Ever since the world is sharing stress about the climate change issue, including greenhouse effect, depletion of ozone layer, melting of glaciers in the Arctic among others, I often pondered that there must be a simple solution to all this. When life blossomed on this planet, I am sure there was everything in abundance and even now we have not run out of everything we have. We are just fast exhausting what we were gifted by virtue of our birth and hence like the fear of death, we are afraid that we would have much lesser food, water, air, space etc than the entire mankind needs.
But for someone like me who has grown up amidst planned greenery, a vibrant garden, has rested under large gulmohar trees and fiddled around with touch-me-nots, it is difficult to imbibe or even visualize this fear of scarcity. I learnt about this more academically, thankfully I did not experience the pain of lack of natural resources (in particular greenery) until I was 23. And that is a good enough period to grow up into a healthy human being having fed on fresh air and foolishness.
Then, like life had it in store, Mumbai happened to me. It has been almost 6 years now and yet it feels like I am an old pipal tree talking to the people passing beneath me and requesting them to let me live.
Mumbai is looked upon as one of the economically developed and one of the fast growing cities in India. An average apartment costs more than the number of stars in Milky Way Galaxy and yet towers grow up at the speed of light years. Hence it is not difficult to understand that here, people have everything but space.
Every bit of greenery is brutally uprooted to erect these towers and even though the municipal corporation has mandated some plantations in every building, the former far outweighs the latter. Hence, pollution is an understatement here. People are making houses in the stratosphere assuming there will be more relief than in the troposphere. But the point is everyone can feel the lack of oxygen in this city.
I know it doesnt take oxygen to fuel the buoyant business in this city but it certainly takes oxygen to retain that buoyancy - which comes through the people.
'Green' they say, is a color soothing for the eyes. Greenery makes our surroundings look clean. A lush green neighbourhood is a sign of being pollution free or atleast a source of fresh air (oxygen). While some plants are air purifiers, some others have medicinal effects and others which are purely ornamental.
So much has been read and written about the importance of greening the environment, but if you ask any average Mumbaikar for a potted plant in their house - they would be bemused as the struggle to save every inch of space doesn't leave any space in their minds for a pot of green. So there are many children in this city who cannot identify with common flowers like dahlia, chrysanthemam, petunia - Rose too they see only in bouquets or maybe a little more on Valentine's Day. [I am not sure how many people are lucky to have a verandah or terrace to have a terrace garden] I feel the relationship with nature starts early in life - if you don't develop an emotion for it like you do for kith and kin, you don't feel for it later too.
Anyway, when I had to buy a house these thoughts quite jammed my mind - Will I ever have a green wall outside my house like I did as a child, will I ever whiff the scent of flowers in monsoons or, see the beautiful bloom bursts of winter. The pocket size is a determinant of the house so my better half and I finally parked ourselves in a house which is in a rather remote corner of Vashi in Navi Mumbai. With millions of wishes and smiles from the lady luck herself, we got a house with a decent balcony and 2 flowerbeds attached to each of the bedrooms.
Needless to say, I quickly repositioned my old collection of plants - the trailing thorny bouganvillea, the healthy and fresh jasmine, the blue-flowered aparajita which creeps only to lend its beauty and a couple of ornamental plants. To my surprise, there was still lots of space left for me to continue thinking green.
I exercised my brain furthermore with all its fertility, browsed and stopped over small roadside nurseries on the highways, asked garden experts, surfed internet and finally zeroed in on a so-called garden consultant who kindly consented to visit me on a certain Saturday. To my delight, this was the day next to the World Earth Day and thus I kept alive my optimism of seeing my 'green' dream come true. After due diligence of the available space, assessing the sunlight, water drainage, and the aesthetic appeal, we listed down our overall requirement for inreasing the size of our flora family.
Ever since that day I have been waiting with bated breath, to see the creepers in the balcony garland its perimeter and create a shadow that is a welcome respite on a sunny day, to see some flowers blossom irrespective of the mood swings of the people staying in the house and some graceful plants that have leaves in colours other than green too.
The installation of my 'green' world is likely to take place on the forthcoming Saturday. If this works out, this monsoon will be one of my most favorite monsoons ever as I would watch the greenery exude oodles of peace, joy, beauty and grandeaur right next to me. And that --- will be my most perfect setting for a good life - healthy, wealthy and wise.
