Vistas Ch.3 - Journey To The End Of The Earth (With Difficult Words)

About the author

Tishani Doshi is an Indian author, poet, and dancer born in Madras (now Chennai) in 1975. Her childhood was spent in India, Tanzania, and Wales. Doshi is the author of numerous books of poetry, including "Countries of the Body" (2006) and "Everything Begins Elsewhere" (2012), as well as two novels, "The Pleasure Seekers" (2010) and "Small Days and Nights" (2019).

Doshi's poetry delves into themes of identity, displacement, and the human body. Her writing style is characterized by its lyrical and introspective nature and is widely acclaimed for its emotional depth and sensitivity. Alongside her writing, Doshi is an accomplished dancer, having performed with the Chandralekha troupe and other modern dance companies.

Journey To The End Of The Earth

Before you read

If you want to know more about the planet’s past, present and future, the Antarctica is the place to go to. Bon Voyage!

EARLY this year, I found myself aboard a Russian research vessel — the Akademik Shokalskiy — heading towards the coldest, driest, windiest continent in the world: Antarctica. My journey began 13.09 degrees north of the Equator in Madras, and involved crossing nine time zones, six checkpoints, three bodies of water, and at least as many ecospheres.

By the time I actually set foot on the Antarctic continent I had been travelling over 100 hours in combination of a car, an aeroplane and a ship; so, my first emotion on facing Antarctica’s expansive white landscape and uninterrupted blue horizon was relief, followed up with an immediate and profound wonder. Wonder at its immensity, its isolation, but mainly at how there could ever have been a time when India and Antarctica were part of the same landmass. 

Part of history

Six hundred and fifty million years ago, a giant amalgamated southern supercontinent — Gondwana — did indeed exist, centred roughly around the present-day Antarctica. Things were quite different then: humans hadn’t arrived on the global scene, and the climate was much warmer, hosting a huge variety of flora and fauna. For 500 million years Gondwana thrived, but around the time when the dinosaurs were wiped out and the age of the mammals got under way, the landmass was forced to separate into countries, shaping the globe much as we know it today.

To visit Antarctica now is to be a part of that history; to get a grasp of where we’ve come from and where we could possibly be heading. It’s to understand the significance of Cordilleran folds and pre-Cambrian granite shields; ozone and carbon; evolution and extinction. When you think about all that can happen in a million years, it can get pretty mind-boggling. Imagine: India pushing northwards, jamming against Asia to buckle its crust and form the Himalayas; South America drifting off to join North America, opening up the Drake Passage to create a cold circumpolar current, keeping Antarctica frigid, desolate, and at the bottom of the world. 

For a sun-worshiping South Indian like myself, two weeks in a place where 90 per cent of the Earth’s total ice volumes are stored is a chilling prospect (not just for circulatory and metabolic functions, but also for the imagination). It’s like walking into a giant ping-pong ball devoid of any human markers — no trees, billboards, buildings. You lose all earthly sense of perspective and time here. The visual scale ranges from the microscopic to the mighty: midges and mites to blue whales and icebergs as big as countries (the largest recorded was the size of Belgium). Days go on and on and on in surreal 24-hour austral summer light, and a ubiquitous silence, interrupted only by the occasional avalanche or calving ice sheet, consecrates the place. It’s an immersion that will force you to place yourself in the context of the earth’s geological history. And for humans, the prognosis isn’t good. 

Journey To The End Of The Earth in Hindi
Journey To The End Of The Earth, Summary and Solution

Human impact

Human civilisations have been around for a paltry 12,000 years — barely a few seconds on the geological clock. In that short amount of time, we’ve managed to create quite a ruckus, etching our dominance over Nature with our villages, towns, cities, mega-cities. The rapid increase of human populations has left us battling with other species for limited resources, and the unmitigated burning of fossil fuels has now created a blanket of carbon dioxide around the world, which is slowly but surely increasing the average global temperature.

Climate change is one of the most hotly contested environmental debates of our time. Will the West Antarctic ice sheet melt entirely? Will the Gulf Stream ocean current be disrupted? Will it be the end of the world as we know it? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, Antarctica is a crucial element in this debate — not just because it’s the only place in the world, which has never sustained a human population and therefore remains relatively ‘pristine’ in this respect; but more importantly, because it holds in its ice-cores half-million-year-old carbon records trapped in its layers of ice. If we want to study and examine the Earth’s past, present and future, Antarctica is the place to go. 

