“The lost land and the losing civilization”
A bright morning and the 6.30 train dropped him back in his hometown decades after the day when his family started their voyage directed towards a city life. Memories flied back to his childhood and the station looked much improved. It was clean and there was drinking water in the station. Most importantly it had toilets separate for men and women. The water was pure and he could find purity everywhere barring the rail tracks since even now, the trains drain their human wastage only on them. Carrying the memories and the luggage, he crossed the platform to reach the exit. Auto rickshaws everywhere and they eventually got seated in an auto rickshaw after the mandatory bargaining procedure. It was that kind of morning when huge number of people rushed out of the station but surge pricing wasn’t done in this town. The rickshaw reached their ancestral house in a village crossing all the iconic bumps on the one way road.
As his family walked inside the house, he turned his head around and the 360° view found only newly built tall buildings on both sides of the road. It was totally a different place from the one he lived and loved decades ago. The street was abandoned and he felt the emptiness easily. Memories flied back again. He remembered the days when this abandoned street was decorated by people with white dhothi in their waist and a colored towel bent down their neck. The hefty sound of carts driven by bulls was missing. The cows which decorated the backyard of each and every little houses were absent. The confusion or rather the shock got higher and higher as he walked deep inside the village. Oh boy, he found houses everywhere. The hectares of fields where agriculture was beautifully taking place is not there. The three wells which watered the village were replaced by public toilets as if there isn’t any more room to build them. The tiny tiled houses with a ‘Thinai’(திண்ணை) at front were demolished down to build roofed houses except one where he found a old man snoring peacefully. He woke him up stating,
“தாத்தா, நல்லா இருக்கீங்களா? நான் மேலத்தெரு ரமேஷோட பையன் லஷ்மண்!”
The conversation started as he replied,
“வா பேரப்புள்ள! நான் நல்லா இருக்கேன். நீ எப்படி இருக்க?”
The changeover in his village and the shock pushed him to question the old man about the happenings of his village in the past years.
“பேரப்புள்ள…” and the old man started his reply with a laugh.
“People from our generation funded our living through agriculture. Each of us had acres of land and we had great pleasure in the way we dealt with our life and our profession. The fields that have disappeared now were the only means of our living then and all the food we had in our village were from them. It was all going good until the day when the industrial revolution gave jobs to people with a better pay. ‘Too much of money’ is always a problem and this made our people to find places where they could make more new buildings. People turned around and found only farming fields. Their hunger for new concrete buildings and the lack of support for agriculture led to the transformation of those fields into tall buildings. This spark gave life to a fire and people started this as a business. Cities were full and so companies came looking for land to expand their business here and since we had acres of them, field by field, everything was changed into tall buildings. Everything was happening all of a sudden and we were left with no answers. Soon, researchers backed by corporates came in, corrupted our lands for the rich resources they had in them. They exploited every little thing they can. The result is what you see here. This is all we have left. I’m 85 and my days are numbered. But, as a boy, you have years with you and make sure that you preserve every little thing around you. Don’t ever be a prey to those hungry and greedy animals out there”, the old man ended.
Confusions and emotions filled the boy’s face. The little boy who was proud about the quality of the amenities in his hometown that morning understood where the real civilization is and where the real problem resides. The anger in him brought the conclusions,
- Money is the root of all devils and it makes people to even bury their farming fields.
- These people need food to eat, build their bodies, bring up their children but never worry about the hardships endured by people who deliver it to them.
- Never ever encourage people to buy houses which are built by destroying farming lands.
- If your resources are corrupted, it’s your right to stand against them.
- Do all that we can to deliver this planet safely into the hands of the next generation.
“விவசாயி ~ இவன் உழைத்து நமக்கு கொடுக்கின்றான், ஆனால் நாமோ அவன் உழைப்பை சுரண்டும் ஒருவனிடம் தினமும் சென்று நம் உழைப்பை கொடுக்கின்றோம்.”
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