Column

For those who care about such things, the goings on at Copenhagen are a matter of deep concern.

But really, if you take a head count, among our billion and more, and ask each one of us about global warming, and the general state of the Earth, chances are: on a scale
of 1 to 5, the subject and awareness of it would be closer to 1, if it features at all.

Don’t believe me?

Then read on!

Outside Dadar station, on the east side, there stands a great tree. Its trunk is venerable, entwined with roots that have been discouraged from spreading themselves. It stands tall and stately, its leaves the only green left against a backdrop of posters in garish colours and other evidence of urban living.

I have sent out a silent greeting to the tree each morning as I pass it by, saluting its majesty, and hoping it will continue to stand as it does, despite the fact that there is so much digging and cementing that goes on in the road around it.

Today, I was dismayed to find the top of the tree chopped off. Like a ritual beheading. The trunk alone remained with one small leafy branch forking out in, what seemed to me, a call for help.

Global warming may be a larger issue. But the temperature around a city is kept more equable by trees. Rising temperatures is the often theresult of concrete replacing the cool water bearing leaves, that also give shade, and combat pollution. Somebody needs to tell axe-happy authorities this basic truth.

Instance 2: The canteen of my own office, or most likely any other. Or in fact our very homes. Have you watched how the bai or the canteen boy washes vessels?

Well, I watched this one in our office canteen washing a rag. Very meticulous, he spread it out and soaped it thoroughly, and turned it around and soaped it again, and then set about rubbing it briskly. All the while the tap was open and the water flowed in a steady stream.
I shouted to him to close the tap till he needed the water, and he did so, looking surprised. It had never crossed his mind that the tap could some day run dry.

A similar story enacts itself in my colony where cars are washed. I have rebuked the man who washes my car many times, but he will keep the water pipe flowing as he dries the cars, and move to shut the tap only when he is done.

Not only does he waste water, but he leaves the cars standing in a swamp by the time he is done. And we are facing a water crisis, and wonder why it is necessary.

He has learnt to use a pipe instead of buckets of water, to clean the cars, thereby lessening his burden, but in the process has not learnt to use the water wisely.

But I don’t blame him. In the washroom, I see young women letting the tap run as they soap their hands, or using reams of tissue to wipe them dry.

Small little things that no one taught us.

That we need to conserve to be able to share resources that were once in plenty, but thanks to the fact that there are more and more people claiming the right to use them, are now scarce.

That what we took for granted a decade ago, is now something we need to pay for: clean water or clean air are not easily at one’s reach.

And life is heading towards full circle: more of us will soon be standing in queues to get our water, and we might end up buying our clean air in tubes…

All the development in the world will not compensate when our life comes to this!