The Deccan Herald, 20 August 2020
On a clear day, you can see forever! Bereft of the haze of man-made pollution, what a clear view the Himalayas present before us in their pristine glory! Suddenly flamingos are thronging in their thousands in Navi Mumbai and peacocks are prancing on deserted roads and bridges instead of being run over by cars. An elephant ambles unchallenged through the empty lanes of a city. Man, his nemesis, has locked himself down, not to escape a marauding pachyderm but to dodge an ‘inconsequential’ virus! Nature, provoked beyond tolerance by man’s rampant destruction, has swept upstart homo sapiens in a silent upheaval of their lifestyle and Sensex economy! With a single nod, ‘mother’ earth has frozen us in our tracks. Life cannot be the monopoly of an individual or a generation or a species, Nature tells us; it has to be a level playing field.
Time was when, inspired by Henry David Thoreau, I could escape into the wilderness without running away from civilisation or carrying it in my pocket. It seems like a fairy tale now; but I have spent many a pleasant day in a small hilly place with dense forests. I turn green with envy for the past whenever I think of the panorama of green canopy spread over the hillside wherever my eyes roamed. Now, the only tall trees I have access to are framed within a digital cage! The melody of enchanting bird songs too is embedded in my ‘mental chip’. I switch on my ‘inward’ audio whenever I am in a vacant mood and wish to connect with the music of the forest. How can I forget the grand crescendo of raindrops splashing on huge leaves and rushing away into rivulets while tickling my naked feet? The rhapsody that a monsoon downpour offers is simply overwhelming—beyond the realm of any orchestra!
Wintry mornings, by contrast, were invigorating. Because of the bitter cold, there would be pin-drop silence in the air till the mellow sun made a lazy effort to rise late and shake off the blanket ofthick fog. Wildflowers would shed heavy dew on their petals and get down to business by welcoming colourful butterflies. As I stepped down the forest path on my morning constitutional, my lungs would fill with the crisp air and my heart would overflow with unsullied joy! Is that past beauty totally lost to us? No! Provided we stop destroying Nature. We need to do it to save the human race from facing Nature’s ‘death sentence’—extinction.