saving the planet, at a shore near you

riding an ancient wind

2010-12-10T05:07:00.000-08:00

The sails are out all the way and we are edging north towars Taiwan, albeit a bit slowly.
2000 years ago ancient mariners used the North East trade winds in the South China sea for transporting chinese porcelain. Eventually this wind favoured the creation of the silk route of the sea in the 9th century. Today we follow the wind from another age as we inch our way towards Taiwan. It is strange , to reconnect with history in such a way. Following timeless winds as we sail across these waters. How many battles and travels and stories and songs has this sea been privy to. It is such a human thought, to be constantly troubled with minor ailments, Of war and sickness and disease. While the universe carries on. Completely Unruffled by our great discoveries and everchanging laws.

The sea is raging a a little with 30 knots of wind, I guess she is not particularly happy. But the smashing of the waves is sometimes punctuated with the lovely splashes and clicks of dolphins and we count ourselves lucky to witness this exciting spectacle. Some of us.

The Raibow warrior is being pounded now and then by 4-6 meter waves. She will be in Taiwan by Sunday.
Thank you butterfly. For flapping your wings.

solitude

2010-12-08T05:11:00.000-08:00

Its been 88 days since I left the confines of land. The comfort of my bed. The smell of warm earth.
On 12th September I boarded the Rainbow warrior , 6 days before I turned 24. Today is the 8th of December. 88 days.
Its interesting , to say the least, this life on the sea that fate has chosen for me . A great mix of environmental activism, extremely satisfying menial jobs, cleaning , and learning to live in a community full of brilliant and often crazy people.
Last week we had a onboard campaign training for Greenpeace campaigners from around the world. As we were anchored in Manila bay, these 12 people learnt how to use a greenpeace ship as an effective campaigning tool. Not to mention, how to clean toilets, wash up after themselves (and others) and How NOT to take showers between 7.30 and 9 AM.
The ship was busting with activity at all hours. and with smart beautiful women. sigh. And then as suddenly it had begun, It came to an end. One fine morning , all the bags were packed and put ashore, with people and beautiful memories. And off we went.
To the solitude of the sea. She really is beautiful. and I say this from 6 meter high waves. Beautiful she is.
Its strange though, after a week of having my cabin full of people . To wake up in the middle of the night, and hear nothing but the waves. No rustling of bedsheets . No rogue alarms. no tiptoeing into the room at 1.

Just the solitude of the waves.

A dream of Haruki

2010-07-14T08:30:00.001-07:00

I was running through the maze , scared shit-less for my life.
It wasn't that I was being chased, but I just knew that death was closing in on me.
I was completely out of options, but I just knew,instinctively, that there was a loophole somewhere.However I also knew that this 'loophole' was almost as scary as death itself. Still, out of options, I decided to take that chance.

Death reached out to me, but I was suddenly out of its grasp, I had just gone insane.Not your usual completely loony kind of insane, but just a bit. Just enough to be out of the grasp of death, away from the invader of all realms, from that stealer of princes and peasants.
.Free.
And free I was , completely. But the cost was unbelievable, to trade in your sanity for life. It is a hard bargain and a small part of me knew that something really really wrong had just happened.
It was somewhere at this juncture that I awoke from a really weird dream , completely drenched in sweat and freezing at the same time. I was immobile , my limbs were completely stuck and I realized that I had never been this scared in my life.
Now I don't live a very normal life, I climb mountains and cliffs and bridges, I drive boats at high speed while being chased by unhappy fishermen or cops (or both) in rough seas and I do a fair amount of adrenaline pumping activities on most days . So when I say scared , I use that word in every possible extreme that you can imagine.
And then as I lay in my bed trying to make sense of what the hell was going on, I heard footsteps outside my room. Now I live on the roof of a 3 storey building, the only access to the roof is a small door which I lock every night before I go to sleep. So how who in the hell is walking outside my door at 2 in the morning?
I think about looking outside my window, but suddenly , out of the blue I remember Gabriel's story ( I sailed with Gabriel for a while on the Arctic Sunrise) about how he heard an unearthly cry outside his house in San Fransisco and how he instinctively felt that whatever it was , He did not want to attract 'its' attention, and so he lay in bed for the next few minutes freezing and sweating at the same time , till sleep overtook him.
Now, I had heard this story from Gabe at least 3 months ago , and I have not once thought about it.Not once that I can remember. Now at 2 o' clock in the night, 3 months later, It came back to me out of nowhere , at least 6 times zones away from where the story was told ( in Dakar,Senegal).
So I kept my head down , didn't make a sound, and waited for this strange encounter to pass. But it didn't.
Whatever 'it' was , was already in the room and I was too fucking scared to move a muscle. So I closed my eyes and thought of every single spiritual experience I had ever had. Using my thought as a shield between me and this ' presence'.
I guess I must have drifted away to sleep because I remember waking up in the morning, extremely tired and jittery. But still very much alive. And somehow stronger.
Amrit
13th July, 2010 Bangalore

