Two things
1 A German acquaintance died yesterday and as death always does, she flung at me the same old surprise - a vacant recurring thought that he whom I so often saw on roads, a one purposed anti-pesticides man is no more! The campaigner will no longer ride on his '0 emission' tricycle along the dusty roads. The cashew patch which he tended since a little over a decade near my house will feel empty. While he was alive, till the day before yesterday in fact, those were trees which yielded organic nuts. Now, with this hero fallen, they may yield the yearly, if not worthless, unworthy fruit. Death of an activist, whatever the scale of his activism, leaves behind a lacuna until something more exciting comes along to divert us. Yesterday when I read of his demise in a brief circular I made a mental note to meet his partner, a Mangalorean, lover of stray dogs and a staunch but subdued activist herself. I saw her standing in the shade of the organic cashew stall by the...