| | | Good morning! | | As my favourite band once sang, “If you plant ice, you’re gonna harvest wind.” I’ve always heard that to mean everything has consequences. It’s difficult to get people and organisations to be accountable; it’s even more difficult to get them to be responsible. But consequences are different; it’s impossible to escape them; and our future, as individuals, as a community, even as a people, is often the consequential right-hand side of an equation where the left-hand side is the series of decisions we (people around us/even people who came before us) have taken. For instance, the makers of SUVs (and they are now hugely popular in India, especially real SUVs that can pretty much go anywhere) are either unaware or do not care about the irresponsible way in which their vehicles are driven in the ecologically fragile grasslands outside Bengaluru or the equally (if not more) ecologically fragile Aravallis outside Delhi and Gurugram. Will there be a consequence? Not today. Perhaps not even tomorrow. But certainly someday.  At least two food delivery companies (including the largest) now offer inter-city deliveries, adding to the carbon footprint of food – perhaps the third most irresponsible activity that a food company can engage in, at least in my opinion (selling sugar and fat using the sheer power of marketing has to be the first; the use of unsustainable palm oil is the second). Then, as I mentioned, it’s pointless to discuss responsibility and accountability. But someday, there will be consequences. Ask the residents of new Bengaluru (and 10 years from now that could well be the first line of a dystopian novel). As long as people realise that, I am fine with whatever they do. Action; reaction. Cause; effect. Crime; punishment. Ice; wind. | | THINK This week, the Congress launched its Bharat Jodo Yatra in a bid to strengthen its organisation, relaunch Rahul Gandhi, and improve its prospects in the 2024 elections. The week also saw the Aam Aadmi Party launch its Make India No 1 campaign from Haryana, hoping to position itself and its leader, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, as the ones best equipped to take on the might of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Narendra Modi (in 2024). Realistically though, as my colleague Roshan Kishore writes, the yatra and the campaign mark the beginning of the race for the No 2 position in Indian politics. | | THINK MORE Cities need public spaces that are egalitarian and accessible. The capital of a country needs a central square, a monument, a building that defines it. The new Central Vista avenue, Kartavya Path, inaugurated on Thursday, promises to be all that. To call it an improvement over the previous avenue, Rajpath, is an injustice to it, and extremely unfair to the latter. It marries the grandeur of the old with the convenience of the new. It boasts sweeping lawns and walkways ; sparkling canals; underpasses (crossing Janpath was a nightmare for pedestrians and wary motorists alike), vending areas, and, most importantly, the two aspects of infrastructure that most public spaces in India lack, toilets and parking. It will be crowded this weekend, and perhaps every weekend after that, just like the old avenue used to be; after all, it isn’t a private thoroughfare, but a public space that belongs to all Indians. Please keep it clean. | | KNOW  Credit: REUTERS Why did parts of Bengaluru flood? The rain did not help. As India’s best weather data journalist Abhishek Jha explained, the city has seen the most rain ever this monsoon – and also the most rain from what the weather office calls an intense or heavy spell. But as S Vishwanath, one of the city’s and India’s top rainwater harvesting experts put it, “It takes a special kind of skill to cause floods, or more appropriately waterlogging, in a city like Bengaluru. A city that is on a ridge line between the Kaveri and Dakshina Pinakini basin; a city whose landform slopes down its three valleys …rainwater to rapidly cascade out.” He attributes the flooding to the city’s growth, its hydrology, and the transport infrastructure it has built. Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, another expert who works for WRI India, drilled deeper, and showed how two of the worst instances of flooding, in RMZ EcoSpace on Outer Ring Road and Rainbow Drive on Sarjapur Road, happened because their “topography has been significantly altered by construction activity and existing drains and culverts are proving insufficient…”. The solution, according to TV Ramachandra from the Indian Institute of Science, lies in: “Restoring interconnectivity among lakes”; protecting “valley zones and buffer regions of wetlands”; preventing “narrowing and concretisation of drains”; and ensuring there is riparian vegetation in flood plains. That’s a tall ask for a city that would rather focus on building the next unicorn, and luxury houses for people who work in it. But there is a larger problem: Indian cities may not have enough incentive to tackle flooding. | | LEARN  Credit: British Museum Now for something completely different. September marks 200 years since the Rosetta Stone inscription was deciphered, helping people understand a language they had been trying to for a millennium-and-a-half. Since then, hieroglyphs have pervaded pop culture – from Asterix comics to video games – and their study has deepened our understanding of one of the world’s oldest civilisations. The fact that the code was indeed cracked holds out hope that we will one day be able to understand the Harappan script. “Inscriptions bearing 400 to 700 unique markings have been excavated since the civilisation was discovered in the 1920s. In 2010, Ronojoy Adhikari, a professor of statistical physics at University of Cambridge, and computer scientist Rajesh Rao, analysed how often a particular symbol occurs, what it typically appears with, and if patterns recur. Their research confirmed that these were not just seals for trade but a script,” my colleague Rachel Lopez writes in this week’s HT Wknd. | | READ MORE India gets a Nasal Covid-19 vaccine. That should help. A Queen Across Eras. Virat Kohli’s hard-won “next” century after 1020 days. Queen Serena. | | OUTSIDE I’m reading a 1964 profile of Bob Dylan that The New Yorker carried in October of that year, and again in late August as part of its archival issue on celebrities. It’s written by Nat Hentoff, who has written extensively on jazz. Then 23, Dylan was already a folk music hero who had produced protest music anthems such as Masters of War and Blowin’ in the Wind. But as evident in the profile, he is getting ready to put that all behind him and become a true-blue folk-rock superstar. The following year, he would release his first album featuring electric instruments, Bringing It All Back Home, but this profile catches him in a transitory phase; he is recording Another Side of Bob Dylan (recorded in one evening when the author is present); he has moved away from the protest movement, mentally and musically; and he is clearly exploring what he wants to be. “I’m not committed to anything except making a few records and playing a few concerts,” he says in one place. “This so-called mass-fame comes from people who get caught up in a thing for a while and buy the records. Then they stop. And when they stop, I won’t be famous anymore,” he adds in another. | | WHAT I'M READING The HT newsroom has written extensively on the fraying federal compact in India, so I won’t go there again. We have also written about the South becoming politically less relevant when the Lok Sabha is expanded after 2026 to more accurately represent the country’s population (southern states, in general, have been far more successful in controlling population than the so-called Hindi-belt ones). The fact that the 2021 Census will not be complete by then could delay the process, although there is nothing to stop the government from going ahead and using the 2011 Census as the basis. In effect, the southern states will be punished for their success in population control. They also fare better on social and economic indicators (which explains the huge influx of migrants they are now seeing). What does all this mean? I’m reading an advance copy of South vs North: India’s Great Divide by RS Nilakantan which delves into many of these issues. | | WHAT I’M LISTENING TO  My old friend, former boss, and predecessor once-removed as editor of Hindustan Times, Sanjoy Narayan, pointed me in the direction of an NPR podcast on For The Birds: The Birdsong Project, which, in turn, led me to the four volumes released so far of original bird-related or bird-themed music and poetry (the project also includes original art). I may or may not buy the 20-LP boxed set that’s out December (you all know how that will likely end), but the music and the poetry readings by actors and musicians is impressive – not just for the sheer width of talent on display (Nick Cave, Beck, Beach House, Jeff Goldblum, Elvis Costello, Kurt Vile, Alice Coltrane, John Cale, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Yo-Yo Ma, Makaya McCraven, Sam Mendes, Olivia Wilde, Jeff Tweedy, Robert Pattinson, and Tilda Swinton are some of the 200-odd people to have contributed), but also the quality of the music and the performances. I’ve listened to little else in the four days since Sanjoy recommended the podcast. | Please share your feedback with us What do you think about this newsletter? | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? 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