sailing on the arctic sunrise

2010-01-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

Copenhagen was an unmitigated disaster.
The leaders of the world came, met and achieved nothing. However, we cant really say it was not expected. Its not for the first time that we have met over the fate of the planet and have decided to do "nothing", or maybe it is.
The positive side of course is that the civil societies , including Greenpeace, have taken up this colossal failure as a call to arms and increased their pressure tactics.
So, here I am, fresh on the ship filled with frustrated and disgruntled environmental activists. It is not an easy thing to realize that one has failed. And that recognition always takes its toll , especially on the ego of an environmental activist , as the optimism of saving the world is smashed to bits by diplomatic politicians. Sigh.
But we cant have one without the other, and the reason we must continue our existence on the fronts of environmental activism to to ensure a balance in the ranks.
If they do nothing , we do double the work. And maybe , just maybe we'll have a planet left by the end of it.
So we sail from our home port of Amsterdam towards Las Palmas on the lovely Arctic Sunrise. An Ice breaker who rocks like a cradle in the calmest of seas.
Its a long maintenance haul, preparing the boat for the climate wars not so far ahead.

On top is a file picture of the arctic sunrise, my home for the next 3 months.

Dolphins on the bow

2009-05-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

,"Dolphins!," went the cry. thrice was it heard , through the day.
It is one of the most pleasant things you will hear shouted onboard the rainbow warrior . for sure.
So we left all work and ran to the bow ( the front of the ship ) where dolphins love to play . For them its a little bit like surfing because they use the water displaced by the ship to move forward , or so they say.
But it is one of the most wonderful and uplifting things that one can see onboard this boat. In a certain way, it gives us a better sense of purpose than any action or campaign can.
The entire crew dissolves into little children , people shouting ,singing and calling on to the porpoises. They love attention , these dolphins. But then again so do we.
Today has been an interesting day. We saw a pod of curious little bottlenose whales
and three sets of dolphins. This is the first time since I boarded the Rainbow warrior in March that we have seen any marine life . I guess its a sign. The mystics within our organisation would certainly believe so, while the mechanics would quietly snigger in the corner. I'm not sue which one is right.
However it is indeed lovely to be greeted by the planet ,and to be able to acknowledge it.
Its a rare thing. And all I see are smiles.

david vs goliath

2009-05-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

It was a hot summer day in Bombay when we found Mr Ratan Tata's house and decided to send him a message from 100 thousand Indians. a hundred thousand concerned and aware activists.
I remember the frantic decisions and the running around required to light some 8000 candles outside his house. We didn't even know whether he was going to see the spectacular image unveiling under his balcony as volunteers started lighting the candles on the sea shore.
But it just seemed the right thing to do.
We were not doing it for him, we were doing it for the 100 thousand people who had decided to click on the send button, to send the Mr.Tata a mail. Telling him how unfair he was being , building a port site next to the mass nesting site of olive ridley turtles. A port site that threatens to wipe Olive ridley turtles off the face of the planet. Gone. Poof. Deleted.

None of us could imagine the size of the fight we were picking on. It was pure conscience which egged us on, that and the complete absence of logic. Those were the principle that Greenpeace was once founded on . But we soon realized the size of the confrontation when our emails started getting hacked into, people were threatened with physical violence in Dhamra (the port site).and this was just the beginning.

The port builders had decided to put their massive PR machinery into action , flooding the internet with conflicting information and throwing dirt on Greenpeace . It wasnt about the turtles anymore . It became an information war. David Vs Goliath. live on the internet. pay per view.
I have nothing against the tatas, but I do have something for the turtles.

A corporation is going to invade into a turtle sanctuary and get away with it. Not only that,they will singlehandedly wipe them off this planet... and they are actually pretending to be environmentally conscious while doing it. That just makes me angry. actually no, its more than just anger ,its outrage.

The war for another species continues. And while the whales have a lot of champions , the turtles don't have many. I hope we will be enough. Else its high time to take a picture of an olive ridley , might be quite valuable in the future. Unlike a tata nano.

