downtoearth.org.in
'Hopeful genres like solarpunk can help bring climate discussions to dinner tables'
Some Indigenous communities such as the Maori of the Aotearoa New Zealand understand time as a non-linear concept and navigate their relationship with the non-human environment accordingly. This helps them visualise life and their actions in a scale larger than the "present", shaping how they care for the planet and prepare for crises. Rajat Chaudhuri's 2018 climate fiction novel The Butterfly Effect encourages its readers to think about the world in a similar way, pushing the limitations we have set on time, geography and species. The binary-smashing thriller is now being taught in the English literature curriculum at universities within and outside India, with the Delhi University recently adopting it in their "Genre Fiction" course. Chaudhuri, who has advocated for climate solutions, sustainability and justice at global fora, including with the United Nations, has been working to communicate science through fiction, which he believes has a role and responsibility to engage with people's ecological consciousness. In his other works like the novel Spellcasters, where smog is a character, or the short story collection Wonder Tales For A Warming Planet on the theme of planerary crisis, he makes a conscious attempt to use familiar spaces and narrative tropes to breathe life...
