Would I Believe Him?

[I wanted to start this blog with something like “The end of a year – and of a decade in your life – is always a good time for reflection on how you’ve grown” and I could not believe how old I sounded. Urgh. But I turned 30 on Monday and have generally been taking stock of where I am in life and I realized that I managed to accomplish some pretty cool things through the belligerent hellfire that was 2020 AD. I’m sure you did too. I’m writing this for myself – each of the things below could/probably should be blogs of their own – and so if you do end up reading, thank you and sorry for being self-indulgent. I will have some real writing for you soon, I promise. But you’re welcome to stick around. It’s a happy piece!]

I remember at the end of 2019 I met my best friend at her office gym to exercise together after work. It was 6pm and the view of the city at dusk from the Blue-chip Tech Company building’s penthouse was stunning. It’s the kind of view people move to New York for. I remember looking at her and the people around us and feeling like they had something I wanted. She seemed so secure in her career, making the money she wanted to be making, living in the apartment she wanted to be living in, satisfied with how she lived her life, happy with how she chose her friends and generally excited for the future. If our mid-20s had been about understanding what we wanted, her late 20s had seen her go and get those things. She had a base from which to grow; she had arrived into adulthood in the most beautiful, convincing way. I said to myself, I would also get to that place in 2020.

And so I did. I actually did it. I feel like I am there now. It is something I am going to give myself credit for. To be sure, I was already in a pretty good place – in an incredibly privileged place – and there is lots I did not do in 2020. I did not finally get a US driver’s license, I did not get speech therapy for my stammer, I did not marry Mary Hatch, I did not solidify my long-term immigration plans – or reconcile my disillusionment with India, for that matter. But here are five things I did do – five things I managed in the midst of a global pandemic. Five things I am happy about and proud of myself for. Five things that make me feel like I’m worthy of my 30s. If 2020 Shravan went back in time to that meet 2019 me at the gym that day and told me where I would be in life, would I believe him? I don’t know. It was possible but not probable. So here are my Christmas presents to myself:

1.     1. I got my dream job

I knew it was time to leave journalism at the end of 2019. I had a great boss and a wonderful team, but I was not growing professionally, learning any new skills or making anything close to what I deserved. Then, when the daily rigors of old job – my last as a reporter – suddenly became too stressful relative to my pay slip, I began a lockdown job hunt amid a crumbling economy. I knew I had to step into my long-term career. I knew I wanted to go from writing about climate issues to actively influencing them. I applied to my current job – leading marketing at a climate finance NGO – in March. After rounds and rounds of Zoom interviews, I accepted a generous offer in May. After months and months of visa application stress, I finally began work in late September.

I can say with my hand on my heart that I love this job. I love this organization – it’s a caring organization, a healing organization. I love my boss, my boss’s boss, my team, the people who work in HR, the people who work in IT… everyone. The work is interesting and challenging and so I learn new things every day and I see a path for me to grow. This is my dream job because I can basically be my authentic self at work and so work doesn’t feel like work. This job change was… huge. I cannot even begin to describe how important it was in my life. It was so difficult but it made me have to strive and be the best version of myself. My relationship with my parents, who helped me in the interview process, reached a new level of closeness and mutual respect. I can’t believe I get paid to do this work. I’m in love.

2.      2. I found an amazing therapist  

‘Therapist dating’ can be harder than actual dating. You have to find someone who accepts your health insurance, who has time slots that match yours and most importantly, who you feel comfortable opening up to. It’s hard to differentiate therapists from their homogenous profiles online. Sometimes you’ll spend a week looking for someone, then you’ll spend your co-pay on an intro meeting and find them awful and then you’ll question if you really need therapy at all and then you’ll stop looking for help for months and months till life stress boils over again. This happened to me a lot. Then a friend shared a therapist hunting technique that I’m going to share with you: set up three appointments with three promising therapists back-to-back or all on the same weekend and just see who you best vibe with. You’ll be able to compare them easily and you can just commit to three sessions with the one you like the most. ‘Therapist speed-dating’, if you will, served me well.

