During the past few years, students in schools and colleges were made aware of the drastic changes that nature was undergoing, by the cutting down of hills and trees, the conversion of land from tilling to construction, the mountains of garbage that keep on increasing, etc. Elocutions, poster competitions, debates, etc, were held, so that students become conscious about what is happening around the world. The symbol of the earth weeping, was mostly depicted in the drawings and the posters beautifully designed by the students.
Recently, students of the present generation have realised, that there are no more tears left, to run down the face of the earth. Why? Because the earth hardly has a face now. She has been buried alive, suffocating under the pressures of buildings, metallic roads, heavy pavers, and mountains of garbage everywhere. Our beautiful red soil has disappeared in towns and cities. Slowly, pavers are creeping around the houses in the villagers too. Mostly, all the countries around the world refer to their land as ‘Mother Land’. Does a child have a heart so daring, that he thoughtlessly buries his mother alive? Very rarely! Yet, we human beings, have forgotten, that the earth is truly our Mother and have carelessly buried her.
In the past, when the earth was free of garbage, tar, pavers, buildings, etc, and with plenty of trees, and mud, it had a lot of breathing place for it. During the Rainy Season, it satisfied its thirst, by sipping gratefully, nearly half of the rain water. It covered itself with a beautiful green carpet and kept the atmosphere cool and clean.
Now, water is excess, the rivers themselves are already half filled with garbage, the fields, a place where the water could take some respite for a while, have disappeared under new highways and new buildings, so where will all this water go?
Naturally, it overflows comfortably into cities, towns and villages. In order to make life easier for us, to have broader, smoother, short cut roads, cleaner surroundings, the world thought that covering the earth and its pores and doing away with the mud and the dust, would make everything superb.
And truly, it does look superb. Yet, we all know that ‘All that glitters is not gold’. The earth and the mud is one of the most important elements of life, akin to air and drinking water.
It is indeed better, to have our feet soaked in mud, during the rains and feel it’s soothing pleasure, rather than to be swallowed up by torrents of roaring, gushing water.
As I watched a live video of a well surrounded area by pavers being caved in, I was shocked to see that although the flood waters raged around, the mud that crumbled from under the pavers, around the well, was like crumbs, crumbling down absolutely dry.
This is the true face of the earth around the world today. Completely dry and shriveled up, full of cracks, waiting to burst open itself and find relief when buildings collapse, roads cave in, maybe through an earthquake, tsunami or a flood.