Students on Ice, the programme I was working with on the Shokaskiy, aims to do exactly this by taking high school students to the ends of the world and providing them with inspiring educational opportunities which will help them foster a new understanding and respect for our planet. It’s been in operation for six years now, headed by Canadian Geoff Green, who got tired of carting celebrities and retired, rich, curiosity-seekers who could only ‘give’ back in a limited way. With Students on Ice, he offers the future generation of policy-makers a life-changing experience at an age when they’re ready to absorb, learn, and most importantly, act.

The reason the programme has been so successful is because it’s impossible to go anywhere near the South Pole and not be affected by it. It’s easy to be blasé about polar ice-caps melting while sitting in the comfort zone of our respective latitude and longitude, but when you can visibly see glaciers retreating and ice shelves collapsing, you begin to realise that the threat of global warming is very real. 

Antarctica, because of her simple ecosystem and lack of biodiversity, is the perfect place to study how little changes in the environment can have big repercussions. Take the microscopic phytoplankton — those grasses of the sea that nourish and sustain the entire Southern Ocean’s food chain. These single-celled plants use the sun’s energy to assimilate carbon and synthesise organic compounds in that wondrous and most important of processes called photosynthesis. Scientists warn that a further depletion in the ozone layer will affect the activities of phytoplankton, which in turn will affect the lives of all the marine animals and birds of the region, and the global carbon cycle. In the parable of the phytoplankton, there is a great metaphor for existence: take care of the small things and the big things will fall into place.

Walk on the ocean

My Antarctic experience was full of such epiphanies, but the best occurred just short of the Antarctic Circle at 65.55 degrees south. The Shokalskiy had managed to wedge herself into a thick white stretch of ice between the peninsula and Tadpole Island which was preventing us from going any further. The Captain decided we were going to turn around and head back north, but before we did, we were all instructed to climb down the gangplank and walk on the ocean. So there we were, all 52 of us, kitted out in Gore-Tex and glares, walking on a stark whiteness that seemed to spread out forever. Underneath our feet was a metre-thick ice pack, and underneath that, 180 metres of living, breathing, salt water. In the periphery Crabeater seals were stretching and sunning themselves on ice floes much like stray dogs will do under the shade of a banyan tree. It was nothing short of a revelation: everything does indeed connect.

Nine time zones, six checkpoints, three bodies of water and many ecospheres later, I was still wondering about the beauty of balance in play on our planet. How would it be if Antarctica were to become the warm place that it once used to be? Will we be around to see it, or would we have gone the way of the dinosaurs, mammoths and woolly rhinos? Who’s to say? But after spending two weeks with a bunch of teenagers who still have the idealism to save the world, all I can say is that a lot can happen in a million years, but what a difference a day makes! 