I found my dude in March and went to his office exactly once before Covid lockdown moved us to nine months of Zoom sessions. I had a lot of unspoken, unarticulated feelings and internal conflicts writhing around inside me and Craig helps me untangle them every week by asking me the right questions. He never tells me what to do. He listens – really listens – and takes notes and then helps me find the answers that are inside me by reflecting my statements back to me. He notes down my ramblings every week and so Craig's list has become my Saturday morning ticket to understanding myself. Therapy is by far the best $50 I spend a week. Sometimes I’ll go into a session thinking “I’m happy! Life is good! Do I really need this?” and then within 20 mins I am verbalizing an anxiety or painful memory that I have never uttered aloud or shared with another soul! I stuck at it and now I'm reaping the benefits. For instance, he has helped me identify that I was living a profound mind-body disconnect, where I lived only in my head and saw my body as another person, another being separate from me. And speaking of my body…

3.     3. I lost 15 lbs.

I lost 15 lbs. in two months and now I know how to lose 1 lb. a week in a sustainable, fun way. (I can’t believe I’ve become American enough to use lb. instead of kg but the secret reason is that weight-loss numbers sound more impressive in lbs., so I lose weight in lbs. and gain it in kg.) Since I became conscious that my body was unacceptably imperfect – when I was bullied at age 11 – I’ve seen losing weight as simultaneously essential and impossible. Learning to love, accept and mold my body seemed like an insurmountable challenge. Then, this summer, all that changed when I got a hand-me-down bike from my uncle, primarily to help me get around town sans Ubers and the subway.

I never learned to ride a bike as a kid so I taught myself at age 29 at Sternberg Park in Brooklyn. It was scary but I said to myself “dumber people than you can do this” and in three rides I got the hang of it. Then I wanted to figure out how much exercise a bike ride actually gives you, so I bought myself a Fitbit. Then I said I wanted to measure these results, so I got a weighing scale. I was 189 lbs. and it came as a jarring surprise. I began doing either a 5k run (500 calories) or a 20-mile bike ride (1,200 calories) every day, six days a week, and using Sunday afternoons to meal prep. My daily diet is oats & almond milk for breakfast, a spinach, bean and meat stew for lunch, and pan-seared chicken & baked veggies for dinner – all punctuated by fruit and green/black tea. I allow myself 3 cheat meals a week. This is my life now and it's delicious.

I lost 10 lbs. in the first month and 5 lbs. thereafter and this regimen feels natural and energizing and has even led me to sleep better. Maybe the boys from middle school were right and I’ll never lose my hand-me-down love-handles but when I look in the mirror I like what I see and love how I feel.  

4.     4. I figured out what I want from a relationship

One of the more terrifying moments of 2020 – obviously aside from actual terrifying things like Covid cases in my family and Arsenal paying Willian £220,000/week – was realizing that my whole approach to relationships was wrong. I had only been thinking about what I wanted my partner to be, rather than how I wanted the relationship to feel. This is another revelation that Craig helped me both diagnose and remedy. I used to say – get ready to cringe – that I was looking for someone who was highly educated, “successful”, ambitious, purpose-driven, globally-minded, etc. I thought I knew my “type”. Then, this summer, I dated someone who was absolutely not my type and she made me feel more comfortable, valued and exhilarated than anyone had done in years. We realized I had to do a lot of work on myself so we ended things cordially. And so, I got to work. Big, scary, life work where you have to put yourself under a microscope and come face to face with your flaws and deficiencies.

I realized that my criteria were not wrong per se, but that they were merely proxies for how I wanted to relate to someone, to feel around them. For example, I wanted someone highly educated because I wanted to feel secure: I linked education with intelligence, intelligence with financial stability and financial stability with a comfortable life. I have a better idea now of what I’m looking for in a relationship, including things like being able to be my authentic self by connecting both at an ‘adult’ level (through physical intimacy) and at a ‘child’ level (through humour). I realized I need both. And I’m OK to wait until I find the person that makes me feel the way(s) I want. 

This has lifted the fog of dating desperation that long clouded my judgement. I just can’t wait for Covid to be gone so we can actually storm dancefloors, visit galleries, warm houses, survey museums, catalogue Taco trucks, christen AirBnbs, and perform all the other dating pageantry that helps you learn about a new relationship. Being patient will be hard. But I think it’ll be worth it.

