English for Today · HSC
English for Today · HSC
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Coleridge's poem, a ballad, narrates the harrowing sea‑voyage of an old mariner who at one point of his journey didn't have any water to drink because of a curse. Cursed or not, we know how important drinking water is in our life. We know we cannot survive without it. In fact, two‑thirds of our body is made up of water. Not for nothing is it said that the other name of water is life. Is there a crisis in our time with regard to access to clean drinking water? The United Nations in a meeting on the eve of the new millennium identified the drinking water problem as one of the challenges for the future. But do we need to worry about the problem as ours is a land of rivers and we have plenty of rainfall? Besides, we have a sea in our backyard too.
One of the sources of water in our country is the rivers. Rivers are everywhere in our life, literature, economy and culture. But are the rivers in good shape? Unfortunately, they are not. A few are already dead and several are going through the pangs of death. The river Buriganga is an example of a dying river. A report published in the Daily Sun describes what has happened to the river Buriganga and why. Its water is polluted and a perpetual stench fills the air around it. But that is not what it was like before.
The report says that the river had a glorious past. Once it was a tributary of the mighty Ganges and flowed into the Bay of Bengal through the river Dhaleshwari. Gradually, it lost its link with the Ganges and got the name Buriganga. The Mughals marveled at the tide level of the Buriganga and founded their capital Jahangirnagar on its banks in 1610. The river supplied drinking water and supported trade and commerce. Jahangirnagar was renamed Dhaka which grew into a heavily populated city with a chronic shortage of space.
The city paid back the bounty of the river by sucking life out of it! According to newspaper report, the Buriganga is dying because of pollution. Huge quantities of toxic chemicals and wastes from mills and factories, hospitals and clinics and households and other establishments are dumped into the river every day. The city of Dhaka discharges about 4500 tons of solid waste every day and most of it is directly released into the Buriganga. According to the Department of the Environment (DoE), 20,000 tons of tannery waste, including some highly toxic materials, are released into the river every day. Experts identified nine industrial areas in and around the capital city as the primary sources of river pollution: Tongi, Tejgaon, Hazaribagh, Tarabo, Narayanganj, Savar, Gazipur, Dhaka Export Processing Zone and Ghorashal.
The river would need a monster's stomach to digest all the wastes mentioned above. There is a limit up to which it can put up with its cruel and thoughtless treatment. We the humans have successfully killed one of our rivers. There are other rivers in the country that are being subjected to similar thoughtless treatment. Unless we take care of our rivers there may come a time when we will cry 'water, water' and find it nowhere.
| Word | POS | Bangla | English | Synonym |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harrowing | Adj | যন্ত্রণাদায়ক | extremely distressing | traumatic |
| Cursed | Adj | অভিশপ্ত | afflicted by misfortune | doomed |
| Perpetual | Adj | চিরস্থায়ী | never‑ending | constant |
| Tributary | N | উপনদী | stream flowing into larger river | branch |
| Stench | N | দুর্গন্ধ | strong unpleasant smell | odor |
| Bounty | N | উপহার | generous gift | reward |
| Toxic | Adj | বিষাক্ত | poisonous | harmful |
| Chronic | Adj | দীর্ঘস্থায়ী | long‑lasting | persistent |
Greta Thunberg is an environmental activist. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2003. When she was eight, she started learning about climate change. The more she learned, the more baffled she became as to why so little was being done about it. At the age of 11, Greta became so sad about climate change that she temporarily stopped speaking!
Greta has Asperger syndrome, a condition that affects how people socialise. But Greta views her condition as a positive, calling it her “superpower”! She says it helps her see the world in black and white, and that there are “no grey areas when it comes to climate change.”
In August 2018, Greta decided to take action. Instead of going to school, she made a large sign that read ‘SCHOOL STRIKE FOR CLIMATE’, and calmly sat down outside the Swedish parliament. Her aim? To make politicians take notice and act to stop global warming. Greta was inspired by teenage activists in Florida, USA, who were protesting to end gun violence.
Greta’s strike was picked up by the Swedish media, and the word started to spread. Soon enough, tens of thousands of students from around the world joined her #FridaysforFuture strikes – skipping school on Fridays to protest against climate change.
In March 2019, climate campaigners across the world, inspired by Greta, came together to co‑ordinate the first Global Strike for Climate. It was huge – over 1.6 million people from 125 countries took part! There are further global strikes planned for September this year.
