Shooting Star

I saw a shooting star last night. As it is said, you wish upon a shooting star: experience though stopped me from wishing anything new. Wishes thus made seldom come true, but the moments do leave indelible marks in one's memory to be recalled and wished upon again, with each fresh encounter. As a line from Dylan's Shooting Star goes, 'seen a shooting star tonight, and I thought of me', I recalled a line I wrote many years ago for someone dear, who then was away in a distant city. The physical distance was hard to bear, but I found solace looking at the starlit sky above: I felt a connection to her through the sky we both were under and the air that we shared.

It has been a promising start so far, but driven by habit I now take an unromantic turn. I saw a shooting star last night and I thought of me, her, a wish made on one cold and dark December night, and I thought of polar bears and Mt. Kilimanjaro. When Wilma ravaged parts of the United States, I was struck right here in Nepal: our webserver being based in the U.S., our site was down for almost a week. The polar ice-caps were nothing more than just chapters in our geography textbook when I was in school. Now I find myself much nearer to it than I ever was - the sweat sticking to my t-shirt as I type is a grim reminder of the drastic climate change that has occured in the last few years, and the heat that makes me sweat is the same that is slowly melting the ice in the poles away.

The world has shrunk, and geographical barriers no longer hold significance. Communication is a breeze and travel getting shorter and faster. I am now as much a world citizen as of the place I am in, and thus bear the same responsibilities towards earth and the continutiy of life as we know it. As experts say, the average weight of polar bears has almost halved in the last century, and by 2020, Mt. Kilimanjaro will bid adieu to its snow cap. Tucked a world away in Nepal, I can brush aside the possibility as a cost of development and consider myself immune, or I can wonder when the bell will toll for us. We are already experiencing the affects of climate changes first hand, so the wait is not long for sure.

While 'dead' is 'as a dodo' for most of us, it already is 'as a thylacine' and may well be 'as a tiger', 'a polar bear', or even 'a cheetah' for our children. A meteor strike is said to have wiped out the dinosaurs, but humans through their ingenuity may well survive one. We may even live through a nuclear holocaust but can we survive human progress?