“For Man gave Earth its saddest sound..its saddest sound”. As I was cruising down the highway from my workplace to my home, this astounding piece of poetry by Simon and Garfunkel was playing in my head and on my mp3 player. As I looked out of the air-conditioned bus towards the Arabian Sea and the high-tide waters ominously lashing onto the mangroves near Vashi creek and the puny fishermen’s canoes that swayed gently in the late afternoon winds, I couldn’t help but think to myself how appropriately relevant these words are to the times we live in. For Man, who once reveled in planting trees and worshipping mountains and rivers, has also given the Earth its saddest sound. The sound of ignorance. The sound of apathy. The sound of 21st century civilization.
I live in a world of contradictions. The city of Mumbai, where I live, experienced the worst floods ever in Indian history in July 2005. Thousands lost their lives, many more lost their homes, and almost everyone in the city developed an unhealthy aversion to the rains from thenceforth. For a place that experiences one of the harshest monsoons on this side of the globe for a good four months every year, this aversion was not going to be easy to live with for most Mumbaikars. Post-flood studies showed that the natural course of one of the most important rivers flowing through Mumbai, the Mithi, had been tampered with, to make space for more dwellings for more people within a city that is literally bursting at its seams and sides and pockets. The population of Mumbai surpasses a staggering 1.3 crores and more people are coming in every day. Studies also showed that the drains across the city were getting choked because of a large number of plastic filth that has been accumulating over the years. Most Mumbaikars are ignorant of this plight. The ones who’re aware choose to forego taking any constructive action because the ingrained attitude often hums to the sound of “What difference can one person make in a city of 1.3 crore?”
Contradiction number 1:
The cycle goes something like this: A certain number of enlightened educated people who believe in being civic-minded and liberal, take standard steps towards making the city cleaner, less polluted, and less threateningly warm every summer. They start with cleaning up the beaches, propagating the use of cloth or paper bags, using environmentally friendly products and making other environmentally friendly lifestyle choices. For a brief perfect moment, life takes on a rosy tinge and people suddenly seem unrealistically cherubic and healthy. As the city thrives, more people from elsewhere are obviously attracted to its riches and the urge to unravel the secret of a healthier, more glowing populace. Its common human nature. Land-hopping from bounty-less lands to bountiful ones has been the trend since the Homo Erectus migrated from Africa across Eurasia over a million years ago in search of food and better climate. National park boundaries get blurred as migrants set up homes (read shanties) near the peripheries of parks. Animals get confused between usual prey and livelihood or humans. Clearly, in a city with an ever increasing population, there are never going to be enough homes for all. The seams that are bursting at Mumbai’s sides are stretched to their Lycra limits and are visible to the naked eye. As populations rise, basic needs are left unfulfilled. Land, water, sanitation, education – there is a dearth for all. Nobody believes things can get any better, because face it, in a city with 1.3 crore people and still counting, who has the patience to bother? Beaches become sleeping and defecating grounds for the impoverished, cloth and paper bags are only for the rich and fancy (the poor stick to the readily available and less expensive plastic), environment-friendly products become rarities, everybody revels in a certain apathetic attitude and debauchery and the city slumps down to its choking, blocking, flooding, overheated self again.
And then they try to save the mangroves near my home by the sea, and in the process make the seas vanish and sea-life is left floundering and this completes the contradiction thoroughly..
Contradiction number 2:
The world around us is changing and yet, there are things that have remained the same for centuries. The powerful have managed to dislocate the powerless from their own lands and they continue to do so all across India. The reasons differ only ever so slightly – either mining for scant resources that are depleting because of over-use by the very same population that encourages the use of cloth bags etc. or other forms of “urbanization” or “industrialization” – which all ultimately mean the same for those being displaced.
My world of contradictions is apparent in the forces that try to wean the lands and the resources away from indigenous populations. I work at an Institute where many are involved in fighting and thereby attempting to diminish the hazards faced by such populations at the hands and bulldozers of “State and corporate villains”. On the one hand, we talk and debate this situation (often alluding to the story of Pandora and the Na’avi) and our minds are clear of any ghosts of us being at fault. But therein lays the contradiction. For all the fighting for the rights of the marginalized and their rich bountiful lands and to keep them from breathing down harmful life-threatening fumes that the villains are only too keen to open up like tear gas on a marching protesting crowd of unsuspecting people, our city remains at its perilous worst. These very people remain unnervingly ignorant of doing things the right way to keep our neighbourhoods from clogging and congesting and going down the environmental sewage drain.
The fact is that, nowadays, people are involved in pursuits that are gratifying to them at material and spiritual levels, but that stay far behind on an intellectual and sensory level. What then can one human do? I’m not referring to lofty ideals of making the environment of the entire world blissfully better by one sweep of my non-existing magic wand. But hear me out..for I am the voice of reason. I begin with myself..my home..my neighbourhood..and travel as far as my mind allows me with cleanliness and purity and wisdom. I do my own duty, not as a conscientious citizen of this city of country..but as an intelligent, thinking, and understanding human. The greatest gift humans have is the mind and we’d be fools to not make good of it while we can.
I don’t litter, I don’t use plastic, I don’t spit except in the washbasins at home, I do not waste water, I switch off the lights and the fans in my room and others when I leave them and there’s nobody occupying them, I stick to public transport, I don’t burst firecrackers during the festival season or otherwise, I line-dry my clothes (I used to do it even when I lived in the UK for two years), I blog about others spitting as if it is their god-given birthright and how tearful that makes me, I compulsively promise myself that one day the world shall be cleaner, brighter, funner, more humane and properly lit with alternate sources of energy which humans respect. I indulge in a very basic sense of environment friendly acts (nothing too fancy or organic or alternative or non-combustible). If 1% of the population of Mumbai does the same, that would mean 1,00,000 Mumbaikars would thereby make this city a highway to global paradise; the numbers are astounding even in such miniscule quantities. Such simple gestures by the world at large would be golden!!
Man ought to give the Earth its loveliest sound..the sound of beauty and justice and cleanliness and a greener world where leaves rustle and birds chirp and the oceans swell and babies sigh peacefully in their sleep.
A little bit of Pixie dust 