Befriending Nature

Come, let’s be friends! That is the theme of the three day youth Assembly of the National Council of Churches in India, organized here in Kolkata, and I had a taste of the some 700 youth gathered from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and different parts of the country. The youth are initiated to befriend God, nature and humanity, and I thought it was a wonderful way of presenting the theme, nature sandwiched between God and humanity, and in fact that is how things came to be, if we take the Bible seriously, or if Charles Darwin were true. Science believes that humanity came much after the birth of the universe and nature, and today it is humanity which is on the warhead to destroy the universe! It is a matter of concern for all of us.

I am not much worried what these 700 odd youth, equal number of men and women, from all over the country and even beyond the borders would achieve in these few days they are together to think aloud. In fact, they may go home with tabula rasa, their minds as blank as they started this workshop, and there would be nothing to be surprised about it. But if every youth today begins to open his/her eyes to see the kind of world we have made, and the kind of world we are giving birth to, then things will be in a better shape when it is time for us to bid farewell to this universe. But I already feel we are unable to give a clean earth to our children, and we are fully responsible for the world as it is today.

In this regard, we should be doing something in black and white instead of talking too much about it. [In fact, I have begun to write about it after doing some work in this regard, and so my writing about it may be taken seriously]. If every human person, be s/he is in a village or city, begins to do just one small act in order to conserve and nurture the earth, the wounds we had inflicted on her will soon be healed, and we may then be able to see the morning sun rise, listen to the song of the bird at our doorstep, find friendly insects and butterflies entering into our drawing rooms freely, doves and parrots would visit us each day to claim their due share of ration!

We all want to do great things, which can change the situation in a huge way, and if we wait for such an opportunity, then we may be too late. Let me write what I had done in the past few days. When I had gone for the New Year celebrations to a village, my friends offered me four saplings of a particular variety of chili, which is known for its pungency. After bringing it home, I had prepared two flowerpots with enough mud, and planted the plants, two each in two pots, and have been pouring water each day. I had raised the pots, so that the sun’s rays may bathe them each day. And after pouring water, I go close to the plants and whisper something nice into their ears, and I believe they are so happy to hear my voice.

But yesterday as I was pouring water to the chili plants, it occurred to me that there is another flowerpot close-by with ‘useless’ grass growing in it beside a tall plant! I had been watering the chili plants and the two Aloe Vera plant and not to others. I thought for a while: I take care of the chili plants because after a few months they will yield chili which I may use in the cooking, but what will I do with the grass? Then, if the chili plants and the aloe vera have the right to live and get attention from me, does not the grass too have the right to live? Should it also not have the privilege of being talked to with love? Does the grass not as important and significant and even precious as any other so-called useful plants? How can I differentiate between the plants, when they all live together?