HEROINES OF CHAOS.

(constantly waves away flies and mosquitoes.)

But your Grandpa must have belonged to the post-war generation, Tamara! To the Boomer generation!

Yes, of course. Not everyone of that post-war generation was stupid, though, or mercenary, or ignorant. 'Boomer' is really just a term for people born between nineteen-hundred forty-six and nineteen-hundred sixty-four. You know, this word 'boomer' isn't polite, Sunita.

Really? I didn't know that, Auntie: I was just told that all that generation were evil.

No, not really: people of that post-war generation were just misguided.

But, oh yes, it was about the Coalition against plastics and climate chaos. Looking back, even if the Coalition had come to power, the Coalition reign wouldn't have lasted long. In reality, though, there came a pandemic.

Yet another pandemic, Tamara?

Yes, but a different virus, worse than before.

The mortality rate was seventy or eighty percent, and there was no vaccine anywhere. There'd already been a short outbreak in Kerala.

Kerala? Where's that, Tamara?

Southern India.

Of course, the area was cordoned off, and the virus seemed to have disappeared: but no, this virus was just hiding in the tall grass, waiting to pounce like the other deadly diseases: M-pox, Ebola and the others.

Only, of course, humans are vulnerable, easy prey, easy targets, and, in those times, people kept on flying hither and thither, spreading the disease all over the world in an instant.

(with fake irony)

People flew? Like birds? Did people have wings in those days, Tamara?

Of course not: don't pretend you're daft. But back then, rich people, their affluent lifestyle, and the resulting pollution led to climate chaos becoming unstoppable, and then after endless decades of storms and droughts, people became tired of it all: bit by bit, it dawned on them that climate chaos had already become the new normal.

Storms and droughts are perfectly normal: what's the fuss about, Tamara?

Oh, you poor thing, the storms didn't use to be as bad as they are these days.

And then, when I was a young woman, the pandemic came back again.

(THUNDERCLAP ! No reaction from actors.)

In the end, it took years and years to eradicate the virus: there was always another outbreak popping up somewhere else.

(sighs, waves away flies and mosquitoes.)

Who knows? Had everyone worked together a bit more at the time, the situation might have been better: but it was already too late: in the hospitals no doctors or nurses were left: and there was cholera too. Many children died in those years, and some were left unburied.

(shakes her head)

Some children still die young, Tamara.

But at least it was the end of the post-war generation!

Yes,it was. My sister and I only survived, because we were living on a farm in the hill country. Those were the days! We never went into town. We felled trees to block the pass, and listened to the radio once a week, if we had power. We learned to live without power most of the time, and without gasoline at all. We used horses, dogs, and grew our own vegetables.

(THUNDERCLAP ! No reaction from actors.)

The biggest hurdle was collecting and keeping seed from one season to the next. In winter, vegetables were always in short supply, but the boys went off and hunted pigs, deer, and rabbits, which were everywhere.

That all sounds very normal to me, Tamara.

Yes, it would. As time wore on, clothes wore out, even jeans; we needed things like cotton thread, a treadle sewing machine, new tools and utensils; and so on. But we survived ten years like that, Sunita: it became a way of life.

But tell me about the rest of the world at that time, Auntie Tamara.

We didn't know, didn't care. There was little news on the farmstead. Earlier, there'd been a report of longer droughts in the dry season in the Amazon rainforest. Did that get worse? Or did the Red Queen hypothesis kick in, too? I just don't know.

The Red Queen hypothesis?

Oh, the hypothesis that farmers lose the battle against bugs, pests, and diseases.

And then, during those years on the farmstead, they said on the radio that medical supplies had become erratic and scarce. After all, at that time, all pharmaceuticals and medical supplies were imported. Tetanus, measles, polio and tuberculosis returned, and more babies and children died young than before.

And then, later, on that farm, behind God's back, soon after childbirth, my sister's darling Sophie died. We just couldn't stop the bleeding. We didn't have the instruments, nor the expertise.

Oh my God! That must have been tough, Tamara.

Yes. Tina, my sister, was distraught. Sophie, your grandmother, dying so unexpectedly: that really destroyed Tina. But darling, as you know, the baby-girl survived, and we adopted the baby as our own. But that's how your mother came into this world, darling.

The storm's getting close: we'll have to go down, Aunt Tamara.

Yes, you're right.

But about my sister Tina ...

Let's go down into the bunker. Come with me, dear Great-Auntie, let me hold your arm.