5.     5. I stayed sober

This was my third year of being sober – my third year of being the best version of myself. All the accomplishments above were only possible because I quit drinking in January 2018 and used that year to figure out how to live a full, fun life without alcohol. To be honest, I rarely even think about alcohol any more and certainly never feel any pangs to return to it. Life is good; life has never been better.

With the life I’ve worked to build for myself, every year of sobriety gets easier and more fun. That’s why I need to keep reminding myself that I’ve achieved something worth celebrating – especially in a difficult pandemic year and a time of so much other change in my life. I defeated my demon every single day through 2020. I used to turn to alcohol to escape my reality, to escape difficulty, to escape loss. The gift of sobriety is that every day you do not drink, is something to celebrate. There is nothing to escape. You get addicted to winning. My life now has reached a sweet moment, where every day is a victory.

So there you have it. Maybe next year is a disaster and we look back at this blog and laugh. But for now, I thank you for reading this far. I would love to hear your favourite accomplishments this year, because I know there are many. I hope you take time to reflect on your own strength and success and you find comfort in sharing the happiness in the lives of your favourite people. Merry Christmas!

Disappointing Women of New York: Part 3

(This will be the last post in this series. As you can probably tell, these posts (Part 1 & Part 2) are more a reflection of my own insecurities and immaturities than any commentary on women in general or on dating the ones who live in New York City. I have disappointed my fair share of women - maybe I'll do a blog on that some day. Any flaws I’ve highlighted in these ladies and their actions are dwarfed by my own and by the galaxy of terror that men have wreaked upon the other genders on our planet. I was at fault in some way for everything that I'm going to tell you about. I’m sure "Disappointing Shravans of New York" could be a book unto itself. I wish all these women – all women in general – only success and happiness. On this dreary Saturday though, I just wanted to blog, to vent, to make myself feel better. So, without further ado, let’s finish what we’ve started.)

 

20 five-year-olds

Ever since I moved to America’s liberal Northeast in 2015, a dominant cultural narrative has been repeated to me again and again and ingrained in me: Women are queens. Men are trash. Women = good, men = bad. Men are boorish pigs who sometimes surprise you with tact and charm but overwhelmingly, they are the vicious aggressors in an age-old battle whose tide has only recently begun to turn. All my best friends in America are liberal women and these ideas provide the stars by which we navigate dating, workplace dynamics and other touch-points of gender interaction. Women by default are good and right and men are bad and wrong. This is the prism through which I’ve been taught to view the world – first at graduate school and then while working in New York. And largely, I have come to agree. It is a prism that serves me well because it can help me compensate for my many unconscious gender biases. But if you’ll humour me today, I’d just like to challenge the notion this one time. Just this once, and then I’ll go back to assuming the best in women and the worst in men, I promise. Sometimes – sometimes – women can be really, really mean. And for some reason, the ones who’ve been the worst to me have all been 25. So, I’m going to make a sweeping, silly, anecdotal generalization: Women in their mid-20s are children.

 

Ghosts in the System

We had been dating almost three months when I told her I loved her. She didn’t say it back and that was fine. We had talked about this. I think it’s fine to tell someone you love them just because you want to, rather than because you need to hear it back (for it to be real). We met shortly after I moved to New York and we went from 0-100 at a speed that surprised us both. But we stuck with it because it felt right. We would hang out often and have the most wonderful time together. We had met each other’s moms. We hadn’t made any long-term plans but we were really into it. She made life fun. For once, I stopped planning every waking moment and just lived every day. It was a joy.

When I wake up in the morning and I’m excited about the day just because I get to spend it with my partner, I know I’m in love. So I told her. And it felt great. She never said it back to me but she would send me long, drunk text messages late at night telling me how great I was. I felt fine about our dynamic; there was not an imbalance. They were three of the best months of my life.

Then one day she went to Paris on holiday for two weeks and stopped replying to me. 

I had never been ghosted like this before, especially not by someone I loved. She did not reply to me even on her return. I think it was more than a month of radio silence before she dumped me over text. “What a queen. YAS! Slay!”

