Environment Day, Restoring Ecosystem & Humans!

 

                                                  

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“It was a normal morning yet I woke suddenly feeling something unusual. Instinctively I looked at the bedroom window of my top floor flat which mostly plays alarm clock for me, making me know about the start of a new day! The window does it by letting in sunlight, fresh morning breeze & chirping of many birds like Koyal to bulbul to bhardwaj & many in my bedroom. But today no such guests came to wake me, instead there was darkness outside, I could see from the window & yet my body clock woke me up. I got up from the bed & opened the door of my balcony, stepped out & to my horror all I saw outside was smog, darkness & lungs suffocating polluted air. There used to be tall trees all around my building but today I could see just cars parked at the places of those trees. Birds chirping music was replaced by howling sirens of ambulances running on the roads with red blue flash lights! It’s said that fear is worst enemy of human mind but it’s a boon also as the worst enemy makes you able to fight with whatever best you have got in you & following that rule I ran with all energy I have got inside the home shutting the balcony door & nearly fall down from the bed & I woke up again, this time in reality! With fast heart beats I looked at the window & the sunlight, the breeze, the music of koyal & mainas, all was there as usual. I got down from bed, opened the main door & got the newspaper & looking at the messages with smiling snaps of the dignitaries I realized, it’s World Environment Day! And then my cell phone started ringing with Happy Environment Day messages & I too got busy in forwarding them with my name below. The dark dream of pollution & treeless world has got locked deep within, maybe till next Environment Day!

 

Well, usually I start my sharing with some wise personality’s quote but this time I thought of sharing something which each of us has dreamt some night or other & if you think its effect of watching too many Terminator movies (Judgement Day, then ask which of us has ever witnessed locking ourselves within our homes for more than three months & living under fear of some unseen virus for more than a year now? Well, nobody hasn’t dreamt of  present scene around, then how you can ignore the possibility of such dream where the nature has been vanished & once again we are locked down in some artificial world with the ehelp of life supporting gadgets but this time for ever & not because of some virus but because of our own deeds! Ok, enough about my Judgement Day dreams, let's come to the Environment Day things”...

 

“The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved”... Richard Rogers

 

Richard George Rogers, is an Italian-British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs in high-tech architecture & adhering to his philosophy, World Environment Day (will refer as WED) is celebrated annually on 5th of June and is the United Nations' principal vehicle for encouraging awareness and action for the protection of the environment. First held in 1974, it has been a platform for raising awareness on environmental issues such as marine pollution, human overpopulation, global warming, sustainable consumption and wildlife crime. World Environment Day is a global platform for public outreach, with participation from over 143 countries annually.  The theme for 2021 is "Ecosystem Restoration". The irony of this whole WED affair is keeping due respect for all its noble purpose yet it has been restricted to their categories only. One is, sincerely caring people (which we call environmentalists) & few NGOs’ as this category really does something concrete for the environment. Second category is of our leaders' (read as politicians & senior bureaucrats) who have to show their love & affection for the Environment as they have to give some message to the "Aim Adami" on this day. And third category of-late is celebrities & elite class of the society which use WED for promoting their own image & hardly care in reality about any aspect of environment! And yes recently there is a fourth category of people, these are “forward freaks” i.e. forwarding anything which comes in their chat box, so for them Environment Day is one more opportunity to forward some messages & that’s all! Rest billions of people care a hang about Environment Day & if you don’t believe me, try it by yourself. Tomorrow morning, ask the first ten people you meet, what is the theme of this Environment Day & if even three people out of the ten give the right answer then I will delete my post, lol (Muchhe mundwa dunga, type challenge)!

