Even if as a toddler you haven’t chased butterflies; even if as a student you haven’t studied Lepidoptera; and even if as a ‘sari’ connoisseur you haven’t fancied nature’s veritable hot couture, Butterflies can still enrich you with what may have missed you in life.
Inducted to family obsession at an early age, a toddler’s instinct was to become a profession for Peter Smetacek. And he crafts his lifetime passion and commitment into prose that is as much enriching as entertaining. Without doubt, it evokes empathy for butterflies and moths.
One of the finest read on Butterflies, the book sends me down memory lane when, as students of entomology, we would emulate eternal romantic Dev Anand in unsuccessfully chasing elusive butterflies. Quite often, it would be the common ‘cabbage white’ falling into our net.
The author tells us that most adult butterflies do not last beyond a fortnight, but not before sending out a message that ‘just living is not enough; one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.’ A toddler’s instinct in matter of chasing butterflies is perhaps borne out of such realization. No surprise, the toddler and the butterfly complement each other as symbols of ‘freedom’, neither of them enslaved to anyone.
As adults, however, butterflies evoke mischievous connotation to which Smetacek had once been an unintended victim. On the trail of Black Prince in western Nepal, his driving license was confiscated on grounds of him being a possible human trafficker. This and much more, Butterflies takes us into the world of these winged insects without any idea why they are colored, patterned and shaped they way they are.
Holding the largest private collection of butterflies and moths in India, the author infuses authenticity and authority in his writing. Even if one cannot make any sense of the myriad genera of butterflies, the narrative espouses belongingness to nature’s exclusive creation. Such is the magic of Smetacek’s writing that midway through the book one involuntarily starts looking beyond the window to catch a glimpse of a fluttering butterfly.
‘The fluttering of butterfly wings can affect climate changes on the other side of the planet,’ noted population biologist Paul Ehrlich had once remarked. Taking the argument further, Peter Smetacek convincingly proves that butterflies are indeed the indicator species that can help monitor slightest of change in the forest micro-climate, only if one could gauge the health of different types of forests using insect population.
Informative and engrossing, Butterflies is a real page turner. Without doubt, it is one of finest non-fiction writings I have read in recent times....Link
Butterflies on the Roof of the World
by Peter Smetacek
Aleph, New Delhi
224 pages, Rs 495
Need it be said that the term 'development' has lived up to what President Harry Truman had presumed it to mean in his address to the US Senate in 1945 - to denote that a large part of the world was 'underdeveloped'. Within its broader framework a vast pool of professionals worked overtime to create an attractive vocabulary that includes terms like 'participation', 'empowerment', 'accountability' to keep the underprivileged mesmerized into believing that their concerns were being looked into. That we have more poor people than ever before exposes the hypocrisy of development which ensures that poverty persists.
Without doubt, development has remained a mischievous tool in the hands of development donors who have broadly been guided by what is known as the Bretton Woods system of economic governance. Over the years, however, the idea of development has got buried under the weight of its lofty ideology. Donors are getting increasingly concerned about the effectiveness of their taxpayers’ money. At this time when development itself has come under scrutiny, Robert Chambers' unsettling provocations should help locate a substitute for the term 'development'.
Though insightful and reflective, the short provocative essays remain confined within the framework of aid, participation and poverty. Without doubt, this framework has created development fatigue not only for those who preach it but for those on whom it is practiced. Global power dynamics and economic realities have gone through unimaginable transformation, and with it has changed the notion of poverty. That poverty is relative is a glaring reality of our times, when even the most impoverished is seeking 'freedom' and 'dignity' at the cost of 'aid'. More than 'provocations' the world needs 'transformation' in the manner in which 'development' has been perceived and delivered.
Nothing short of substituting 'development' can undo what has thus far been unleashed in the name of development. Provocations for Development opens a Pandora's Box of development myths and fallacies that development thinkers and practitioners must engage with. The author doesn't insist that the book be read cover to cover. However, there is enough for the reader to feel provoked, at least five days a week for next fifty-two weeks....Link
Provocations for Development
by Robert Chambers
Practical Action Publishing, UK
224 pages, £8.96
(available online at www.developmentbookshop.com)
If you are someone who struggles with deadlines, gets distracted from the task at hand and surfs the web instead of paying the bills, this book promises to help you ride over your guilt of ‘postponing’ provided you are not an arrogant procrastinator or a habitual offender.
Derived from a Latin word meaning ‘to put off to tomorrow’, procrastination has been described as ‘one of the general weaknesses’ that prevail to some degree in every mind. Rather than lamenting, it is better to live with it because a structured procrastinator gets a lot done by not doing what s/he is supposed to do at a particular moment.
Socrates, like other Greek philosophers, was baffled with akrasia, the mystery of why people choose to do other than what they think is best for them to do? Not because we don’t know what is right, argues John Perry, but because a number of desires of various sorts are competing for control of our bodies and thought processes. Man might be a rational animal but when it comes to taking a call on multiple desires, one tends to take a ‘rationalizing position’.
A Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, John Perry celebrates the nearly universal character flaw by pointing out that procrastinators end up being doers at the end. For writing this small book of big essays, inspiration came from an eight decade old article by Robert Benchley in the Chicago Tribune titled ‘how to get things done’, in which it was stated that ‘anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work s/he is supposed to be doing at that moment’. With tongue-in-cheek wit, John Perry takes the argument further by advocating the acceptance of the obvious.
It is probably right that procrastination is a basic human impulse, but anxiety about it as a serious problem seems to have emerged in the early modern era. Several self-help books are on offer to help you stop procrastinating. John Perry has contrasting advice: ‘Pat yourself on the back for what you manage to do while enjoying the time others think you might have ‘wasted’. Taking a philosophical self-help call on akrasia, the author suggests that we realize the existence of structured procrastination to not only feel better about ourselves but to actually improve somewhat our ability to get things done.
Insightful and amusing, The Art of Procrastination has a positive view of what till recently has been considered a character flaw. No wonder, his first essay on ‘Structured Procrastination’ won the author 2011 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature. And for writing this book, John Perry followed the principle of procrastination – he completed the book at the cost of grading papers and evaluating dissertation topics of his students. Without doubt, he has done a perfect job with the book. And one is sure that less interesting work of grading papers and evaluating dissertations was eventually done. After all, why do keep something for tomorrow when it could easily be done the day after tomorrow!...Link
The Art of Procrastination
by John Perry
Workman Publishing, New York
92 pages, $12.95
