By Ratna Manucha
The other day, while driving down Rajpur Road after a long hiatus, I glanced out of the car window and was startled to see a flat landscape where once the stately eucalyptus trees stood. The stark emptiness of the land echoed the emptiness in my heart. Pete Seeger’s legendary song, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’, flashed through my mind. This song, which was all the rage in the nineties, signifies the cyclical nature of war and suffering.
The aromatic eucalyptus trees which lined the entire stretch along Parade Ground among other parts of the Doon Valley with the crisp whispering of their leaves every time even a gentle wind blew and their heady fragrance wafting through the breeze was such an integral part of my childhood. Their ghostly white trunks have always held a strange fascination for me, ever since I was a little girl. In fact, now, forget about the eucalyptus trees, which were an intrinsic part of our valley, but even the other trees are stealthily doing the vanishing act.
Suddenly I find my thoughts going into overdrive. With the random tree cutting, flattening of hillsides, destroying the green cover, resultantly, the animals and birds becoming extinct, conditions of drought persisting, rivers drying up, floods, landslides, cloudbursts and other natural calamities are rapidly becoming the order of the day… which in turn are taking many lives and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
Well, this too is a war of another kind. The kind humans are waging on nature and, in turn, nature is ravaging the human population.
So here’s my humble tribute to Pete Seeger’s iconic song, which may a couple of decades down the line, be sung by the people who are still alive to witness this crazy destruction of our planet.
‘Where have all the people gone
Long time ago
Swallowed by cyclones, landslides and earthquakes everyone,
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where have all the hillsides gone
Long time ago
Flattened by greedy builders, every one
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where have all the green trees gone
Gone to sawmills every one
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where have all their branches gone?
Gone for firewood everyone
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where have all the songbirds gone?
Flown to greener lands everyone
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where have all the rivers gone?
Dammed and dried up everyone
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where has all the wildlife gone?
Killed by poachers everyone
When will they ever learn?
When will you ever learn?
Where have all the people gone?
Gone to graveyards everyone…’
‘Dust thou art to dust returneth.’ Perhaps the great American poet Henry W Longfellow could prophesise the future when he wrote the above oft quoted words in ‘The Psalm of Life’.
(Ratna Manucha is an author and educationist)