Difficult Words Journey To The End Of The Earth

aboard (अबो:ड) = जहाज पर	absorb (अबजॉब) = ग्रहण करना
affected (अफेक्ट्ड) = प्रभावित	amalgamated (अमैल्गमेट्ड) = एकीकत
assimilate (असिमलेट्) = पचा लेना	austral (ऑस्ट्रेल) = दक्षिणी
avalanche (ऐवलान्श्) = हिमस्खलन	average (ऐवरिज्) = औसत
battling (बैलिङ्) = लड़ाई करना	billboards (बिल्बॉड्ज) = विज्ञापन-पट्ट
biodiversity (बाइओडाइवसटि) = जैव विविधता	buckle (बक्ल) = झुकाना
bunch (बन्च्) = गुच्छा	calving (काविङ्) = हिमनद के शिलाखण्डों का टूटना
carting (काटिङ्) = ले जाना	celebrities (सलेब्रटिज) = प्रसिद्ध लोग
chilling (चिलिङ्) = कंपकंपी पैदा करने वाला	circulatory (सक्यलेटरि) = रक्त संचार तंत्र
civilisation (सिवलाइजेशन्) = सभ्यता	climate (क्लाइम) = जलवायु
collapsing (कलैप्सिङ्) = नष्ट होना, ढह जाना	consecrates (कॉन्सिक्रेट्स) = पवित्र बनाते हैं
contested (कॉन्टेस्ड) = विवादग्रस्त	context (कॉन्टेक्स्ट) = संदर्भ
continent (कान्टिनण्ट) = महाद्वीप	cordilleran (का(र)डिलरन्) = समानान्तर पर्वत-श्रृंखलाएँ
create (क्रिएट) = उत्पन्न करना	crucial (क्रूश्ल) = निर्णायक
crust (क्रस्ट्) = भूपटल	curiosity-seekers (क्युअरिऑसटि सीक र) = जिज्ञासु
current (करन्ट) = धारा	debates (डिबेट्स) = वाद-विवाद
depletion (डिप्लीशन्) = क्षीणता, ह्रास	desolate (डेसल्ट्) = सुनसान, उजाड़
devoid of (डिवॉइड् ऑव्) = विहीन	dinosaurs (डाइनसॉरज) = डायनोसोर नामक विशाल जन्तु
disrupted (डिज्रप्ट्ड ) = विघटित	dominance (डॉमिनन्स्) = प्रबलता
drifting off (ड्रिफ्ट्ङ् आफ्) = बहकर चले जाना	ecospheres (ईकोस्फिअज) = पर्यावरणीय क्षेत्र
ecosystem (ईकोसिस्टम्) = पारिस्थितिकी	emotion (इमोशन) = भावना
entirely (इन्टाइअ(र)लि) = पूर्ण रूप से	environment, पर्यावरणीय क्षेत्र
environmental (इन्वाइरन्मेन्टल) = पर्यावरण सम्बन्धी	epiphanies (इपिफनिज) = प्रत्यक्ष दर्शन
equator (इक्वेटॅ) = भम	etching (ऐचिङ्) = निर्धारण
evolution (ईवलूशन्) = उद्भव	exactly (इगजैट्लि ) = बिल्कुल यही
exist (इजिस्ट्) = अस्तित्व में होना	expansive (इक्स्पान्सव) = विस्तृत
extinction (इक्स्टिक्श्न्) = विलोपन, लुप्त होना	feeling, भावना
floes (फ्लोज) = बर्फ की तैरती चादरें	Flora and Fauna (फ्लॉरा ऐन्ड् फॉना) = वनस्पति व जीव-जन्तु
fossil-fuels (फॉस्ल-फ्यूअल्ज) = जीवाश्म ईंधन	foster (फॉस्टर) = प्रोत्साहित करना
frigid (फ्रिजिड्) = ठंडा	Function (फङ्कश्न्) = कार्य
gang plank (गैङ् प्लै ङ्क) = जहाज से नीचे उतरने का पुल	generation (जेनरेश्न्) = पीढ़ी
geological (जीअलॉजिकल) = भूगर्भ विज्ञान सम्बन्धी	giant (जाइअन्ट्) = विशाल
glaciers (ग्लैसिअज) = हिमनद	glares (ग्लेअ(र)ज) = चकाचौंध
global warming (ग्लोबल वॉमिङ्) = पृथ्वी के वायुमण्डल के तापमान में वृद्धि	got under way (गॉट् अन्डर वे) = विकसित होने लगा
head back (हेड् बैक्) = वापस मुडना	heading (हडिङ्) = आगे बढ़ना
heading (हेडिंग)= moving, बढ़ता हुआ	hosting (होस्टिङ्) = आश्रय देती हुई
ice pack (आइस पैक्) = कठोर बर्फ	iceberg (आइस्बग्) = हिमखण्ड
ice-cores (आइस् कॉ(र)ज) = बर्फ की गहराई तक	ice-shelves (आइस्-शेल्व्ज ) = बर्फ के कगार