Here is something you can do, spread this video . as far as possible. as wide a possible. Put their PR machinery to shame, Shame them into doing something about the port. Who knows? it might just work .

a new beginning

2009-05-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Its been about a month and a half since I joined the rainbow warrior again.
A month and a half filled with quiet reflections on the how and the whys of the universe.
We have spent much of the past month doing underwater researches in Sweden and Norway. Trying to find ways to convince the public that overfishing is not the best way to get cheap fish to their tables; using pretty corals and bubble reefs to put our point across.
I used to think that climate change is the biggest danger to our present generation, but this month has made me realize that its just the shadow that clouds our future. In this shadow lurk many monsters that we still have to deal with. Toxics , overfishing, unsustainable development.... these are the words that will shape the destiny of our children. These will be the profanities that our generation will face tomorrow, as we leave them behind in our legacy.
the fishes are disappearing from the seas faster than we know. Will they recover? will the dead come back to life? Mother earth still has some surprises up her sleeve. I hope a living ocean is one of them, the alternative is too scary to be true.
I have been delving into the history of Greenpeace, looking for answers , stories and a direction in the ether. I am still looking....
In the meantime the environment is under attack as always , and corporations have found ways to paint themselves green to sell their products . We have a more difficult job of trying to wipe the cheap toxic green off the dirty ones , so that the planet lives on. I hope , pray and beg that we succeed.

good bye warrior

2008-10-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

when I was a young man, (younger than today) ,I read a book that changed my perception (more than others) . It was a brilliant piece of fantasy by Salman Rushdie called ´Haroun and the sea of stories´.
The book is about a second moon of our planet, a place called Kahani, where all the stories originate. There is a huge ocean full of stories and every wave in the ocean changes the story as it mixes with another one, creating an everlasting flux of stories
10 years later, I found myself on kahani. For this is what I think of our dear rainbow warrior. Every inch of it is crawling with untold stories (and other strange bugs, but lets not go there now)
Every place we go, we create new stories, retell old ones and let them swim into the cosmos, clashing with the waves of corporate crime, of profits before lives of all the bad things that are tearing our planet into pieces. I wonder who will win, which story will fade and which one will change the world. I dont know ,nobody knows.
But we try. Captain Mike Fincken is an extrodinary storyteller. the walrus , the king of gup. I hope he leads this boat full of love ,hapiness and crazy stories into a new world. A slightly better one.
Captain Daniel Rizotti (the captain before Mike) used to say that this boat is nothing but steel, a cold lifeless material, but it is us who make this boat the Rainbow Warrior. We are the rainbow warrior , not this boat, not the one that was bombed and sunk by the french in 1985, not the one that is going to follow . But We. and our stories are going to change the world.

aromatic alarms and other la-la maladies

2008-10-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

In spanish la-la means hippie. On this legendary boat with an extra high la la quota, we have some strange instances . One of them today was the classic , straight from the book incident. Someone left a incense stick , in the the wrong place for the wrong amount of time and the fire alarm unfortunately doesnt come with nasal buds and a good taste.
Thus, the crew had to jump at 8'o clock in the evening to the high pitched (and very irritating)sound of the fire alarm .
It took 2 firemen , 5 minutes and a lot of common sense to extinguish this particular fire. This was a funny one, however to all those who read this piece.Please pray that we dont get a real fire alarm, for there is no worse sound to jolt a sailor out of his sleep.
cheers from the la-la warrior

hello mr.warrior sir

2008-10-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

One of the lovely dolphins who came visiting the warrior a few days ago.
It seems our presence excited her to jump upside down (with a grin that spread from one fin to the other)
The video shall also be added as soon as broadband internet can be found.
Photo courtesy the talented miss kajsa sjolander

the most dangerous bay in the world

2008-10-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

The bay of Biscay, is a name that used to appear in the last page of the log book in the olden days, the last entry before the ship sank without a trace(and not because the books were printed here)
The weather forcast looked dim as we approached the notorious bay , we were expecting 40-60 knots of wind (around 80-100 kmph).
However the planet is not without a sense of irony (how else could it have survived us for so long) , thus we ,who have been fighting against climate change for so long faced sunny weather and blue skies in a part of the world where they are completely unheard of.
To add to the general signs of happiness from our beloved planet, we were also greeted by at least a hundred dolphins over the last few days , who performed various gymnastic acts as they surfed on the bow wave(some of which I have on video) , not to mention the dozens of whales that we have seen in this beautiful bay. One of them today was extremely close to the ship, so close in fact , that she had to dive under the ship to pass us by .