Since her strike began, Greta’s life has become a whirlwind! She’s given rousing speeches to politicians, to the EU parliament, the UK parliament, to protesters and more. She’s appeared in documentaries and had loads of books and articles written about her. She’s even been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!
In August 2019, Greta travelled on a wind and solar‑powered boat from Plymouth, UK, to New York, USA – the journey took 15 days. Her passionate speech “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words...” has drawn much attention from all over the world. Thunberg was known for changing how some people think and act about climate change. Her impact is called “the Greta effect.”
Greta has named Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist, as one of her greatest inspirations. In the 1950s, Rosa sparked a civil rights movement that improved the lives and treatment of millions of African Americans.
| Word | POS | Bangla | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| Activist | N | কর্মী | campaigner |
| Baffled | Adj | হতবুদ্ধি | confused |
| Whirlwind | N | ঘূর্ণিঝড় | chaotic activity |
| Passionate | Adj | উদ্দীপ্ত | full of emotion |
From Yuval Noah Harari’s Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World
One example of modern gatherers is the Nayaka people, who live in the jungles of southern India. When a Nayaka comes across a dangerous animal such as a tiger, snake or elephant in the jungle, the Nayaka might talk directly to the animal: ‘You live in the forest, and I live in the forest too. You came here to eat, and I came here to gather roots and tubers. I didn’t come to hurt you, so please don’t hurt me.’
A Nayaka was once killed by a male elephant they called ‘the elephant who always walks alone.’ People from the Indian government then came to capture the elephant, but the Nayaka refused to help the government officials. They explained that the elephant had a good reason to be violent: he used to have a very close friend, another male elephant, and the two always roamed the forest together. One day, some bad people shot the second elephant and took him away. ‘The elephant who always walks alone had been very lonely ever since and was very angry at humans. How would you feel if your partner was taken away from you?" the Nayaka asked. That's exactly how this elephant felt. The two elephants sometimes went their separate ways at night, but in the morning, they always came together again. On that terrible day, the elephant watched his buddy fall to the ground. If two creatures are always together and then you shoot one, how's the other one going to feel?"
Scientists have invented a special word for people who believe that animals can talk and that there are spirits who live in rocks and rivers: animists.
Excerpt from Sharing the Earth: An Environmental Justice Reader
1. When an explosion in the Union Carbide Chemical Plant in Bhopal, India, killed thousands of people on the night of December 2, 1984, it was regarded as a terrible but singular disaster. When a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine in the former Soviet Union exploded just two years later killing an undisclosed number of workers, it was regarded as a terrible but singular disaster. So too when the world learned of the ecological and human cost of decades of petroleum waste dumping in the Niger Delta by Royal Dutch Shell in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the attempt to privatize water in Bolivia by the Bechtel Corporation in the 1990s, the death of close to two thousand people in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or even the horrific aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki six decades earlier. Each was regarded as a terrible but singular disaster.
2. In fact, these and other similar environmental disasters are neither singular nor isolated. Rather, they are clearly interconnected; they are caused by human beings; and they disproportionately negatively impact poor people and women. That is what Environmental Justice as a movement understands. What is often regarded as a natural disaster is upon closer examination the result of sometimes shortsighted and other times reckless even pernicious corporate, governmental, or individual environmental practices that target and disadvantage vulnerable groups.
3. As a concept and a movement now global in scope, Environmental Justice holds that environmental burdens and benefits should be shared equally by all people. It recognizes that currently the negative impacts of ecological devastation, particularly the environmental harm and hazards created by overconsumption of resources in the global North and by elites worldwide, fall disproportionately on the world's Poor, the vast majority of whom are people of color, especially women and children.
4. Simultaneously, the benefits of that overconsumption are enjoyed primarily by the privileged around the world, a fraction of the earth's population. Environmental Justice, commonly referred to as EJ, seeks to make these facts visible and to bring people together to work for positive change.
5. Environmental Justice links two large, foundational bodies of modern thought and activist engagement. It yokes concern for the environment, including all life on the planet, to commitment to social justice: human equity in terms of race, gender, religion, nationality, and class. Environmental Justice bridges the gap between [the] two movements: environmentalism and human rights advocacy. It not only brings them together for positive change but also shows their inextricable connectedness.
