The Colour of Grass

It hasn't rained in England for over four weeks and the grass has turned from lush green to the colour of hay. A lot like the grass of the Sahayadri hills back home in the non-monsoon months. During the monsoon months, the grass of the Sahayadris turns a bright incandescent-bordering-on-fluorescent green. I have never seen grass of that colour (or anything of that colour) anywhere else in that world. The lesson is simple. Lush green grass needs regular rain. While green grass and bright sunshine are considered idylls of nature, bright sunshine uninterrupted by rain causes grass to wilt. Rainy weather is the price to pay for green grass. And, if  you see lush green grass in a place where it doesn't rain through the year, it is likely that the grass is either artificial or it is watered by an expensive and ecologically damaging sprinkler system. I remember as a child playing with the sprinklers on the lawns of my residential complex. The sprinklers would rotate in steps, sending long arcs of water through the air, and the game was to let the streams of water chase you without getting wet. That was a simpler time, before India embraced capitalist excess.
Now, the unusually warm weather in England is being seen as evidence that even one of the wettest countries in the Western hemisphere cannot escape global warming. The globe is warming, capitalism is lurching from crisis to crisis and liberalism is dying a slow and agonizing death. What a time to be alive.