Sometimes the universe throws strange surprises at you, the bay of briscay was certainly one of them.

my path to the warrior

2008-10-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

September 2007:

I always wanted to become a film maker. In 2007, when I finished college, I desperately wanted to study Filmmaking in FTII, Pune. I wrote the test for Film Direction (which is written by a few thousand students every year) and got through to the interview (along with a lucky 29 others).
However I did not pass the interview. And that turned into one of the best adventures of my life…
I returned home and was promptly offered a role as an Actions coordinator with Greenpeace (One of the most exciting jobs that this exciting organization has to offer) .A good friend (and also Greenpeace India’s Communications director) told me ,” Their loss is our gain,” and I had an inkling that somehow the universe had made the right choices for me, for such is the way of the cosmos.
So there I was.
I took the job 6 days before my 21st birthday, on the 12th of September 2007. I enjoyed a delicious cake in my own name on the 18th September and just like that, I was in.
Greenpeace: a home to idealistic Environmentalists across the Universe

July 2007:

I was completely and utterly frustrated with not being able to accomplish enough ( a disease all idealists tend to suffer from…)
I was offered a position on board the Rainbow Warrior , the flagship of Greenpeace.
I couldn’t resist.
So…. After careful considerations, lasting for about 3 seconds,
I resigned.

Leaving behind good memories, a small set of shoes to fill in,
Leaving behind a laptop and a small part of the table,
Leaving behind friends and very close mates,
I moved onto another piece of Greenpeace.

September 2008,

I walked a fair distance to get here. But here I am, A journey of 22 years concludes with another journey. On the 18th of this month I turned 22 , onboard the Rainbow warrior. And I am glad I’m here, not anywhere else in the universe. I feel like I’m home, a bit strange when your home takes you in all corners of this beautiful planet.
But if you think about it, it’s the perfect home to have.
It was a rather funny occasion, We had Indian food ( in the honor of yours truly ) and some funny elements on board (also known by the name of annkatrin) decided to hide all the cutlery and make everyone eat with their hands.
The pandemonium that resulted, was completely “not my fault” ( even though I enjoyed it immensely).
There were about 10 different nationalities on board , and none of then had ever eaten food with their hands. I leave the rest to your imagination. However, everyone did have a lot of fun (and a lot of gulab jamuns) to the music of Nusrat fateh ali khan in the background. It was over all a rather lovely evening.(all except for the speech I had to make in the end, disastrous is the word for that one) .
The following day we watched Om Shanti Om , in the hold. In hammocks , with fresh lassi (Yes I mean fresh lassi, and pretty good one, thanks to Joanna and dafna) . I never thought that thew firings would be able to sit through all of it , I mean 3 hours straight is not a child play, but they managed really well. In fact by then end of it, some of them were dancing to dard-e-disco (while the others were nursing minor headaches due to the whole reincarnating return of shahrukh khan).
But stangely enough, they were all very happy .
Un-fucking-believable.

Welcome to the rainbow warrior

israel action ( continued)

2008-09-23T01:40:00.000-07:00

I think the video is kind self explanatory. The police was so pissed, you could have fried an egg on their foreheads . But what the video doesnt tell is the story of how they came onboard the warrior afterwards to arrest the ship. The captain, Daniel, decided not to let them onboard unless they dumped the M16 carbine they were bringing aboard, carelessly pointed at crewmembers (also they were quite smelly).

They climbed on board and for a while, It was quite serious, and then the guy holding the automatic gun , dropped it on the floor.( i mean how many guys do you know who come holding a M16 , and then drop it? it was hilarious.)

The other highlights of the day was the dolphins , they came to visit the ship (as usual, rescuing our arses from the more serious aspects of the universe, namely the ships impending arrest). It was really funny to see the cops suddenly jump up and run towards the railing ( I personally dont think they had seen any dolphins before)

Captain Daniel was of course uber cool in his dealing with the cops. He hit them with a mallet of polite conversation and it was clearly stronger than their guns.

epilogue ( of secret documents)

A french insider memo from 1985: You cant sink a rainbow!

An Israeli insider memo from 2008: apparently you cant arrest the darn thing either!!

A greenpeace action in israel (continued)

2008-09-23T01:33:00.000-07:00

my vlog on the warrior

2008-09-22T14:58:00.000-07:00

an action in israel , free paranoia for everyone

2008-09-17T11:20:00.002-07:00

9th September 2008:

Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior launches a Peaceful and Non violent action aginst authorities in Israel. They are amongst the many ( and the fact that they are many doesn’t condone that’s they are stupid ) countries , who think that burning coal is perfectly all right. That climate change is problem for others to deal with. And that human babies are flown into our world by stork airlines.

