World Worries.

The chill winds on the wane for sometime. The blooming "Gul Mohar" trees symbolize onset of more blazing summer. Head to toe blankets or rugs discorded with disdain with our increasing need to breath more fresh air. Mornings are quicker and turning brighter. Misty dawns, small bonfires, mufflers, are coming to an end. The brief cool winters are almost over. Despite of all dry skins they bring, winters have their own charm. You are absolutely cool. You do not have to turn on fan round the clock and frenetically search for fresh air inlets. You can enjoy deep slumber till late in the mornings. No need to turn on A.C and pay fat electricity bills. Blessed with undisturbed sleep during nights as we don't wake up to abruptly switch off silently killing A.C . No longer you fight with your partner for right fully owning a bed right under the ceiling fan. Not required to stop at roadside to buy a dry coconut or drink sugar cane juice with contaminated ice. Your throat is flawless as you do not gulp extremely cold waters from the fridge to quench your thirst. No need to take evening shower ( as against a bucketful of cold water generously poured over body with a big plastic mug in summers. Back then I wondered how all the world outside India is surviving with out a plastic mug in their bathrooms and I wanted to hide a mug in my suit case while I take my foreign trip) The roads beginning to look dusty and hot. I am depressed. I am heading towards great Indian summer.

I vaguely remember Stalin speeches unearthed from my daddy's trunk saying "We need only three things to win the war". My curiousness rose as my eyes ran through his next utterance " arms, arms and arms". That was the age when word jugglery was always the tickling factor on my nerves. Similarly we have only three seasons in India. Summer, summer and summer. The very first day in the rainy season is the happiest day in my life. I take great pleasure in imagining that I am living in a farthest day of an year away from summer. Intermittently sun continue to scorch during the dry spells even during rainy season, the more severe the drought is the more our predicaments are. Few down pours, followed by few cloudy weeks, ending like few bright fortnights, all pass by the wink. After marooning few cities, the water, clamoured for long, runs into the gutters, people watch them not knowing what to do with it when flows unasked. Administration has no idea how conserve it. It is refreshing to know that even in Chirapunji, the place with the highest rainfall in the world, people buy water in summer. I think you can not find a finer paradox than this. The winter enters when our occasional showers totally miss from our weather charts. No doubt our winters are increasingly becoming warmer. We are hardly finding an occasion even to wear a sweater. Yet days are cooler than in summer. We can work with utmost efficiency without being exhausted, and do all the other stuff which I have mentioned above.

Our miseries in summers are numerous and to a great extent many are man made. Our perennial power problems remain unresolved. As far as my memory goes I grew up with power cuts. Even to day there is no end to my power problems affirming my belief that time taken for finding a solution to some of our problems is minimum one generation's life span. Our nuclear deal achieved by jumping through hoop of fire with a hope to solve our power problems.. Still I am stuck with the idea that it will take off only after my counting days on earth. It always has a fair chance of being buried too if my left friends come to power. Power cuts used to begin in summer. As an indication of our being more progressive they were preponed to winter. Now as we progress more they are further advanced to rainy season. You can be taken by surprise by watching heavy down pours from your window on day one and other day followed by eight hour power cut (it is no power breakdown) Water problems add ten folds to our power problems. Municipality have their own tricky ways of conserving water with erratic supplies. Interestingly they become more enthusiastic with repair works during summer, apart from the vows brought by abruptly bursting Krishna water pipe line due to it's faulty execution. Rural folks are worst hit as there is no one to sell water around nor they have money to buy it, desperately keep gazing their withered crops.Bore wells going deeper and deeper in search of water, one fine morning stop pumping water to the surface. Mercury touching 50 Celsius in most parts of the land , one wonders if the country is turning into Sahara Desert.

Much cherished springs of the West are barely enjoyable in Indian subcontinent. Cuckooing sounds like fire alarm while we exasperate covering our heads with a handkerchief walking on the roads. Fruits which are supposed to cool our body in summers, make their presence even before onset of summer and disappear when people really need them. Poor mangoes chemically ripened even before they reach their riping age look attractive enough to buy, but tongue piercingly sour to taste. Hence forth eat them sour or abandon them. Nature gifts abundantly but we have no patience to wait.

As our days are becoming increasingly hot with soaring sun, and our evenings are fuming with radiation from concrete structures and tar roads. We were living on the edge few years ago. At the moment we are on the the brim. We have systematically destroyed our planet with greater speed than even anticipated. Imagine Mumbai drowning in the sea, Sunderbans vanishing from the map, and Mount Everest sans ice cap. Tree less forests, wild sanctuaries with scant wild life, straying elephants in to the human habitat, dwindling tigers, extincting millions of under water life, monkeys hanging to our windows, all these disastrous changes occur as a result of man's mindless aggression on nature. Homosapiene the greatest thinking animal, has turned too casual, and at times greedy, and above all rapidly multiplying.

Our scriptures say when river Ganga dries up it is symbolically end of "Aryavarth" .Whether we believe it or not our great river "Ganges" is one of the seven most endangered rivers on earth. So is the condition of many other rivers too, finally tapering into lean patches or stinky swamps with industrial effluents. Senseless felling of trees, animal poaching, carbon emissions, plastics, industrial waste, what not? We have abused this mother earth. We have dumped every thing on it's heart. Now we have to be prepared to face it's wrath. It is hard to find any one who fails to enjoy nature's beauty. As our nature is shrinking with man's ever expanding territories what are we leaving behind for our posterity?

It is never too late for a good work. At least now let us do some thing in a small way. Let us check resource wastage. Let us abandon polutants. Let us protect our green cover. Let us plant a sapling. Does this sound like an ad? No . It is heart felt.