morning . The afternoon .and when we were lucky, in the cool (that means 35 degrees) evening.  

And you could see the effort it took , every single time he took off the suit, to put it back on. 

But he did. without a word of complaint. Every .single. time. 

He even found the strength to smile when the mask came off. 

 The one thing that Chirag demanded from me, was a Greenpeace t-shirt.,” One is nice, two is better and three is great ,” Is what he tells me the last time we speak on the phone. 

Sometimes its not what is on the t-shirt that matters, but who wears it. And I think I am really glad that this young man sports a Greenpeace t-shirt (and yes, I will get him 3 of those.). As the Rio +20 Conference draws to a sad end. And world leaders fail to inspire the millions , yet again, Small inspirations like Chirag (whose name aptly means “the lamp”) light up the path to a better tomorrow. 

Maybe with a few more like him, we might stand a chance.