Perhaps I had come on too strong. Perhaps our three-year age gap was beginning to tear at the spontaneity of the romance. Perhaps she had just realized she was bored of me. It doesn’t matter. You do not ghost someone who has told you they love you, who you’ve introduce to your family, and then dump them over a text message. You act like a grown-up. But alas, 25-year-olds are not grown-ups. 25-year-olds are children.

 

War Correspondence

It started on Hinge, of course. (I do not know how people meet outside of dating apps.) She was a consultant. She had gone to Yale too. She “checked all the boxes”. We talked for a bit and then she said she was traveling for work and would be back in a couple weeks. And of all places, she was in Bombay! It was her first trip to India and she was traveling alone.

This was a couple months after I’d been dumped by aforementioned Ghost Girl and so I think I had come across as a bit desperate to this new lady. In any case, the power dynamic was definitely in Check Box Chica’s favor. But as soon as I realized she was in my hometown and was working on a project that was close to my heart, I offered to help. I genuinely went into “help your friend visiting Bombay” mode. She gave me her email and we emailed each other every day. Aside from restaurant recommendations and site-seeing tips, I also connected her with my industry contacts and friends who would be best placed to advise her on her project. I remember writing honestly, “even if we never meet, I just hope you have a good experience in India” and she replied saying “Oh we will definitely meet when I’m back! This is amazing! Thank you so much. Etc.”

We never met.

We had exchanged 31 emails before she ignored me. An email a day between two strangers for two weeks; each message reaching across 11 time-zones. It was kind of nice to try online dating via 3 lines on an email every night. It felt like writing letters to a soldier on some front-line. Did my soldier die or defect?

Looking back on my emails, I was definitely too eager to impress and too anxious to show my virtues. But. I don’t think you ignore someone who has gone out of their way to help you when you’re traveling alone for work to their country for the first time. I don’t think this is how “YAS Queen Slay me” queens should act. At least tell them you’re not feeling the chemistry or make something up? I wasn’t ready for this kind of behavior. Weren’t women amazing, emotionally intelligent archangels of kindness and virtue? This is what I had been told. I guess she was not. What she was, of course, is 25.

 

5pm Checkout

I knew it wasn’t really “going anywhere” with this girl. She came into my life a month after “we’ll definitely meet” Check Box Chica. This new woman was fun but we were both very different. We texted a lot but would meet only every couple weeks for a few months. She wasn’t my usual type and I was not hers. She had taught English in Southeast Asia for a while and was now working at an education non-profit, but she was still very much finding her mission in life. Alas, she was beautiful and I was lonely and so I gave it a go. On one occasion, she even took the train out to New Jersey, where I was baby-sitting for some family-friends on the weekend, and we went for a lovely hike in the nearby forest. We kissed for the first time over a waterfall. It was nice! There were no “expectations” or ever any conversations about where this was leading. It was two people showing up for each other in a frigid November when the big, scary city had started to ice shut.

Though we did not see each other over Christmas, we texted and shared photos of our vacations. She sent me a photo of her holding her baby cousin and I sent her one of me in a Christmas sweater. It was nice!

We even met once in January. And I was starting to consider whether we could maybe work after all, if we could meet a little more often and invest emotionally in each other. So, we made a plan to grab dinner on a Wednesday. The night before, I’d suggested a place in East Village and she said she was looking forward to it. 6pm tomorrow, we agreed. I had made a reservation. The Italian joint was known for its lasagna and its cheesecake.

I texted her the next day at 5pm to let her know I was leaving work soon. She texted back... saying that she had been seeing someone else all this time and that she wanted to give it a shot with him. So, she said she would not be able to meet me and that she was sorry. I was “a good guy who deserved someone good, etc.”

Have you ever been dumped by text an hour before you’re supposed to meet for cheesecake? It’s a weird feeling. You kind of step back and ask yourself, “What…. What just happened?” How long had she been sitting on this decision and why did she wait until an hour before, to not only cancel the date but to cancel the dating? I could not imagine leading someone on like that and not being honest with them. But then again, I am not 25.