We of course try to tell them otherwise. So we paint a coal carrying ship in Ashkelon , Israel with the words “QUIT COAL , SAVE CLIMATE" . We hope that if we keep our font size really big, somebody might actually understand what we are saying. Of course , the police tend to prove us wrong most of the time. But still we keep on trying.

So we do a classic greenpeace Non violent direct action , and the authorities do not like it. They arrest all the protesters and then board the ship with guns . We welcome them with fresh coffee. But they decide to arrest the ship , or at least they try to. After some discussion they decide that the ship is too big to be handcuffed ;) ( don’t they know you cant stop a rainbow ) so they go for the captain instead . Captain Daniel is very cool and gives them a polite conversation instead. Finally after hours , they decide that they just want coffee and biscuits and not the captain. :)
Its amazing what powers lie hidden in the cuisine. We get our activists and our boats back. They get hugs and kisses. We promise not to trouble them anymore. Everyone is happy( except for the coal ship and they better not be too happy, we ‘ll be back for them later )

terrorism and climate change

2008-09-17T11:20:00.001-07:00

Israel:

When you think about Israel, you get some strange pictures in your head. Usually for a mildly well informed Indian, you think of a Jewish nation in the Middle East, constantly under attack by terrorists. In fact most of us might even sympathize with Israel, it seems they are pretty high on the Al Quaida hit-list, just like we are.

But if the WHO , along with scientists from along the world are to be believed . It seems that climate change is a bigger threat to human life than terrorism.( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3381425.stm for all you skeptic boys and girls) For most of us, who have lived with trains and buses being bombed are probably the only ones who can imagine the reality of those words.
Believe me, I would love to give the climate skeptics a chance, and say that climate change is just a myth , a joke, a cosmic parody . Sometimes I really wish it was.

A small pop quiz :

1. When you plant a bomb in a public place and you kill 20 people. They call you a terrorist. Its completely unforgivable , You get the life sentence.

2. What do you call yourself when you are doing something that will leave a 80 million people in your own country homeless? This is not the first time we have dealt with numbers that size . Remember the partition of India and Pakistan? Remember the horror stories you grandparents told you? Remember the wars that followed and the bitterness that exists 50 years later between our two nations? .... Remember?

Now multiply that number by 10 times. And imagine….

What name will you give to the people responsible for it?

I take out my dictionary and skim through it, but somehow none of the words . terrorist or mass murderer or genocidal maniac does the trick ( genocidal maniac comes close, but even Adolf Hitler was only responsible for about 5 million deaths, and that’s still too low a score )

I leave you to it….

the how and the why of being a green activist

2008-09-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

I have been working with Greenpeace for the past 4 years, since I was 17 years old. And like everyone who joins Greenpeace with a passion for Environmental activism, I have been in awe of the Rainbow Warrior (RW for the ones well versed in Greenpeace lingo). The ship that sank and came back, the biggest blot in the French conscience since Waterloo , the ship that pretty much change the entire course of Environmental activism around the world. And believe me none of this is an understatement.

So finally I found myself on the RW 2 months ago, trying to stop what is probably the biggest threat to human life. No, its not cholesterol related. It doesn’t even have any connections with Nuclear weapons. Its our friendly neighborhood climate change. It might sound impossible to a lot of us sitting in air-conditioned rooms on comfortable seats, but if scientists across the world are to be believed (and not the soon-to-be-extinct Bush administration) it seems climate change is the single biggest threat to our culture, our way of life and even to our very existence. In other words . Its true, and its happening to you, you just don’t know it yet.

3 thousand years of human civilization, everything from languages to music to digital watches (the non waterproof kind of course) is at threat. And who is the biggest criminal ? well its that harmless piece of black coal that we have been mining and burning for the past 100 years. Quite an irony , 100 years of dumb humans is all it takes to wipe out 3000 years of smart ones. But at least we are not going down without a fight, large corporations and some countries think that making a quick buck is better than saving the planet from environmental destruction, and they seem almost amazed when someone tells them any different. That’s where we come in, the ship, the activists and the truth. We stopped them at map da phut , Thailand. We stopped them at Ashkelon , Israel. And we will try and stop them from burning a single piece of coal if we can. We have been beaten, bombed , shot at, kicked in strange places, thrown vegetables at .And its not stopped us before , do you think we let it stop us now. I don’t think so.

Captain Mike Fincken used to say these words ,’ for the past 37 years Greenpeace has fought at the front line of environmental activism, but all that has only been a dress rehearsal for the fight that lies ahead. Climate Change is the biggest threat to human life and coal is the biggest criminal. ,”