Cancered Mother and the Unconcerned Son

 

Well, trees are falling. It’s a routine thing now. The trees themselves don’t even seem to complain anymore. Men and his kind completely own earth now. The rest of the part of nature is all secondary. Everything is too familiar and routine now. Wilderness is gone. Go anywhere, in the most desolate part of the world, and you still cannot forget the familiar homo-sapiens smell.

My solace is a little eucalyptus grove that was planted 34 years back by my father. I remember myself tugging behind him and trying to help with my little self. Many trees fall in storms. People take away wood. Farmers drink and defecate here as I see tell tale signs whenever I visit it. Some say frustrated farmers go into paid orgies also. And I believe it. I don't have any problem as long as there is no rape and forced endeavor to infringe upon somebody's modesty. I tolerate all and everything as long as this little green patch is there as my father's leafy memorial.

Trees are being cut around. Roads after roads under construction. Mechanical farming takes one toll after other with poisonous injects. And there it stands with its little piece of seclusion. Love you father! Hope your consciousness still caresses these leaves.

Trying to amuse myself like a rusted classical poet of the bygone era, walking in the virginal silence of a forest, right there in the little grove, I come across a forlorn pair of peacock eggs in the eucalyptus grove. Two little lumps of fluid waiting as a milestone on the path of creation to shape into winged lives.

The world of seclusion abruptly comes to an end beyond the small proportions of the grove. Farmed fields are as clean as human dwellings. Farmers spray poison even on narrow 6 inch field divides lest grass grows there and encroaches into the paddy inside. There starts the tale of beggar peacocks—about whom I write so copiously in my stories—who roam in the villages to survive. This pair of eggs hardly stands a chance of successful hatching. Even if it does, it will be a sad pair of beggar peacocks.

On my curiosity-driven next visit, I see them growing in numbers from two to four possibilities of life and living. The mother seems to be doing well. The crows are croaking schemingly above. I hope they don't get into any mischief. But can there be a bigger mischief than the mankind himself?

It’s a gloomy forecast for Mother Nature. They quibble like school kids over trifles and nobody seems to be bothered about the house on fire. Still there are some faint rays of hope.

The Philippines, a tropical island nation in the Pacific, will now require by law all graduating students, from elementary school to college, to plant 10 trees each before they can graduate. It’s the best law any legislative body can think of at the moment. It will help alleviate our collective sins against the mother planet.

The bill, called the “Graduation Legacy for the Environment Act,” is meant for the Filipino youth to help tackle climate change and build a greener environment for the coming generations.

Well, Philippines seems too far. Here in my home state of Haryana, the last nail in the coffin of scrub forest appears firmly driven in. Haryana is a small state. However, the fact that it has the lowest forest cover in the country at 3.59% makes it really sound miserable. Yet, not too many seem to miss trees here. As a silver-lining to the hopes of development enthusiasts, it surrounds Delhi NCR and that is where the planners find scope of creating more and more concrete jungles.

Politicians in India basically keep their financial spines sound primarily by managing real estate, mining and quarrying through their cronies. Haryana is no exception. With Delhi NCR getting over-bloated, Haryana politicians have always eyed construction scope in Gurugram and Faridabad. Nothing wrong with that. However, the simple fact that this area covers Aravali scrub land, which is the last bulwark against total desertification of Delhi NCR, makes it really worrisome, especially given the fact that Delhi already is an intolerable torture chamber for its residents due to pollution.

Haryana governments, despite the SC directive of 1996, have not notified forest land in its territory falling in the NCR. They eye the mullah by keeping a scope for construction by clearing the semi-wilderness of the scrub forest in the area. Already a lot of it has been destroyed through illegal mining. The recent Haryana government legislation allows the illegality to be carried out in open, which till now has been carried out through dubious means. It also leaves the heavenly slice of little patch of Shivalik hills in Panchkula, having exotic species of trees and birds, open for quarrying and hotel industry. Greed for money has no softer consideration for Mother Nature. I wonder will the reprimand by the Supreme Court be sufficient to stop Haryana politicians from raping the last remnants of scrub forest in the state.

Elsewhere, the juggernaut of our consumerist greed goes on unchecked world over. Not the end of July yet and we have already consumed the annual budget of natural resources meant for the whole year. It means whatever was supposed to be used as per our needs in a whole year has been chucked out in less than seven months. So the remaining five months will bear testimony to our greed when we will rape natural resources. Unchecked growth of cells in a physical body leads to cancer. Unchecked growth of modern civilization has led to cancer and tumors in mother earth. It's a dying planet, eh!

Global Footprint Network (GFN) prepares an annual budget of natural resources. Since the 1970s, we have chucked out the complete year's budget well in advance. Now we spend the whole year’s budget in just half year.

They have this concept of Earth Overshoot Day, also known as Ecological Debt Day: It's the sad date in the calendar in the year when “humanity’s resource consumption for the year exceeds Earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources that year.”

The earlier it's met in a particular year, the more it indicates that our unsustainable practices are going deeper into earth's natural reservoir to draw out from the basic pool. Under the onslaught of ever rising demand born of bursting at the seams population, the pressure on the ecosystems is ever on the rise. Demand exceeds the supply, thus there is 'ecological deficit'. The planet is thus hugely debt ridden under the onslaught of consumer culture. Will things improve? Probably not!