Here today, gone tomorrow

The little water body up the slope from my house, after which Tank Road is named, is to me a symbol of what is wrong with us as a people.

It's a small body of water, and once or twice a year gains in great prominence. A week before the Ganpati festival, the surroundings are cleaned, the road leading to the tank is rid of its potholes and unevenness. By day the clear water reflects the dancing sun, and by night gleams in the reflected light from the surrounding  houses and passing cars.

If the tank is too small to take in the sum total of the number of small and medium idols that are immersed in it through the festival, it does not complain. And over the years, though the number of immersions has grown steadily, there seems to have been no ill effect.

Yesterday, I happened to drive past the tank, and the sight it showed me was appalling.

A shock to the senses.

The surface was a mass of white, pink, green and brown, innumerable plastic bags some still filled with rubbish that could not sink, floated over the water.

I wondered if the fish that must live underneath would get any air at all to breathe, so thick was the shelf of plastic 'bouquets'!

And that is what I mean. We as a people, live for the immediate need. We do not think of the bigger picture, the longer plan, the consequences of our action today. We do not think either, of the other person, whose right we merrily trample on, in the process of doing what we wish to do.

Nobody, not the person who throws the plastic bag into what he or she sees as his personal dustbin, not the corporator who must be passing that way, at least before election time or during festivals… nobody stops to think that the tank could cease to be because of the way it is being used. That once the fish die, it would become a haven for mosquitoes, that the water could become stale and putrid due to lack of enough oxygen.

Those are issues for others, and not of any immediacy, and definitely not as important as ridding oneself of one's rubbish!

The same mindset makes us 'develop' cities and towns at the cost of flora and fauna, plant the wrong trees in habitats that are unsuited to the vegetation, build skywalks that no one uses, and convert wonderful old roads into soulless thoroughfares. And in the process we deplete our water sources, and make the ground water run dry.

It is also for the same reason that we will worship with fervour at a temple in the morning and then do nothing humane or pious the rest of the day. We seem to believe that God, whatever shape or form we believe him to exist in, cannot see beyond what we wish to show him of ourselves, and that he shuts his eyes on us the moment we leave his graven presence.

Is it not time to realise that real development is not high rise buildings and fast cars and high speed trains or being able to bring air travel within the common man's reach.

It is in developing the self into caring for what will not remain with us, unless we tend it now.

Maybe if we think of a future where the coming generations will have to do without what we now take for granted and waste, we will be a bit more caring. After all, we need to leave at least our immediate world a little better than what we found it. Not worse!