Every monsoon has its own cruel and deeply moving stories to whip the sleepy human consciousness up so as to make human beings aware that they are playing with danger. The Pune-Mumbai road is, for example, notorious for monsoon landslides. Equally infamous are the dilapidated structures, about to totter down any minute like a pack of cards.
Well, the Mumbai monsoon is undoubtedly tough, as high tides, too, rise at the same time. The traffic snarls due to this phenomenon are nothing in comparison with the death trap called open manholes. Just a few years ago, a famous surgeon was thus washed away to his death.
The monsoon melodrama, however, acquires huge proportions when landslides wipe out an entire hamlet. In 2014, it was Malin near Pune. Yesterday, it was Irshalwadi in the Khalapur Tehsil in Raigad district, some sixty miles away from Mumbai. A hamlet almost disappeared due to the 11 p.m. landslide. The exact loss of human lives and property is yet to emerge.
Why did the tragedy happen? Sure it was incessant and heavy rain. However, it is clear that it has to be due to the human intervention in the ecological balance. The digging up of the soil for rice plantation, destroying hills for constructions of all sorts, uprooting trees loosen the soil. The torrential rains do the rest!
Yet another example it could be of the need to respect Nature, not to destroy it in multiple ways. Well, nature's fury, unlike Macbeth's, is not mere thunder and lightening, signifying nothing. It means a warning, and we must follow and respect such warnings.
Well, in the post-LPG era and given its neo-colonial underpinnings, the human greed seems to be overarchingly shadowing the very existence. Human beings have satisfied their needs long time back, and are looting, literally torturing Nature in multiple ways. In a way, Nature is not really answerable for such a feral response if we choose to and continue to ignore its wake-up calls! How many Malin's are we waiting for to happen till we wake up?
Pratima@Nature can be our friend, if we allow it to flourish, to exist, live, bloom, fructify! Why make it our worst enemy?
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