The Big Picture

Ciril Jazbec

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(N)Ice One

Diminishing snow falls and shrinking glaciers mean the Indian region of Ladakh in the Great Himalayas is running out of water. Ciril Jazbec documents their ingenious solution to this pressing problem.

by Michael Epis Contributing Editor

This 33.5m high ice stupa near the village of Shara Phuktsey won first prize for the largest ice stupa in a 2019 competition. Its nearly two million gallons of stored water helped irrigate fields in four villages. The stupa also drew tourists: ice climbers came to scale its steep flanks. W e think that the first big victims of global warming are the low-lying island nations of the Pacific, which are going under as the sea level rises. But the first big victims of global warming are precisely the opposite: people who live at high altitudes, whose problem is a lack of water. And who at the same time risk being swept away by too much water, as happened to 6000 people who died in India in 2013 when torrential rain caused part of a glacier to suddenly melt.

Ladakh is India’s northernmost region, in the Himalayas. In winter the mercury dips to -40°C; in summer it climbs to 40°C. While there might be snow on the mountains above, Ladakh is a desert, receiving virtually no snow and experiencing sudden downpours that wreak devastation. People rely entirely on run-off from glaciers, much of it melted snow from recent falls. That water sustains life by feeding crops, livestock and people. And here’s the problem: snowfall has dropped by half in 30 years. Temperatures have risen, by 1°C in winter, and 0.5°C in summer, in the past 40 years, making the glaciers recede. The water that is needed to irrigate fields in March before sowing crops in April and May is simply not there anymore. There is not enough snow water to supply the villages; not enough glacier to get it to the villages. And many mountains that were perennially covered in snow have lost their snow caps. Villages in the mountainous northern tip of India have already been abandoned because the weather patterns have changed, denying them water.

There is a solution (for the moment): the ice stupa, which Slovenian photographer Ciril Jazbec has spent the past few years documenting.

Developed by Sonam Wangchuk, a Ladakhi engineer reinventing old techniques, the ice stupa captures water, turns it into ice, then later back into water. Flowing water at the start of winter is diverted into irrigation channels, slowing the water down and capturing it, so it can become frozen as temperatures drop. The channels are dug in the shadow of the mountain, hiding the water from the sun.

Ice stupas come in other forms too: they can be trees planted near the village, on which falls snow, later harvested as water. Walls of earth can do the same job. So can vertical pipes, embedded into streams – the water comes out at the top, turning into ice. “Stupa” is an old word repurposed – it refers to a Buddhist place for holy relics, which can be as humble as a mound of earth or as grand as a huge monument.

Wangchuk knows the ice stupas are not a permanent solution, and that greenhouse gas emissions simply have to be stopped: “We have a negligible carbon footprint,” he told National Geographic,“but we are bearing the brunt of a changing climate.”

Phuntsok Paldan, a carpenter, built this stupa with his neighbour in the village of Tak-machik, on the banks of the Indus River. The stupa enables local farmers to irrigate their wheat, barley and apricots. Farida Batool attends middle school in the village of Karith, high in the mountains on the Pakistan border. She and her fellow students have helped build several ice stupas.

Shara team in front of the Giant Shara Ice Stupa, which is 33.5m tall – the tallest one built so far. THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Ice stupas are built in winter by channelling water from a mountain stream into a vertical pipe. Water comes out of a nozzle at the top, and as cold air freezes the falling spray, a cone of ice rises around the pipe.

Letter to My Younger Self Writing Was a Place to Take a Breath

by Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor

@melissajfulton

Author Christos Tsiolkas was saved by his girlfriends, his English teacher and his family’s unconditional love.

Ithink 16-year-old Christos was on the cusp

of coming to terms with my sexuality.

When I go back to 16, probably the most pressing memory is realising that I was gay. And coming to terms with it. I mean, that process is a long one – it doesn’t happen overnight – but I think at 16, the running away from it had finished. And so there was a combination in the young boy that was 50 per cent terror and 50 per cent excitement about what the future was going to hold.

I’ve talked a lot about how fortunate I was with the

family I’ve got – that sense of even when things were difficult, always knowing that love was unconditional. The other thing that is really prominent when I go back to 16 are my girlfriends. And when I say girlfriends, friends who happen to be women. They were lifesavers. My friend Catherine, my friend Natasha, my cousin Vicki, a whole heap of women who protected me, who looked after me, who – I don’t think this is too big of a word – saved me.