idealism (आइडीअलिजम्) = आदर्शवाद –	imagine (इमैजिन्) = कल्पना करना
immensity विशालता	immersion (इमश्न्) = तल्लीनता
inspiring (इन्स्पाइअरिङ्) = प्रेरणा देने वाला	involved (इन्वॉल्व्ड) = शामिल था
isolated landmass (लैंडमैस) = land area, भूखण्ड	isolation (आइसोलेशन) = एकान्त. अलग-थलग होना
jamming (जैमिङ्) = कसकर दबाव डालना	kitted out (किट्ड आउट्) = आवश्यक कपड़े आदि पहनाए
layers (लेअ(र)ज) = परत	longitude (लॉन्जिट्यूड) = देशान्तर रेखाएँ
mammoths (मैमथ्स) = रोंएदार बड़ा हाथी (जो विलुप्त हो गया)	marine (मरीन्) = समुद्री
markers (माकरज) = चिह्नकारी	megacities (मेगासिटिज) = महानगर
metabolic (मेटबॉलिक्) = उपापचयी	microscopic(माइक्रस्कॉपिक्) = सूक्ष्मदर्शी सम्बन्धी
midges (मिज्ज) = मच्छर	mind bogglingमाइन्ड् बॉग्लिङ्=सिर चकरा देने वाली
mites (माइट्स) = सूक्ष्म जीवाणु	occasional (अकेशन्ल) = यदा-कदा
occurred (अक(र)ड) = घटित हुआ	operation (ऑपरेशन्) = संचालन पद्धति (यहाँ-चलाया जा रहा)
opportunities (ऑपॅट्यून्टिज) = अवसर	paltry (पॉल्ट्रि) = नगण्य
parable (पैरब्ल) = दृष्टान्त	peninsula (पनिन्स्य ला) = प्रायद्वीप
periphery (परिफरि) = परिधि	perspective (पस्पेक्टिव्) = संदर्भ, परिप्रेक्ष्य
phytoplankton (फाइटॉप्लेंकटन्) = एक प्रकार की समुद्री घास	planet (प्लैनिट) = ग्रह
Precambrian (प्रिकैम्ब्रियन) = प्रारंभिक भौमिक युग में बना	preventing (प्रिवेन्टिङ्) = रोकना, बचाना
pristine (प्रिस्टीन्) = स्वच्छ, प्राचीन	prognosis (प्रॉगनासिस) = पर्वानमान
prospect (प्रॉस्पेक्ट) = संभावना	providing (प्रवाइडिङ्) = उपलब्ध कराना
relatively (रेलटिव्लि) = अपेक्षाकृत, के अनुपात में	remains (रिमेन्ज) = रहना
repercussions (रीपकश्न्ज ) = प्रतिक्रियाएँ	resources (रिसॉस्ज) = संसाधन
retired (रिटाइअड्) = निवृत्त	retreating (रिट्रीटिङ्) = पीछे हटना
revelation (रेवलेशन्) = रहस्योद्घाटन	ruckus (रक्स) = उथल-पुथल
set foot (सेट फुट) = पहुँचा, कदम रखा	shield (शील्ड्) = कवच
significance (सिगनिफिकेंस) महत्त्व	single-celled (सिङ्गल-सेल्ड) = एककोशिकीय
species (स्पीशीज्) = प्रजातियाँ	stark (स्टाक्) = कठोर
stretch (स्ट्रेच्) = फैली हुई	stretching (स्ट्रेचिङ्) = फैली हुई, पसरी हुई
supercontinent(सूपर कॉन्टिनन्ट्) =विशाल महाद्वीप	surreal (सॅरीअल) = असंगत दृश्य
sustained (सस्टेन्ड) = जीवित रखना	synthesise (सिन्थसाइज्) = संश्लेषण करना
teenagers (टीनेज्ज) = किशोरवय के लडके	threat (थ्रेट) = धमकी
trapped (ट्रैप्ट) = गिरफ्त में	ubiquitous (यूबिक्विटस्) = सर्व व्यापक
unmitigated (अन्मिटिगेट्ड) = कम न होने वाली	variety (वराइअटि) = किसी (थ्राइव्ड) = फले-फूले
vessel (वेसेल) = जहाज	visibly (विजिअबलि (लैटिट्यूड्) = अक्षांश रेखाएँ
visual (विशुअल्) = दिखाई देने वाला	volumes (वॉल्यूम्ज) = मात्रा, भण्डार
wedge (वेज्) = प्रवेश करना, घुस जाना	wonder (वण्ड) = surprise आश्चर्य
wondering (वन्डरिङ्) = चकित रह गए	zones (जोन्ज़) = खण्ड

Journey To The End Of The Earth in Hindi
Journey To The End Of The Earth, Summary and Solution

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