Fueling Thoughts

snake oil  (dictionary.com) noun 1.  any of various liquid concoctions of questionable medical value sold as an all-purpose curative,especially by traveling hucksters. 2.  Slang. deceptive talk or actions; hooey; bunkum.  From commuters puttering to work on miserly two-wheelers, to those who splurge on the latest imported four-wheeled status symbol, albeit a diesel version and the industrial sector for whom it comprises a major recurring expenditure, high prices of Fuel are a painful reality for all. However, whenever a technology that promises to save a few litres of the all-precious fluid is announced, it is instantly relegated to the category of Snake Oil Salesmen, in which none but the most gullible would believe in or actually spend any money on.  But do they work? The only question ever uttered about any of these wonder devices, additives or technologies is invariably “does it work?” Unfortunately, there is no single universal answer, as the field is varied

Sometimes in the autumn of 2010 I was flying from Mumbai to my hometown Guwahati, as usually on the cheapest air-ticket with a tradeoff in having a long looping route, via Kolkata and Agartala. The short stretch between Agartala and Guwahati is actually a quick aerial hop over Meghalaya, which if luck accords, would remain cloud-cover free offering the sight of marvelous verdant mountainsides, steep gorges and snaking brown rivers below. It was during this flight, when thanks to exceptionally clear weather I noticed the scattered pockets of deforestation on seemingly inaccessible hillsides, ones caused not by commercial logging but by the nearby villager’s mundane need for firewood. Deforestation; caused by indispensable human need for Firewood, an endemic problem of all the mountain areas of India.   I remembered instantly how once as a guest of the venerable T.G.Rinpoche at Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh (another mountainous State with pockmarked hillsides), my host who was a mo