My parents lied to the primary school in

Richmond when I started there, and said I was five when I was actually four, because they were both

working. And so when I was 16 I was doing my final year at high school – I went to Blackburn High [in Melbourne]. And those girlfriends were the first people I started to tell I was gay, during the HSC year. We had a great art class, and there was only 10 of us. That was one of those spaces where we would sit and talk about everything to do with life, sex, drugs, music, film, and that was the slow beginning of coming out to the world, to those women. I don’t think that was an accident. I had that trust there.

It was hard, not only being queer, but being in

Box Hill… it was a very different time. It was quite Anglo – there wasn’t a lot of us wogs at school. So there was a lot of loneliness as well. But what I had was an absolute love of reading and absolute love of cinema. I’d go into town at least once a week to go and catch a film.

I had the most amazing English teacher, Mr

Havir. He was a Czech migrant who absolutely loved literature. And he introduced me to European literature, to the French and to the Russians, and I devoured those books. You know when you’re at that age, and a book or a film, if it captures something about your yearning or your life, it becomes like a Bible. I’m sure if you asked some of the students I was with they would say I was a pretentious prick, but I had really romantic notions of seeing the world, and it came from that love that Mr Havir inspired through reading. Stendhal and Dostoevsky really stand out, and probably James Baldwin as well. Firstly Giovanni’s Room, that was one of the first gay novels I ever read.

One of my best friends Natasha, she and I became

obsessed with Woody Allen’s film Manhattan. I saw Manhattan about eight times in two months – she and I just kept going back to it and fantasising: she would become a singer and live on the Lower East Side, and I would be a writer. Again, that film was a bit of a beacon of possible life.

I didn’t grow up in a world where being a writer

seemed possible. Mum’s still got notebooks from primary school where I would write books seven pages long, so yes, that yearning, that wanting to be a writer, was there. But I just didn’t know how to make it possible. It seemed like being a writer, being an artist, was all about class, if I can use a big word. It didn’t feel like it belonged to me. And then I got into university and maybe that was the first stirring that it could be something I could do. But that looking over your shoulder? That doesn’t quite go away when it’s not an assumed part of your world.

It was such a relief to know that I could write, and

it kind of saved me, because it means that you don’t feel lost. You’ve got those words on the page – you’ve written them, they’re a record. Writing was a place to stand and a place to take a breath for me.

My partner Wayne, we met when I was 19, his peace is in the garden. We all find different ways – it doesn’t have to be the big-A Art. It’s just about finding the path.

I don’t think I realised this at the time, but what my parents passed on to me was a notion of

sacrifice; to not only think of yourself, and to consider the consequences of your actions on other people. I feel like my generation can’t claim that, that loyalty to other human beings. XXX If I could go back to that young man, my advice to him would be to listen more. I had to struggle and create my own world, and fight to be the man I needed to be. But I was so impatient, and I didn’t realise what my parents were offering me. My father was a beautiful gardener, and one of my great shames was when I was in the garden with my father at about 16. He was saying, what do you want to do with your life? Because he knew I had this creative bent and he was worried about it. And I said, I want to get out of the suburbs; I want to get away from this kind of life – it’s really boring and uninteresting. And he looked around at his plot of land and his garden, and he said, look, this is all I wanted in my life – a place to call my own, where I could raise my children in safety. And I said a really horrible thing to it him: that’s such a petty dream.

It was only after going to

Greece as an adult – my dad was one of 12 siblings – and when I went back to the house where he grew up, in the mountains in central Greece, I realised the journey he had taken. And how impressive – much more impressive than anything I’ve done – it was that he had been able to create that dream for himself. Thankfully, I was able to apologise to my father years later.

The paths that have led me here, I’m

really grateful for them. So I don’t want to change anything about my life. But I would say to 16-year-old Christos to try better at languages. We’re not very good at languages in Australia, and I’m really glad I’ve got Greek. I think being able to speak in another language, and to listen in another language, makes you more aware of nuance, and respectful of that. I’m grateful for my limited French; I just wish I knew more.

With The Slap, it was really important for me to

try to understand every side. But for what it’s worth, I’m on the side of Richie’s mother. If I had to choose one person in that book who I think is a genuinely good person, it’s that character.

TOP: THE YOUNG AUTHOR IN HIS STUDY IN CANBERRA BOTTOM: WITH HIS CAT STANLEY, IN MELBOURNE IN THE 90S