Affinity

 Affinity with animals, togetherness with the flora and the fauna, that is what makes the real world. Have we forgotten that empathy? Luckily, may be, some ten to twenty per cent people care for their pets and their terrace gardens. Most, however, have forgotten the "il faut cultiver notre jardin", the Candide message of Voltaire with its quasi-Edenic echoes.

We need to revive that feel for our own survival. If animal species become extinct, if certain plants/trees die, we, too, would not survive. In the current consumerist lust for using every inch of any scenic beauty, many sea shores have lost the mangroves, for example. The rising sea water hence would drown metros like Mumbai. When hunters kill a lion or a tiger for fun or for some imagined medicinal value of their body parts, they are actually killing an entire life chain!

Last year I used to teach a great 1854 text entitled " A Simple Philosophy ". It was a letter written by Seathl, the Chief of the Native American Suquamish tribe of the state of Washington. Addressed to the White President of the USA, it talked of the beasts of the land as brothers and the earth as the mother. It ended with " this earth is precious to God, who is the God of All, and even the white man cannot escape this common destiny."

Much water has flown under the bridge thence. Be it colonisation or consumerist consumption, the historical march of political economy is an eternal fast forward to mindless destruction. Unfortunately, it is self destruction, too, which we choose to overlook in our colonising of the skyscape via the sky'scrap'ers or of the very galactic space now as plots on the Moon and the Mars are already on sale.

If at all we put up a "show off" for caring the fauna and the flora, easy photo-op's are sexy. So we choose to save the tiger, but who would bother for the city vanquished bats or sparrows? They are hardly that attractive, right? When we ignore such details, we invite  nature's wrath, be it the changed seasonal cycle or wild fires (when they are 'not' planted, of course).

Well, we are not eroding the soil, for example. We are erasing our own future generations to extinction. Hope we wake up, listen to the fervent cry of the wild life on this day dedicated to its conservation, and beyond.

Pratima@ save other species to save the human species!