But for someone like me who has grown up amidst planned greenery, a vibrant garden, has rested under large gulmohar trees and fiddled around with touch-me-nots, it is difficult to imbibe or even visualize this fear of scarcity. I learnt about this more academically, thankfully I did not experience the pain of lack of natural resources (in particular greenery) until I was 23. And that is a good enough period to grow up into a healthy human being having fed on fresh air and foolishness.
Then, like life had it in store, Mumbai happened to me. It has been almost 6 years now and yet it feels like I am an old pipal tree talking to the people passing beneath me and requesting them to let me live.
Mumbai is looked upon as one of the economically developed and one of the fast growing cities in India. An average apartment costs more than the number of stars in Milky Way Galaxy and yet towers grow up at the speed of light years. Hence it is not difficult to understand that here, people have everything but space.
Every bit of greenery is brutally uprooted to erect these towers and even though the municipal corporation has mandated some plantations in every building, the former far outweighs the latter. Hence, pollution is an understatement here. People are making houses in the stratosphere assuming there will be more relief than in the troposphere. But the point is everyone can feel the lack of oxygen in this city.
I know it doesnt take oxygen to fuel the buoyant business in this city but it certainly takes oxygen to retain that buoyancy - which comes through the people.
'Green' they say, is a color soothing for the eyes. Greenery makes our surroundings look clean. A lush green neighbourhood is a sign of being pollution free or atleast a source of fresh air (oxygen). While some plants are air purifiers, some others have medicinal effects and others which are purely ornamental.
So much has been read and written about the importance of greening the environment, but if you ask any average Mumbaikar for a potted plant in their house - they would be bemused as the struggle to save every inch of space doesn't leave any space in their minds for a pot of green. So there are many children in this city who cannot identify with common flowers like dahlia, chrysanthemam, petunia - Rose too they see only in bouquets or maybe a little more on Valentine's Day. [I am not sure how many people are lucky to have a verandah or terrace to have a terrace garden] I feel the relationship with nature starts early in life - if you don't develop an emotion for it like you do for kith and kin, you don't feel for it later too.
Anyway, when I had to buy a house these thoughts quite jammed my mind - Will I ever have a green wall outside my house like I did as a child, will I ever whiff the scent of flowers in monsoons or, see the beautiful bloom bursts of winter. The pocket size is a determinant of the house so my better half and I finally parked ourselves in a house which is in a rather remote corner of Vashi in Navi Mumbai. With millions of wishes and smiles from the lady luck herself, we got a house with a decent balcony and 2 flowerbeds attached to each of the bedrooms.
Needless to say, I quickly repositioned my old collection of plants - the trailing thorny bouganvillea, the healthy and fresh jasmine, the blue-flowered aparajita which creeps only to lend its beauty and a couple of ornamental plants. To my surprise, there was still lots of space left for me to continue thinking green.
I exercised my brain furthermore with all its fertility, browsed and stopped over small roadside nurseries on the highways, asked garden experts, surfed internet and finally zeroed in on a so-called garden consultant who kindly consented to visit me on a certain Saturday. To my delight, this was the day next to the World Earth Day and thus I kept alive my optimism of seeing my 'green' dream come true. After due diligence of the available space, assessing the sunlight, water drainage, and the aesthetic appeal, we listed down our overall requirement for inreasing the size of our flora family.
Ever since that day I have been waiting with bated breath, to see the creepers in the balcony garland its perimeter and create a shadow that is a welcome respite on a sunny day, to see some flowers blossom irrespective of the mood swings of the people staying in the house and some graceful plants that have leaves in colours other than green too.
The installation of my 'green' world is likely to take place on the forthcoming Saturday. If this works out, this monsoon will be one of my most favorite monsoons ever as I would watch the greenery exude oodles of peace, joy, beauty and grandeaur right next to me. And that --- will be my most perfect setting for a good life - healthy, wealthy and wise.
2 comments:
very sensitive and carefully written human-nature relationship. In my organization Arbor Day Foundation will be providing a tree to each one of us to plant, and there will be a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation on behalf of the employees not wanting to plant a tree :)
I share the same feeling for green as you do. In this Era, space is so scarcely available for greenery in house that no one bothers about. Closest people can come to green is to have a plastic permanent bouquet in vase next to TV. Luckily for me Gardening is one of my hobbies and derived from my mom. I remember when we were living in small tiny rental house that time too we had plants in every nook and corner of house. Now here in US I planted my seasonal garden in my balcony last week. will post snaps soon :) I have tomatoes, chillies, methi some flowers etc.
Green surely makes your heart green. Link to something similar in 2009: http://agastikale.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-experiments-with-gardening.html
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