As a child I used to love fairy tales. Read voraciously and
keenly. Absorbing much like a sponge and just soaking up all the magical fairy
tales and stories from far away lands. There was a world that I envisioned and a
world that I had pictured in my mind as the perfect world where chocolates
would just simply grow on trees and natural beauty would surround us while we
fit into that landscape of green and lush. Goldilocks adventures into the woods
were a particular favourite where she would sneak into the lives of the 3 bears
just to be caught red handed, jump out the window and disappear into the woods
again. Each story that was worth remembering had revolved around the mysteries
of the woods and deep forests. Red riding hood braving the woods and the big bad
wolf to meet her grandma, Snow white and the seven dwarfs living in a small
cottage in the woods, Hansel and Gretel finding their treasures in the deep
woods….Alice in wonderland…etc etc..The list is never ending. I doubt I would
have remembered any of these stories as a child if they had contained a setting
in which Red riding hood walked through garbage lined streets, under the
blazing sun and leering men to reach her Grandma.
These stories were meant to provide an escape, to inspire
and to show us a world to aspire to. What a perfect would should be like and
what we should have strived to build for us. Amazingly, everything that we were
taught as children and that we loved as children is being destroyed by us, before
our very eyes and there is nothing that the majority of us is doing about it.
Voices have been lost in layers of cynicism and a sense of righteousness has
been replaced by insatiable greed.
I was watching The jungle book the other day and I was
amazed at how it instantly transported me to that innocence of childhood and
wanting a life of such simplicity and beauty. I almost felt sad for Mowgli when
he reached the man village and parted from Baloo and Bagheera. Instead of
relief that he was back to where he belonged my heart ached to see him back in
the jungle. It struck me then that I didn’t like my own world anymore. It made
me wonder how much we’ve destroyed our world and that too up to a point where we
ourselves are constantly looking for escapes. How have we managed to build a
world around us along with a life that we constantly need to run away from?
What would the world have been like had we stayed true to a child’s love for
the magical, wooded storyland? Would we have lived in a land that was still
pure and beautiful?
As a country we’re sitting on the verge of a natural
disaster. Our forests are fast disappearing under the greed of those that
continue to sell our country. Our wildlife perishes at the hands of those that wield
the axe. The mute are suffering the gravest injustice and no voices speak for
them anymore. The non-patriots, the non-loyal and the corrupt seeds of our
country continue the rampage at an alarmingly accelerated rate. True patriotism
lies in being loyal to our natural heritage. True religion lies in saving our
natural heritage. Not in singing songs of devotion, chanting hymns without
knowing the meanings and raising flags while destroying our country.
I’ve always wondered why is it that those that destroy our
forests think that they can survive without them. What makes them confident
that they can survive without our ecosystem? It is the very life giving force
that our forests gift us with which we seek to destroy. Why do natural
disasters and calamities shock us anymore? Why do we cry for the lack of clean
drinking water when we are slowly and steadily working towards destroying the
very rivers that provide us with that?
Those that have read my words and feel that somewhere
something needs to be salvaged while it still can please don’t stay quiet or be
party to the grave injustice being done to our ecosystem. Raise your voices,
raise awareness and speak up when you see crime against our natural heritage
and our wildlife.
The wisdom was there for us to imbibe a long time back. The
ancients have written the word many eons ago. While we choose to glorify the
Geeta and other teachings that have religious sentiments from our scriptures we
choose to ignore the most essential, basic and fundamental lesson that was
passed on to us. The only lesson that can help salvage the losses of today and
leave us a ray of hope for the future.
“Do not cut down the forest with its tigers and
do not banish the tigers from the forest; the tiger perishes without the forest
and the forest perishes without its tigers” - Mahabharata, 400 BCE, Udyogaparva.
And we perish without either....
About the author: Neha Parmar is a wildlife
photographer and a conservationist with some tolerable talent for writing. If
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