2019, how I perceive it

To all the readers out there, I wish you Happy, healthy and fulfilling, environment friendly new year 2020.

My new years eve was very simple. I cooked Indian Paneer pasanda curry with some paratha and rice. Me and my husband had this nice dinner together, got back on out cozy comfy couch. My husband was bit tired after long office hours, I was little ill, so be both slept back around 11.30pm.

Soon we noticed firecrackers through our giant windows, creating gorgeous colorful rainbows in sky. We jumped out of bed, stood near windows and stared the beautiful fireworks that night.

Next morning we woke up, catching up nice warm cup of our favorite ginger and masala chai (Indian tea) in couch.

I was scrolling my whatsapp  filled with new year messages. I replied them back. Everywhere on social media whatsaap status, facebook, Instagram.. was flooded with messages, putting all the photos of celebration and happy memories of 2019.

I simply somehow ignored it and got involved in revisiting my year 2019. Ofcourse, my 2019 as a year was good enough.

On personal front, I travelled to London, supported my sister in law from per last day in pregnancy till the little one turned 20days old. This was a huge experience of motherhood which I received without delivering a baby. The feeling to hold the new born, shattered me from within. Post this, I quit my old job in Belgium and moved to Netherlands. I got new job in Netherlands and my independent Visa for Netherlands. This year, I cleared all my government exams for Dutch language (reading, writing, listening, Speaking, KNM). This year my employer also gave me indefinite period contract, which also means, my own independent Visa. For my new job, I got opportunities to travel to Denmark, Vietnam, Poland, which was exiting and exhausting at the same time.

Me and my husband moved from city Dordrecht to city Aalsmeer in Netherlands, which is like 20 min from our job locations. This saved our hilarious travelling of about 4-5 hours/day which we continued from 2 years. We both could sleep enough, spend time with our friends in weekend. We could also now spend more time on ourselves, watching movies, reading, cooking – eating nicely, exercising and much more. I would say things are now slowly moving, but to get all these things on personal front, I struggled a lot. Each day, each hour. But may be that’s how it is, you don’t achieve anything unless you struggle, and once you achieve it, you have a respect of what you earn.

This was everything about my personal front- simple and grounded achievements. Nothing flashy, shinny. These memories flashed like a second.

However most important things I refer to while revisiting 2019 and the way I see 2019, is more on the global front, on environmental front.

1. Heat wave in Europe- hitting 41-42degrees was a huge incident impacting millions for several days. There are no air conditioners, cooling fans, wooden homes heating hard, leaving the feeling of getting burned when sitting at homes. I remember myself sitting in bath tubs filed with cold water for hours. Drinking water wasn’t sufficient. This even took life of several’s in the continent making it impossible to sustain.
2. Amazon rain-forest fires- took place across Brazil, Bolivia,Paraguay, Peru. There were more than 80,000 forest burned during this incidence which is more than 77% increase in fires in Brazil. Lush green aerial view was replaced by Yellow, orange, red colored fires and grey ashes spreading over 60% burning of Amazon. Amazon rain-forest is referred to as lungs of the earth, as it alone produces more than 20% of earth oxygen trapping CO2.  Fires to amazon was impact on breathing air by billions on this planet.
3. Australian bushfires- took place in Australia in which impacted around 8 states. This killed many lives, but most importantly affecting lives of animals killing them, and making them homeless. Air quality dropped to hazardous level where estimate states ~306million tonnes of C02 was emitted. In beginning of Jan 2020, smoke levels traveled to ~11,000 km, when people in New Zealand tweeted, “we can smells the smoke of fires here, we are worried and we can imagine the worst situation there”! This spread of bushfires was beyond control.
4. Flooding in India- especially in states Maharashtra and Kerala impacted ~1600 families with death of their beloved ones and about millions were displaced. Nearly 13 Indian states experienced this situation, which ofcourse country wasn’t prepared for. Dams were overloaded to due to heavy rains, which busted making Indian states look “Venice”. Schools, offices, public transport, shops, everything was just standstill waiting for some help to get them rescue.

And a lot more such natural disasters happened in year 2019. Nevertheless, 2 more contributions from beginning of this year, creating disastrous situation that world is facing are:

• Taal Volcano eruption followed by earthquakes in Philippines
• Coronvirus

All these hazardous situations could have impacted you, me and our families directly, of course it has or it will! When I see this, read this, I feel, earth has started showing its bad side to us; I feel bad, that , we humans has treated mother earth so badly during years that it showing off its effects now; I never imagined it will be this way! Instead of partying and posting photos of new year celebration, I decided to do something for this mother earth. I decided it’s a high time to start practicing good habits consciously, which will leave lowest carbon foot print and get back us a better life. I decided also to pass this message to as many people as I can and bring the awareness.

This is how I perceived 2019. How was yours? What are your plans for 2020? I am exited to know from you. Do write to me via email, comments below.

*all the statistics in this article is reference from wiki pages.