 

I think people in their mid-20s are inconsiderate because they are still looking to maximize their self-interest at any cost – and at anyone else’s expense. I know I was like that. When you’re in your late 20s, I think you’ve been through enough heartbreak to be gentle to people whom you’re breaking things off with. I think you learn decorum, etiquette, etc. Maybe all these women were ghosted and/or dumped by men in similar or worse ways to the ones above and so they saw nothing wrong with it. I feel sorry for them. It makes me sad that people on dating apps are so unkind to one another. There is never a fun way to end a relationship or let someone down easy, but there is a respectful way – a mature way. I’ve found women in their late 20s are generally kinder when they end things.

I think there’s a lot of room for kindness in dating. Who is going to teach us? The apps are great at matching us up but they are absent when it comes to helping us part ways. I don’t know if apps are going to help us get better at the hard bits, the messy bits. Only life teaches you that. 

 

Xavier's by Proxy

I am writing this from a marble island counter-top, in a sunny kitchen in South Orange, New Jersey. This is a home filled with love and laughter in the face of many difficulties – a home to family-friends that has been a beacon of warmth and care for me since I began visiting New York in 2005. This home has been my happy place – my emotional release valve – since I moved from India to the US in 2015. The man of the house attended St. Xavier’s College in Bombay with my parents in the 80s and they form part of a jolly friend group that has stayed together, multiplied and evolved over the last 40 years. There are five or so other families in this family-friend cluster that I consider to be more family than friends. Recently I thought about what has held their friendship together and why I feel so at peace with myself when I’m around them. I realized that wherever in the world I’ve lived, the aspects of my Indian identity that I feel most connected to are reflected in the values that the Xavier’s gang lives by. The Xavier’s gang of 50-somethings hang out with their Xavier’s friends’ kids – just as their own kids do! Strangely, it is in the company of these middle-aged moms and dads that I can be my authentic self. They make it so easy to be yourself. What on earth did that college teach them?

For the uninitiated, Xavier’s was founded by Jesuit priests in 1869 in South Bombay. I have not spent that much time on campus but I remember the beautiful architecture and the greenery and sense of space that surrounds it – a certain lightness and airiness that I felt so rarely in the rest of the city. I think two things happened that brought this Xavier’s gang together. The first was that the boys all grew up  in relatively educated, suburban middle-class households. They did not grow up poor but they were not South Bombay elite in mindset or pocketbook either. It seems there was a drive among them to learn about and explore the world, rather than simply continue a family business and/or accumulate wealth. So there was a self-selection into Xavier’s even before the Indo-Gothic halls could whisper their magical hymns.

From what I’ve learned about Xavier’s, the ethos of the institution is about critical thinking, social activism, tolerance, diversity and inclusion rather than simply academic or sporting excellence, for example. This is the second part of the Xavier’s experience that I think turned the Xavier’s gang into the progressive, kind, liberal bunch of wise-cracking air-guitarists they are today. In many ways, it seems Xavier’s was ahead of its time since those are the same buzzwords that schools, colleges and workplaces around the world seek to tattoo on their foreheads today.

Perhaps calling Xavier’s a ‘liberal arts school’ is going too far, but from what I have gathered from smitten alumni, it was a university that attracted well-rounded candidates and sought to round and ground them further in its core values. When my parents and the Xavier’s gang recount college stories, they’re always tales of music festivals, sports tournaments, rainy treks… not so much about the classes or their career office. Somehow, while the rest of the city (the country?) was striving for academic perfection, these brave Jesuits were trying to fill young Indians with empathy. My parents talk about the university staff – ‘Father’ this and ‘Brother’ that – more as mentors and confidantes than professors or teachers and have maintained astonishingly close bonds to those kindly old men to this day. I could name on one hand the professors I remember from my undergrad in the UK. And while I’m connected to my high school and undergrad friends, it’s not like we meet every year (or our kids live in each other’s homes) the way the Xavier’s mob operates.

When my sister and I were young and our parents would introduce us to members of The Gang, all they had to say was that these were “Xavier’s friends” and no further explanation was necessary. That name and the friends who carried it hold certain inalienable values that I’ve only recently been able to put my finger on. They exhibit the form of secularism and tolerance that makes me proud to be Indian. They live the Indian values that I most closely identify with.

