Imagine that you have left your home-door, locality, village-city and have gone on a space journey. Although only about 600 people have been able to travel in space since 1961, but there is no limit to the thought experiments. You are seated in your spaceship wearing an armor-coil, that is, a special airtight outfit, with a seat-belt fastened. There is a big bang below. Fuel kept under high pressure rises from below. Its burning generates so much energy that your vehicle reaches the sky, defying gravity. It is possible that the rumble of the vehicle can make you faint, even if you are the Teesmar Khan of your locality or your area!
You may believe that your religion, your caste, your language, your customs are the best; You have the birthright to bulldoze other religions, other castes, other ideas, other languages. If you look at your house from above, you will see the size of everything smaller. Your locality, village-city, state, country… all will disappear. None of your identity will be of any value. This happens on earth too, even if we don’t pay attention. Rivers, mountains, land, atmosphere, sea… they do not recognize the boundaries of any human-made identity. Not even any religion made by man! Every ancient classical tradition has tried to understand the eternal religion of creation. Many streams of modern science are also doing this. Every mode of knowledge has its limits, be it traditional or modern. The universe is infinite.
Earth is limited. Its range is fixed. The higher you go, the thinner the atmosphere. Then the earth will look like a submerged blue ball. Where did this water come from, no one can say exactly. Scientists studying it estimate that every drop of water has been on Earth since the time icy meteorites coming from space hit here. Collided with other planets and satellites too, but there was no water left. Some countries are finding water in space through their space programs. The amount of liquid water on Earth is not seen anywhere else. Our life rests on this water.
Perhaps you have a feeling that the power to make the rivers, by squeezing the water of which we are developing our fast, has not come to us till today. No pipeline, no canal can bring water to the earth from outside. The water that we have started selling by filling it in bottles and tankers, we have taken that water by snatching it from other living beings. The earth has not given us the right to be clean by shedding our excreta in it. This industrial system of looting water is made for our convenience, for which we may have to pay some price. If we know the story of the formation of this water, then it will be clear that we are trashing our water sources. This will put us in grave trouble.
The crisis has arrived. There is rot in the rivers and ponds, the level of groundwater is going towards Hades. Water scarcity is everywhere. Yet we are not changing our ways. This bulldozer of development has become the biggest religion of our time. Politics assures us time and again that economic growth is limitless. Even if there is some wastage from it, then we will change the color of development to ‘Green’, make it ‘Sustainable’. That’s why the politics of name change goes on so much. We think that changing the name of an object changes its nature!
When truth is in front, man’s ability to deny it is truly limitless! We accept our own lies more than the truth of others. That is why the old scholars had kept the idea of ’Koop Madunk’. We look at our wells with our own glasses and consider it to be the whole universe.
That is why the threat of nuclear bomb is being heard nowadays. Attention Nuclear weapons will not see which nation has a claim on which plot. They will do untold destruction by blindfolding them. Fear of nuclear weapons was a major factor in the emergence of the environmental movement in the 1960s, and we now have a bigger threat than nuclear war: climate change. With the development of coal and petroleum burning in the last two hundred years, carbon-dioxide is increasing in the air. The amount of this gas in our atmosphere is only 0.04 percent, but it has amazing power to increase the temperature of the earth by stopping the heat of the sun. Whenever its quantity in the atmosphere has increased, then there has been a catastrophe. When it has come down from a fine equilibrium, then the ice age has come and the earth has frozen. By burning coal and petroleum for development, we are changing the fine balance of the earth on which the entire life-world rests. The effect is in front. In the 122 years of which we have temperature data, till date March has not been such a hot month. The creation does not run by our scripture or policy, nor is it under our judicial system, but our existence rests on its fine balance.
Our planet is a spacecraft orbiting the Sun. The living beings living on it are free travellers, because the universe does not charge us any entry fee at the time of our birth. When the pot of development will fill up and start challenging the balance of life, then the earth will be disturbed. This upheaval will continue until a new equilibrium is reached. Whether we will be in it or not, no one can say! Not all bulldozers of our development will even be like straws in front of him!
If we do not look outside our wells, then no one will be able to stop us from getting buried inside them. Today on Earth Day, let us remember this much. Even if tomorrow we may rejoice again in our own wells in our unticketed travel.
(These are the author’s own views)