HAVE I NOT REASON TO LAMENT, WHAT MAN HAS MADE OF MAN?

Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,
Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.

If there is a paradise on earth,
this is it, this is it, this is it!

So sang poet Amir Khusrau seven hundred years back, waxing eloquent on the unravaged beauty of Kashmir. William Wordsworth expressed a similar sentiment in his Lines Written in Early Spring. More recently a poet / lyricist wrote: ‘ Ee manohara theerathu tharumo…. Ini oru janmam koodi…..’ (Will you give me another lifetime on this beautiful land) ! As we witness environmental degradation caused by Man’s mindless acts of ravaging Mother Earth, I ask myself, ‘What right do we have to commit such atrocities?’ As said by someone wise, ‘We have not inherited this world…. We have merely borrowed it from our children!’ Worth analysing?????

RAJASHREE’S WORDS: NIRVANA, IMPOSTERS, CONURBATION

Nimmi inhaled deeply as though she wanted to fill her lungs with the pure air devoid of pollutants…. She knew in her bones that this long whiff of bliss would sustain her for the next two years, the memory of it making every moment of her self-imposed exile in the West tolerable, till she came back on another holiday to her village and its neighbourhood. Standing on the tor, she stretched her hands wide open as though trying to embrace her favourite haunt in a big hug. The verdant hills, the azure sky and the zephyr waltzing with the foliage, and the trees trying to restrain them like a stern chaperone…. Aaaaaah! This was true nirvana! The ultimate bliss for human soul… This unique scene had been etched in her heart in her youth, when she used to seek an escape from her ruthlessly selfish and mechanical urban existence in this heaven on earth. She zoomed her powerful digital camera to capture another set of hard copied memories, for her to feast her eyes on, after staring at the computer monitor for hours together.
When your eyes smarted with exhaustion, those pictures on the panels of her dingy cubicle would freshen her mind, if not her body.
As she zoomed-in the distant hills, she froze. There was movement in the forest in front of her. Not the movement of the tribals who once in a while appeared to get in touch with modern civilization…, but of that modern civilization itself…. She zoomed the lens as much as she could. ‘It was true….,’ she realized with panic. There were mechanized saws cutting down trees. She could also see a few trucks waiting impatiently to get away with the loot.
How dare they! Trespassers in her paradise! ‘Chacko! Start the car…. We need to inform the police about some poachers….’she yelled to her driver, hurriedly throwing herself into the taxi she had hired for the day.
The Circle Inspector in the nearest town was not very interested in her story. Yes, he knew there was felling going on in the virgin hills, yes, they were authorized, yes, the municipality itself had issued orders, no, nothing could be done by her, no he didn’t feel moved by a pravasi malayalee’s artificial concern for her land, yes, he knew she was an NRK, (non resident keralite), yes, he had seen many like madam, no, it was not his duty to stop legitimate business…yes, it would be better if madam got a stay order from a court, yes, by that time considerable patch of forest would have been denuded….No, nothing could be done, that was that!
Imposters! She muttered angrily…. Devilish imposters pretending to be law enforcers! The legal system was impotent. No one bothered any more. She frothed and fumed making her driver shake his head in sympathy. ‘Madam,’ he said gently, ‘ They are going to set up a paper mill here. It would give job to hundreds of literate unemployed youth. This is called progress, Madam. Soon Parakkaankadu will be a conurbation, its nearness to Munnaar and Thekkady turning it into a tourist boomtown…. We will get our share of tourists…. And our economy will boom…. We all will all live happily ever after!’
‘Take me back to the tor, Chacko,’ said Nimmi in a tone devoid of any emotion. ‘Let me add a few more pictures to those on my walls….. Probably, I shall never return to this place.’