Planet of the Apes

All this worry about nature and the environment….I have had the spare time to sit and wonder about it.

That ‘we’ have caused a lot of damage is more than apparent and that this may lead us to our doom, the 'armageddon' to use a popular cliché, is ominous. But the question is, what is the real concern here? What is the REAL issue? This is not the first time! The planet has gone through topsy-turvy times before. It has appeared to be at the brink of destruction but was it ever actually destroyed?! Not really! For here it stands, millions of years later, all intact-no huge chunk missing and not in million pieces as Hollywood would have us believe in its glamorized obsessions with self destruction and doomsday fiascos. The ice age successfully came and went without any assistance or intervention of the human race or its ‘activists’ and life still persists on this planet.

It's about time we acknowledged the real issue. It's not nature that really concerns us. Nature does not need our concern. It can take care of itself. It is the most self sufficient, self sustaining entity known. It balances its act no matter how extreme the situation gets. That it does so, at the cost of anything and everything, is the issue. The concern therefore is not saving the ‘natural’ world. Oh! It will survive all right! And how! The concern is saving our own asses. Saving our own smug selves from anhiliation. And saving our face while at it. To rectify the damage that was done so that whatever exists on this planet millions of years later do not find ‘scientific evidence’ that proves that Homo sapien sapien was a primitive creature which was daft enough to cut down the branch it was sitting on and with gloating pride about its ‘scientific progress’ it ushered in the “fire age”. Now THAT is a real concern.

Brick kiln chimneys stuck into the bosom of the country soil like enormous incense sticks fuming in veneration. Such is the soil that this earth is made of, such are the bricks that our walls are made of.

Vrindavan....
A place where painted sadhus fancy themselves to be Sri Krishna....the ultimate flirt.....and the entire female population to be their 'Gopinis'. A place where you are offered bhang as frequently and as unhesitantly as if it were tea. A place where grass probably means something that was not procured from a lawn. A place filled with lights and colours and people as 'rangeela' as the deity they worship.A place of 'Radhe Radhe' and multiple names of Gods double up as greetings and exclamations. A place of excesses of every kind, a place where the earth wears shoes of sand to prevent you feet from soiling it! A place with monkeys enough to give you a clue about where the words 'Vanar Sena' probably had their origin. Of the ultimate bondage of commitment and the freedom to walk the streets in a loin cloth and shout out loud without being promptly stuffed into an asylum. A place of music, and ras leela and of plenty, of milk and ghee, of makkhan malai. A place where the Gods have a palate to give any epicure a run for his money. Of wide eyed devotion, beliefs and superstitions, miracles,mockery, subterfuge.... of sincerity. Of narrow lanes and broad grins, of small budgets and big appetites, of insecurity and refuge, of incredulity .....of faith. A place of minimalist luxury, of rich poverty, of willing compulsions. The place is a paradox, an irony, an enigma. The place is 'Dev Sthan'-A place of the Gods.