EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL 13TH AND 14TH ISSUES OF EXPRESSION

Once in a moonlit night in my adolescence, I was enjoying the serene beauty of moonbeams flooded over the stagnant water, ripples were fleeting around our house, toads were croaking, crickets were chirping, glow worms were illuminating, crows were cawing and a swarm of Egrets fleeted away. White clouds were composing collages on the sky canvas of our imaginations. These impressions inscribed has not yet been depleted from my memoirs. And it was such an environment as if we were not in a house; the feeling was like I was in a houseboat. Then it was summer vacation of my school. And I was feeling cool at that moment. The fact is really absurd and astonishing nowadays.

why?

How?

The environment has been changed, yes, it has been changed completely by us. I am not a scientist, but I dare assume that the environment is also being mutated and creating some new unwavering, strangling claustrophobic impact on human beings. We are transforming nature with our ignorance, and ignominious greed. We are killing our environment, where we inhaled at the time of our birth and where we would last our breath.

A few days before, a heavy thunder shower awakened me from my sleep. In search of memoirs, I wished to open the window of my teens. A waft of rain brought the smell of rotten, musty stuff from nearby dumping grounds, which engulfed the room. Instead of the small ground flooded with stagnant water, a multi-storied building stands out like a demon. There were no croaking, cawing, or chirping sounds. I peeked through the building to find out the sky, which appeared to be a blurred dusky dome covered with black smoky clouds, but there was the moon still giggling from a corner. Are you too searching your memoirs? An absurd futile effort, you yourself have erased those. 

I think all of you understood what I meant. We are destroying our ecological setup through deforestation, pollution of the air with harmful chemicals, filling all water bodies, and even using our groundwater without restoring rainwater harvest, thus introducing all sorts of pollution and destruction.

In an interview with ‘The Guardian’, a famous scientist and cosmologist warned us about the environment: if we want to live another 1000 years, then we have to find out a suitable environment on another space on another Earth for our living.

In the ‘Science Journal’, a paper has been published about ecological deterioration and restoration. If we want to revive our nature and want to live in an environment that existed 100 years ago, then we should maintain afforestation, planting trees per head (10 nos. at least). For that purpose, we need X acres of land, which we have more than our requirement. Then only we could get back to our previous environment.

Our realizations and choices are ours. What we have to decide is whether to search for another space in the outer world or to afforest and restore our nature step by step reducing pollution through our sincere and persistent efforts. With such ideas in mind, in the coming monsoon I will sow seeds, and implant trees of flowers and fruits whenever and wherever I will go on tour and broadcast  Otherwise, we have to find out a new space that is suitable and affordable for us to live with our next generations.

We have nothing to blame others or enjoy the solace of mind. Days are chasing us, water scarcity declared in India scaring countdown has been started, no time to escape.

Tirtha Basu