Look at this extract from the charter of the Xavierites of Bangalore alumni group:

“We cherish values such as pluralism, liberalism, social responsibility and freedom of thought that we have imbibed from St. Xaviers, and which in turn, we wish to propagate. We also desire to champion worthy causes which reflect the values we cherish.

We, the Alumni accept that there are a number of worthy causes which might meet the desired criteria. We accept that the first such initiatives might be modest in scope. We accept that more than the need to achieve width or scale of coverage, is the need to make a beginning.”

I was astonished when I read the charter. It felt like someone had distilled my entire world-view and raison d'être – something I’d been trying to crystallize for years – into a 1-page word document.

It seems I trace a large part of my Indian identity to… my parents’ college? This is weird, right? I’m not saying everyone at Xavier’s is like this, but I do think The Gang is the way they are because of Xavier’s. They have even picked up friends over the years who never went to Xavier’s but in our minds they are all part of the Xavier’s Gang because they share the same values.

Some in the squad are more religious than others and those who practice, do so privately and in a way that even this staunch atheist can accept and cherish. When I heard them talk about social issues as a kid, they were always quick to criticize religious bigotry or gender-based discrimination. (Jokes about their wives do not count.) They hate politicians for being corrupt, not because of what party they were from. They love India enough to call out its flaws; those who live abroad pepper their homes with the country’s essence (plurality, debate, etc… as well as a rogue Ganesh figurine here and there). They love Indian music as well as Western music – they loved music because it was good, not because of who sang it. While all of them have done well for themselves and their families, they never ever ever ever talked about money obnoxiously or flaunted their wealth; conversations around material possessions are always tempered by Bandra-convent-school humility. It is so different to the energy in other well-to-do Indian living rooms where people become experts at talking about themselves, their newly acquired toys or the job their kid got with Goldman Stanley and Googazon or Bainkinsey.

When I look at my closest friends today – people in the late 20s or early 30s just starting to get married and have kids – I wonder if we will make the effort to travel and see each other, to stay as connected, to use our friendship as a foundation to build meaningful lives on. I hope so. Some of my closest friends are moving away from New York because of Covid. I am sad that I won’t get to be in the same city as them when their kids are born. I guess we have to trust that the bedrock of our connection is solid enough that it will endure the stresses of life on this curious planet. What work and sacrifice must have gone into keeping the Xavier’s ties strong? Or was it effortless? I wonder how the internet will impact my generation’s ability to cultivate family-friend groups. My sense is that we’ll remain connected to a lot more people, but not as closely as the Xavier’s mafia has stayed connected to itself.

What a gift their friendship has been to my life. How grateful I am that my parents went to a liberal, open-minded institution and built friendships with humble humans who work across such different professions. How thankful I am that my folks did not go to IIT/IIM – not that there is anything wrong with those great institutions or the sacred friend circles they must have bellowed out over the years. I’m just glad we’re Xavier’s kids who are as happy listening to Lucky Ali with an uncle and aunty in Washington DC as we are listening to Dire Straits with an aunty and uncle in Bangalore. Somewhere along the way the air-guitarists all learned to play off the same hymn sheet.

Writing round-up: Summer 2020

Folks - it's been a while. I know. I've been posting my blogs publicly on other platforms and I've also been writing long, personal pieces which I've been circulating with close friends. All that is a long way of saying that I've neglected Shravanblog. I didn't even get around to writing the long-simmering Part 3 of Disappointing Women of New York.

For those who'd like to catch up on my recent writing, here are a few pieces for you:

- In Founding Fuel yesterday, I looked at the experience of achieving financial independence and how to navigate the relationship with your parents after you've accomplished it.

- Meanwhile, in The Hindu, I suggested that we should treat journalism as a public good (like we treat fire fighters, for example) and fund it as such. Tell me what you think! 

You can track all my writing for The Hindu here.

I'm quite proud of a piece I wrote for them earlier this year, exploring why so many Indians find it so easy to cheer for Pakistani cricketers. I daresay it's one of my better ones.

I'm working on a longer writing project - a special blog series - that I hope to launch by the end of this year. It's very meaningful to me and you'll soon see why I've been a bit careful about discussing it. 

