Mercurial Weathers–and Planet-Cooling Micro-Strategies

May 2024. “Mercury is rising” across Pakistan. I think back to 2008 when I was in the Southernmost city of Pakistan, Karachi, and temperatures were rising, and climate change was real, and I was training my body to live without air-conditioner… by altering my diet, sitting and working and praying and even lying down in the garden, breathing deeply, being in a well-aired room, and dressing in natural fiber. I prayed, I was kind and patient. I was communicative and minimally social. I worked from home. I took light showers and sometimes would have to dampen my cotton clothes while lying down in order to stay hydrated in extensive heat. I ate a diet that had plenty of fluids, fiber and yogurt that kept the body cool. That was my strategy to keep my blood cool and body earthed, and avoid installing and depending on an air-conditioner that would not only rake up the electricity bill, but would also make me dependent on its coolness. And I didn’t want to be tethered to a machine the production of which–cooled air–does not even suit my body’s native and natural requirements.

Instead, I built a better relationship with Earth and with myself and my food, clothing, environment. I also dreamed of inspiring tens of thousands of people to do the same, in order to bring down the “scorch score” of our region, and to what degree I have an influence, of Planet Earth. I managed to influence a few thousand to grow their own food gardens, and of that I am proud. But alas, this is not enough.

What I feel we need right now is an urgent, decentralized movement to COOL THE PLANET.

We need to shift our efforts towards being regenerative, most urgently, if we are to pull the human species and our kin out of the mouths of the sharks of extinction and annihilation. We need to turn the large issue into small actions that people can take, wherever they are. So here are some suggestions, and I am starring* the ones that I have implemented myself:

• Create garden niches, regardless of the size. It can be small enough to fit a tiny flat balcony. Or it can be a forest planted in a park. Pick what you can deliver. * (my mother implemented this)
• Plant a few saplings of a fitting variety in a suitable location.
• Weave planting and gardening into school syllabi. *
• Create natural pools and places for mud baths.
• Acclimatize yourself to the Sun instead of avoiding it. *
• Create houses and buildings with sizable garden and green space, and try to move work, play and life outside of “the building”.
• Bring oxygen-making plants into the building. *
• I have seen a portable pool in the back of an open Mazda or similar vehicle. (Forgive me, I would never know the name of it!) Please create portable pools and take them places in the city or villages.
• Eat cooling diets. Cucumber, yogurt, watermelons, gourds. Eat seasonally. *
• Wear suitable footwear that do not heat the feet and body. *
• If you are Muslim, do ablution, but use minimal water for it. *
• Harvest rainwater and use it for watering and cooling.
• Wear natural fiber clothing, suited to the seasons and to local needs. *
• Create building design with vegetation, creepers and awnings that cool down the building and keep it shaded.
• Create new micro-careers around “space cooling and body cooling”. Teach everyone to implement cooling strategies in their lifestyle and habits. *
• Create better ventilation. *
• Keep tempers calm and regulated so as not to offend and aggravate the body. Clarify interactions, intentions and deeds. Stress in the sphere of human dealings puts our bodies in duress and the nervous system on fire, leading to internal inflammation. This is “h3ll on Earth” and in the psyche.
  * (trying, because I get massively inflamed)
• Enable actual fairness and justice so that tempers (of the affected) do not have to flair. Take the culprits to account swiftly or they bring fire to community. * (Trying, and fail often)
• Create micro-climates of coolness and serenity. *
• Do stretches and exercises that make the body lean and fit, and melt away bad fat. Open up the pores, and BREATHE! *
• If you have been colonized by the British and have been made addicted to milk tea, rethink it, and drink suitable local cooling drinks. Barley drinks, plum sherbets, apricot juices…. all these are seasonal cooling drinks in my part of the world and must be brought back into vogue, replacing the colonial and fascist drinks that are dangerous, synthetic and non-nourishing. *
• Create periods of rest and non-activity in the most intense season. *
• Think of the collective. Your “cooling strategy” should not create waste, pollution and tax (burden)and toxicity for the society and economy. **!!

There are many more ways in which we cool. We cool within our minds, bodies, psyche, environments, spaces and buildings. We cool down the interactions and systems of justice. We cool down the food supply and value chain (for places and seasons of heating). We cool down the materials by weeding out the breath-choking materials, and replace them with what is breathing, alive and organic. We survey and audit the entire system, and find out where the blockages and flare-ups are, and then we fix them and make alterations.

If you are reading this: What of these suggestions have you already implemented? What will you implement now? Tell us your intention and story.

Featured Photo by Maria Orlova