Trilogy

While cleaning up the vacant house in Delhi, I happened to pick a few editions of National Insurance News to cheer up D who happened to be a part of the editorial board of the company's quarterly newsletter. Those were the good old days when the scripts were written in hand, with folded hands you asked the office typist to type the matter and then corrected many times over and with each round of re-typing, your backbone bent forward in subservience that much more than before. Then came the rounds with the printer for the proof reading and layout, all done, painstakingly, manually. With some time in hand, I tried to glance through the contents of these magazines and suddenly came across an article written by me in the Jan-March 92 edition of NIN. I had completely forgotten about the article which had been awarded the second-best entry on the subject of environment. 

Re-printing the article written about thirty-two years ago which may appear in pretty much amateurish language and style but the theme and situation are definitely relevant even today. Like a good student of history, the article called Trilogy is in three time periods where the first and second parts deal with the future in 2025 and 2050, as I saw it then. You did not need the talent of Nostradamus to foresee the future that reckless and mindless deforestation and concretisation were doing to the world. The third part is how we should have acted since 1991 when this article was actually written. 

Part I

Year: 2025 AD

Place: My Home

Time: A very good morning

I get up and open the window

Take a deep breath of fresh air

Cough..cough..cough…

It’s good, fresh morning no more.

My little daughter comes to me 

She wishes to go out in the rain.

She goes, comes rushing back and black

She looks as if she’s come out of a drain

For rain ain’t rain anymore.

I take her to the shower

Put the tap on

Drip…drip…drip…

Our throats go dry and showers have choked

We went without fresh water for ever more

I go to the Supermarket,

Buy a few gas masks,

Acid proof rain coats,

A small desalination unit

And a synthetic Christmas Tree

To celebrate the ‘Last Supper’.

Part II

Year: 2050 AD

Place: Mount Arafat

Time: Heavenly

Overheard from the clouds.

First Cockroach: Trying to play food ball alone?

Second Cockroach: This is not a ball

It is a seed and I’m planting it.

First: Planting it…for what?

We have nothing to do with seeds and plants.

Second: I’m planting it for I have seen man

Who once inhabited this planet.

He prospered by cutting trees,

By building concrete jungles, polluting the air

He did everything for himself

But forgot Nature.

Today, Nature has forgotten him,

What good is our life without man,

We lived in his house,

Ate his food,

Played hide and seek with him.

Only if he had looked after Nature

The way Nature looked after him.

He would have been alive.

I am planting this seed

May be a plant may grow

And man might stalk the green earth again.

Part III

Year: 1991 AD

Place: A remote corner in India

Time: To Act

The foregoing is not a science fiction

But just a peep into the future.

What can I do?

There is an old jungle saying

“No grass grows where Phantom wee-wees”

This must be corrected today

“Grass grows wherever man wants it to be.”

Let us go to the forest

And Chipko to the trees

“Cut me before you cut the log”

And become a true Green Warrior.

Chimneys and dams must be built

But not for the ‘dam’nation of the man

Nature and Progress must become comrades in arms

And not foes in arms.

Let us ask ourselves a few questions…

Have I planted a sapling so far?

If No, then it is time to Act.

Am I Polluting the air?

If Yes, then it is time to Retract.

Have I been wasting or polluting water?

If  Yes, then it is to time to ‘Hydrophobia’ct.

Can I write a book “How Green is my Valley.”

If No, then it is time to die…

Save the Planet: Perhaps it is not too late!

SS