Green lands are Turning into Skyscrapers
I live in the suburbs of the city. Most of the people who live here are farmers, so we get veggies, fruits, and almost everything else fresh. They don’t supply goods to any stores. They sell vegetables in the street and sometimes hawk at doorsteps.
I happened to have a conversation with one of the street vendors at the market. I have seen him many times. But this was the first ever conversation I had with him. He is used to selling some seasonal fruits or nuts like watermelon, cucumber, sugar cane, and groundnuts. So I thought he has his own agricultural land and cultivates according to season.
I was wrong. He asked me while we were conversing, “Which century do you live in?” He pointed at the tall building and said, “See the building; it’s mine.”
I laughed and asked him sarcastically, “Why do you have to sell these in the cart while you have a tall building like this?” He said, “The land was mine, and I had some acres of agricultural land a decade ago. These lands were once my inheritance. We had been farming since my forefather’s time. Not any more. Now I bring the goods from the whole seller for money and sell them in the streets.”
He also pointed at some street vendors nearby and told stories of them.
I asked him the details out of curiosity. There were lots of reasons he listed that he couldn’t farm the crops. Poor government policies, debt burdens, crop failure due to unfavorable weather conditions, and so on.
He is struggling to earn a meager amount of money in the same place that he once owned, which has now turned into a tall building.
How has his life turned upside down in just 10 years? More than his life, his story makes me think about our environment.
Thank you for reading.