In a few weeks I'll share a blog about how I connect to my Indian identity through... my parents' college friend group?? Yes. Really. I'll explain. 

Anyway, sorry again for not posting enough here. Life in New York rumbles on.

As you were. 

Mission Statement: Desis Against Climate Change

My name is Shravan Bhat and I’m an Indian journalist based in New York. I want to start a youth-led conversation around climate change in South Asia by meeting once a month in cities around the world to eat biryani. Yes, you read that right. Read it again if you like.

Why? Two main reasons. First: climate changes poses the single greatest threat to our region since Ricky Ponting’s 1999 Australia team. But seriously: it will make all our problems (poverty, gender-based violence, religious persecution, etc.) much worse. I believe climate change will hit the subcontinent harder than most other parts of the world because our societies are comprised mainly of low-income farmers who are therefore hugely vulnerable to bad monsoons, volatile temperatures, unseasonable drought and so on. Second, it poses perhaps the last remaining opportunity for real intra-regional cooperation, since it is the only issue that basically everyone agrees on. Global warming does not care if you’re Hindu or Muslim or if you speak Bengali or Urdu; it will strike across man-made borders indiscriminately. Let’s not sit in silos and bicker, let’s use this common challenge to build peace and reach solutions through compromise. To summarize in cricket terms: climate change is Australia and I’m proposing we put together a combined subcontinent team.

Don’t take my word for it, just look at this recent article from The World Bank. Thankfully unlike the Americans, we don’t have to argue the science behind the threats climate change poses to our part of the world. There’s plenty of reading material out there if you’re curious. How can we help people living in low-lying coastal areas in Bangladesh and the Maldives prepare for rising sea-levels? What can we learn from the work that’s already been done? The melting Himalayan glaciers have worsened floods in Pakistan — what are we going to do about it? My country is either ghosted or ravaged by monsoons ever year — do we have a plan? The environmental damage will impact us across national, provincial and linguistic borders. We are in this together. Are we just going to accept that our governments like to make enemies out of one another? Are we OK with the status-quo? I am not. 

I want to (try to) start a movement where instead of constantly fighting each other, South Asian countries work together to solve the challenges posed by the man-made climate emergencies we are already experiencing. If you’re from (or connected to) Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka and you’d like to be a part of this movement, please Like our page on Facebook.

Since our politicians care mainly about making money for themselves, we’ll have to do this from the grass-roots level. So how are we going to do this? That’s where biryani comes in. I am going to reach out to young people here in New York to meet once a month to just sit around a table, eat nice food together and talk about the impact climate change is having on our home countries and communities. I will share video clips or news reports about recent climate catastrophes on this page, which we can use as a discussion point to get the conversation going. I’d like you to try the same thing in your cities. Maybe we’ll fail and maybe we won’t be able to do a damn thing about the rising temperatures and their cataclysmic effects on our region — but then at least we’ll have made some new friends. Maybe I’ll fail and no one will show up to the meeting — but then at least I’ll get to eat biryani.

Why am I doing this? Is it because I don’t have any friends? (Kind of.) Do I need to get a girlfriend? (My god, yes.) Or is this just a desperate effort from a not-yet-cynical writer who wants to be able to look his kids in the eye when they ask him what he did about the preeminent existential threat to our species? You can decide for yourself.

I welcome your ideas for how we can start and sustain meaningful conversations around this issue. My hope is that everyone who comes to eat biryani, leaves thinking about how they can help those vulnerable populations who will be impacted by climate change. If you’re a lawyer, maybe you’ll think about getting into environmental litigation? If you’re a financier, maybe you’ll consider lending to sustainable infrastructure projects? If you work in the corporate world, maybe you’ll advise your company to view climate change as the single greatest wealth creation opportunity of the 21st century? If you work in the media, maybe you’ll convince your publication to dedicate regular coverage to how climate change effects ordinary people every day? If you work in I.T., can you help us design systems to monitor air pollution? If you are an accountant, please can you help me do my taxes? I am bad at maths.

Let’s give this a shot? Let’s give this our best shot. There is really nothing more important in the long term than climate change and nothing more rewarding in the short term than biryani. 

Sincerely,

Shravan