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Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago, has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from story to story woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas, and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions—Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences, on the other. The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honorable royal family (the Pandavas), who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago, has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from story to story woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas, and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions—Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences, on the other. The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honorable royal family (the Pandavas), who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago, has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from story to story woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas, and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions—Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences, on the other. The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honorable royal family (the Pandavas), who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago, has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from story to story woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas, and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions—Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences, on the other. The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honorable royal family (the Pandavas), who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago, has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak.

This is not a new habit. The ancient Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which are frequently compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey, are colossally longer than the works that the modest Homer could manage. Indeed, the Mahabharata alone is about seven times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey put together. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are certainly great epics: I recall with much joy how my own life was vastly enriched when I encountered them first as a restless youngster looking for intellectual stimulation as well as sheer entertainment. But they proceed from story to story woven around their principal tales, and are engagingly full of dialogues, dilemmas, and alternative perspectives. And we encounter masses of arguments and counterarguments spread over incessant debates and disputations.

The arguments are also, often enough, quite substantive. For example, the famous Bhagavad Gita, which is one small section of the Mahabharata, presents a tussle between two contrary moral positions—Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences, on the other. The debate occurs on the eve of the great war that is a central event in the Mahabharata. Watching the two armies readying for war, profound doubts about the correctness of what they are doing are raised by Arjuna, the peerless and invincible warrior in the army of the just and honorable royal family (the Pandavas), who are about to fight the unjust usurpers (the Kauravas).

Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with the seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember the skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitor-birds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons—which makes unnatural changes in these crucial cycles concerning. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot—and we all know that choking 'smog season', months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.

Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun—the closer we get, the warmer we feel, the farther we go, life gets colder. However, these changing climes—unending summers, chopped-up winters, howling typhoons—are courtesy of us. The Anthropocene is the era of human impacts reshaping Earth, with one main cause: the more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases—carbon, sulfur, methane—are emitted. These block our planet's natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping it within. As the planet heats—we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times—it collapses.

Thus, melting Arctic ice has reached a record low alongside massive glacial retreat in Antarctica. As the oceans swell, water is absorbed by winds unleashing this as 'unseasonal' rain. This wonky water cycle also spurs droughts—dry months burst into wildfires, reducing Amazon forest and Hollywood studio equally to smoke and dust. In the relentless logic of the Anthropocene, nothing is wasted—hence, that smoke and dust return somewhere as a 'season of smog'. Yet, there are solutions.

Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with the seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember the skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitor-birds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons—which makes unnatural changes in these crucial cycles concerning. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot—and we all know that choking 'smog season', months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.

Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun—the closer we get, the warmer we feel, the farther we go, life gets colder. However, these changing climes—unending summers, chopped-up winters, howling typhoons—are courtesy of us. The Anthropocene is the era of human impacts reshaping Earth, with one main cause: the more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases—carbon, sulfur, methane—are emitted. These block our planet's natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping it within. As the planet heats—we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times—it collapses.

Thus, melting Arctic ice has reached a record low alongside massive glacial retreat in Antarctica. As the oceans swell, water is absorbed by winds unleashing this as 'unseasonal' rain. This wonky water cycle also spurs droughts—dry months burst into wildfires, reducing Amazon forest and Hollywood studio equally to smoke and dust. In the relentless logic of the Anthropocene, nothing is wasted—hence, that smoke and dust return somewhere as a 'season of smog'. Yet, there are solutions.

Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with the seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember the skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitor-birds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons—which makes unnatural changes in these crucial cycles concerning. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot—and we all know that choking 'smog season', months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.

Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun—the closer we get, the warmer we feel, the farther we go, life gets colder. However, these changing climes—unending summers, chopped-up winters, howling typhoons—are courtesy of us. The Anthropocene is the era of human impacts reshaping Earth, with one main cause: the more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases—carbon, sulfur, methane—are emitted. These block our planet's natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping it within. As the planet heats—we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times—it collapses.

Thus, melting Arctic ice has reached a record low alongside massive glacial retreat in Antarctica. As the oceans swell, water is absorbed by winds unleashing this as 'unseasonal' rain. This wonky water cycle also spurs droughts—dry months burst into wildfires, reducing Amazon forest and Hollywood studio equally to smoke and dust. In the relentless logic of the Anthropocene, nothing is wasted—hence, that smoke and dust return somewhere as a 'season of smog'. Yet, there are solutions.

Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with the seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember the skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitor-birds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons—which makes unnatural changes in these crucial cycles concerning. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot—and we all know that choking 'smog season', months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.

Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun—the closer we get, the warmer we feel, the farther we go, life gets colder. However, these changing climes—unending summers, chopped-up winters, howling typhoons—are courtesy of us. The Anthropocene is the era of human impacts reshaping Earth, with one main cause: the more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases—carbon, sulfur, methane—are emitted. These block our planet's natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping it within. As the planet heats—we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times—it collapses.

Thus, melting Arctic ice has reached a record low alongside massive glacial retreat in Antarctica. As the oceans swell, water is absorbed by winds unleashing this as 'unseasonal' rain. This wonky water cycle also spurs droughts—dry months burst into wildfires, reducing Amazon forest and Hollywood studio equally to smoke and dust. In the relentless logic of the Anthropocene, nothing is wasted—hence, that smoke and dust return somewhere as a 'season of smog'. Yet, there are solutions.

Everything we associate with the rejuvenation of life is intertwined with the seasons. Think of holidays and harvests, festivals of tunes and tinsel, altered ocean currents heaving with young fish. Remember the skies suddenly agleam with vibrant visitor-birds or beaches hosting turtles born and birthing there. All beings on Earth are shaped by the seasons—which makes unnatural changes in these crucial cycles concerning. Consider how summer in western countries now stretches to half the year while winter has shrunk, withdrawing its draperies of snow. Spring has lengthened, bringing in more pollen and invasive species, while in the east, the monsoon is more erratic, spewing rains of wild velocity. Summers have grown unbelievably hot—and we all know that choking 'smog season', months of dense air pollution covering us like a filthy blanket.

Natural seasons come from Earth orbiting the sun—the closer we get, the warmer we feel, the farther we go, life gets colder. However, these changing climes—unending summers, chopped-up winters, howling typhoons—are courtesy of us. The Anthropocene is the era of human impacts reshaping Earth, with one main cause: the more we burn fossil fuels, the more greenhouse gases—carbon, sulfur, methane—are emitted. These block our planet's natural processes of releasing heat into space, trapping it within. As the planet heats—we are now 1.5 degrees hotter than preindustrial times—it collapses.

Thus, melting Arctic ice has reached a record low alongside massive glacial retreat in Antarctica. As the oceans swell, water is absorbed by winds unleashing this as 'unseasonal' rain. This wonky water cycle also spurs droughts—dry months burst into wildfires, reducing Amazon forest and Hollywood studio equally to smoke and dust. In the relentless logic of the Anthropocene, nothing is wasted—hence, that smoke and dust return somewhere as a 'season of smog'. Yet, there are solutions.