Come, Come Back to Nature

Globalisation. World is a village. How often do we hear such words and phrases! Our spirits soar. For such phrases ultimately mean economic gain, foreign exchange to be precise! All those wonderful essays on the components of the process that is globalization are unwitting attempts at deluding ourselves and we keep doing this ad nauseum. I say delusion because, we know exactly as to where this unstoppable process is leading to.  Extinction?  Of course not.

Disaster? Ummm..perhaps, yes!

The cost of runaway development in a developing country that is India, is our degrading environment, our precious natural heritage and the country’s innate beauty. This world may be a village thank you but mother India has lost its villages. Environment? It’s globalization, dear and we really should not bother about it, should we? Well, this attitude is understandable coming from a no-holds-barred businessman but, to the misfortune of us Indians, it has percolated down to the common man, the misled, deluded villager.

Now, now. Don’t get me wrong. I am neither an environment activist nor a doomsayer! In fact, my generation can proudly say that they are the products of real development. Today’s crowd including young baby-boomers, fail to – rather, refuse to - understand the real meaning of ‘enjoyment’. As a product borne out of globalization and the resultant fast pace of development, their enjoyment means material life, fast buck and ‘have fun’ attitude. Well! Why not? Development in the good old days had a feeling for nature’s bounty. Without begrudging the attitude of the youth today, can we also take care of our natural resources? The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’. Yes, we can!

It is a universally accepted fact the India is the only country in the world to have a range of ecological, biological and cultural diversity. Be grateful to God for this gift. A developing economy like ours needs both, the businessperson and the environment educator (as against environmentalist - no activism please!). While the businessperson provides all the basic needs plus material things in terms of goods and services and pumps cash into an ailing economy, the environment educator keeps him/her on toes so that all of us breathe easy. This is technically defined as 'sustainable development'.

However, no amount of International conferences on the hole in our ozone layer or Save Tiger rhetoric or World Environment Days can do anything to stop homo sapiens’s vulgar encroachment on our national, natural heritage – unless, we, in our individual capacities, feel and empathize with nature; one regrets to say this but we just don’t.

The result: we have forgotten to even appreciate nature; the proof lies in the black comedy that unfolds everyday at ‘tourist’ places, in the hordes that go to ‘points’ to watch sunsets and sunrise; the cacophony of sounds emanating from a massive human swell is incredible. The loud crunching of wafers for example, the drinks, the games, the percussion instruments, the ubiquitous tape recorder (that too blaring pop music) – the list is endless. The climax (or anti-climax, depending upon how one views it!) comes when you hear loud, bawdy comments like,”..so what was so beautiful ?…We wasted our time!”. The unfolding tragedy ends with terrifying and polluting noises from departing diesel ‘package’ buses hurrying the tourist to the coziness of ‘its’ un-natural habitat. And that too, after visiting another temple nearby and offering prayers! This particular tribe does not ‘feel’, does not empathise; they don’t care. And yet, they ‘enjoyed’, they had ‘fun’. Nothing can be funnier than that!

And so, for the umpteenth time, the sun just set, without anyone realising it, without anyone appreciating it. If appreciation of Nature is a forgotten art, this little event demonstrates it with tragic brutality. ‘Little’ it might be but the implication of the drama is mighty big! If there is any learning from it, it is this: we fail miserably, on a daily basis, to experience the whole gamut of emotions that natural phenomena offer for us to appreciate Nature; globalization has brainwashed us into taking Nature for granted, taking it lightly.

The use of capital ‘N’ is important and very necessary in today’s times. To be with Nature and appreciate its all-encompassing beauty is to be with God, no less. One just does not have to go to any temple, for heaven’s sake! And if you do so without being with Nature, then, it is sheer hypocrisy; worse, you are committing a sin that no amount of sacred waters or confessions can wash. Yet, we continue to move on this path deluding ourselves that we are happy and contented in doing so; and, we continue to offer prayers even as we throw the skins of the very fruits that we offer, out on the streets.

Somewhere along the way and in our sub-conscious is a germ of anxiety, may be unhappiness; something is amiss; there is ‘incompleteness’ about life. Just think about it. There is an inkling of fulfillment not happening despite our ‘happy’ life, our ‘higher’ standard of living, our overall ‘Gross’ domestic product (economists love GDP, don’t they?).

Unknowingly, the problem lies with the total absence of anything like an attitude towards Nature; the irony of it all is the fact that our vedas, shashtras and puranas form the very basis of what the rest of the world labels as ‘environment education’. We had it all these millennia and yet, we have forgotten it; our children don’t even know about it and we the elders care two paise for it. Extend this aspect further and it should be explicitly clear why there are no audiences to appreciate even our arts and culture, our dances and our music. The reason is simple; you don’t appreciate Nature and you don’t understand our folk and classical performing arts – for they are based on nuances drawn straight out of the very environment which, once upon a time, we used to inhabit - and, hold sacred.

Now, we have only a few places left to be there and quietly, be with God; it is in solitude even as we are in groups that we can experience the beauty that Nature still offers, albeit grudgingly - because we have almost destroyed it, have’nt we? Fulfillment, happiness, rich and poor, religious and atheist – at least to me, these words are as meaningless as a dead stump of a tree minus its once beautiful canopy. No, surely it is not development. It is stark naked retrogression if development is without understanding our very basis of life, mother Nature.

So, let globalization take a path that is consciously tempered by our prayers to Nature. Come. Come back to Nature! Feel it by heart and internalize it. And you will be a complete human being once again. Even as you experience a refreshing, newly found compassion for God, it is a promise that, of all the issues bothering the society today, bread and butter will certainly not be one of them!