6. Environmental Justice therefore represents a new, important body of thought and action at the beginning of the twenty‑first century, especially as people around the world face the realities of climate change, increasing toxicity, resource depletion, and the rapid disappearance of species and arable land on which the health of many human communities depends. Fundamental to both the concept of Environmental Justice and the activist EJ movement is the search for fair ways of sharing environmental burdens and benefits and collectively creating a future in which the dignity and rights of all people are respected.
Masanobu Fukuoka (1913‑2008) – born on Shikoku, eldest son of a rice farmer. After studying plant diseases, he returned to his village to focus on natural farming. During WWII he worked as researcher but later dedicated himself to farming. In 1975 he wrote The One‑Straw Revolution. He also wrote The Natural Way of Farming and received the Magsaysay Award in 1988.
Read an excerpt from The One‑Straw Revolution:
Before researchers become researchers they should become philosophers. They should consider what the human goal is, what it is that humanity should create. Doctors should first determine at the fundamental level what it is that human beings depend on for life.
In applying my theories to farming, I have been experimenting in growing my crops in various ways, always with the idea of developing a method close to nature. I have done this by whittling away unnecessary agricultural practices.
Modern scientific agriculture, on the other hand, has no such vision. Research wanders about aimlessly, each researcher seeing just one part of the infinite array of natural factors which affect harvest yields.
Furthermore, these natural factors change from place to place and from year to year. Even though it is the same quarter acre, the farmer must grow his crops differently each year in accordance with variations in weather, insect populations, the condition of the soil, and many other natural factors. Nature is everywhere in perpetual motion; conditions are never exactly the same in any two years.
Modern research divides nature into tiny pieces and conducts tests that conform neither with natural law nor with practical experiences. The results are arranged for the convenience of research, not according to the needs of the farmer. To think that these conclusions can be put to use with invariable success in the farmer's field is a big mistake.
Recently Professor Tsuno of Ehime University wrote a lengthy book on the relationship of plant metabolism to rice harvests. This professor often comes to my field, digs down a few feet to check the soil, brings students along to measure the angle of sunlight and shade and whatnot, and takes plant specimens back to the lab for analysis. I often ask him, "When you go back, are you going to try non‑cultivation direct seeding?" He laughingly answers, "No, I'll leave the applications to you. I'm going to stick to research."
So that is how it is. You study the function of the plant's metabolism and its ability to absorb nutrients from the soil, write a book, and get a doctorate in agricultural science. But do not ask if your theory of assimilation is going to be relevant to the yield.
Even if you can explain how metabolism affects the productivity of the top leaf when the average temperature is eighty‑four degrees Fahrenheit, there are places where the temperature is not eighty‑four degrees. And if the temperature is eighty‑four degrees in Ehime this year, next year it may only be seventy‑five degrees. To say that simply stepping up metabolism will increase starch formation and produce a large harvest is a mistake.
The geography and topography of the land, the condition of the soil, its structure, texture, and drainage, exposure to sunlight, insect relationships, the variety of seed used, the method of cultivation—truly an infinite variety of factors—must all be considered. A scientific testing method which takes all relevant factors into account is an impossibility.
You hear a lot of talk these days about the benefits of the "Good Rice Movement" and the "Green Revolution." Because these methods depend on weak, "improved" seed varieties, it becomes necessary for the farmer to apply chemicals and insecticides eight or ten times during the growing season. In a short time, the soil is burned clean of microorganisms and organic matter. The life of the soil is destroyed and crops come to be dependent on nutrients added from the outside in the form of chemical fertilizer.
It appears that things go better, when the farmer applies "scientific" techniques, but this does not mean that science must come to the rescue because the natural fertility is inherently insufficient. It means that rescue is necessary because the natural fertility has been destroyed.
By spreading straw, growing clover, and returning to the soil all organic residues, the earth comes to possess all the nutrients needed to grow rice and winter grain in the same field year after year. By natural farming, fields that have already been damaged by cultivation or the use of agricultural chemicals can be effectively rehabilitated.
Lesson1: 1C,2C,3B,4C,5C,6C,7C,8A,9C,10C,11C,12D,13C,14C,15C
Lesson2: 1C,2C,3B,4C,5B,6B,7C,8C,9B,10C,11B,12B,13B,14B,15B
Lesson3: (open‑ended)
Lesson4: 1A,2B,3B,4B,5A,6B,7B,8B,9A,10B,11A,12A,13B,14A,15A
Lesson5: 1C,2B,3B,4B,5B,6B,7B,8B,9B,10B,11B,12D,13B,14B,15B