And on top of it when the theme of WED is “Restoring Ecosystem” then less we expect the common man to know about the importance of WED is better. Why can’t we make environment related awareness campaigns simple &  straight as unless you know something, how you are going to care or respect that thing, is a basic psychology applicable to most humans & environment is not going to be an exception for that, high time for environmentalists to know & act on this fact! As first, how many people know what an Ecosystem is in the first place & then we speak about restoring it when half of the population doesn’t have access to potable drinking water is the state of the country we live in! Guys, whom are we kidding, as looking at such themes of WED types events I really wonder about future of the environment & I am not just criticizing for sake of it but the only way we can save environment is making its importance known to every single human being & with such difficult to understand themes, it’s not going to happen!

And then the humans are fools (most of them) though we proclaim ourselves as the most developed brain species yet when it comes to using that brain very few stand to the definition of most developed specie, is also a proven history, right? When it comes to working for future we often try to shut our eyes & take a short cut & most importantly we are greediest specie too as no other species on earth can eat just for sake of eating because more food is available, which we often do. No other species try to build three to four homes for themselves when they have one home available. No other specie wears clothes & even they would have been they would have been satisfied with one or two sets of clothes as well other accessories unlike we do, where our cupboards go overflowing with our accessories yet we rush to “New Season Clearing Sale” events making traffic jam on the roads with our equal love for the automobiles! This all because no other species does anything to show other species around how wealthy & capable they are! Well, if I too am sounding like any other frantic NGO guy then I am sorry, truth is always bitter & I said all above things not as a preacher but to make the so called environmentalists aware that you are dealing with such species, so make your awareness campaigns accordingly!

Agreed Environment Day campaigns can’t be run like some discount sale offer yet thanks to latest Oxygen demand due to the virus spread, somewhere we (read as common man) has realized (I hope so) that things like Judgement Day can happen here & today if the lockdown & fear is of some virus then tomorrow it may be due to lack of fresh air, polluted water & no green cover as well over increased population of one single specie that is humans! And this all may damage permanently to the existing humans wiping out our own species by ourselves & for that we should care for the environment as then only the common man will think about saving it!  And for this one need not have to give-up everything like wearing fancy clothes or shoes or buying luxury cars & eating in fine dining joints, no sir, all you have to do is while you try to make your life comfortable then just keep some space for every other specie & its needs as they don’t have a greed which you have!

I think each of us & to start with those who has understood importance of having good environment, let’s make others aware that, it’s not important whether we have understood what it means ‘Restoring Ecosystem” but important is have we understood what are we needed to save & why, when we say “Save Environment’! A big banyan tree is an EcoSystem, which we cut down for our road widening. A river flowing through the city is an EcoSystem which we destroy by polluting it with our garbage & drainage. An anthill (Warul) is an EcoSystem making earth fertile as well supporting hundreds of insects which we demolish for our homes. Our Oceans are Eco Systems which supports millions of species & whom we won’t allow to survive by pushing the sea from all sides for our land greed & on top of it end up polluting the ocean with our waste. We haven’t even spared tallest mountain in the world i.e. Everest & we are polluting it in the name of adventure games such as mountaineering & every day we make some Eco System go extinct because of our so called needs!  Eco system is nothing but a life cycle just the way we have our parents, a home, a school around all of which makes us grow as strong human beings & able to survive on our own. Same way, every species has its own life cycle which makes them able to grow & survive on their own. And around us thousands of such eco systems used to exist happily which we destroyed under the name of our needs which were & are our greed actually! All we have to do is minimize this damage & try to redo what we have damaged already. Joke is we have our redevelopment schemes for the old buildings & slum rehabilitation schemes for slums but nobody ever bothered to make a redevelopment scheme for some sparrows or a butterfly & which actually was the easiest thing to do. Because all that a sparrow or a butterfly needs is some green cover & some flowers but till we keep our policies for the towers there won’t be any space for the flowers to bloom & so there won’t be any space of our own future also, mind it! Till then keep forwarding Happy Environment Day messages & call yourself as caring responsible species; as any way we are experts at fooling our own self, aren’t we??

 

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s

 

Please do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying! 

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2021/01/post-lock-down-real-estate-home-buying.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way(Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

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