Sahyadrica

Millions of years since our ancestors first drank from a pond, bathed in a stream, built a house by a lake, grew vegetables along a river, and channeled water for their home – today, in this anthropocene era, I sit and I wonder: whether a bird now shares its wetland with man, or does man lend his wetland to the bird. The bird is not your everyday business-man, or your money-lender. A bird here is Mother Nature. Chapter I: The Built Wetland The dancing bird Jayakwadi Dam, Paithan, Aurangabad District, Maharashtra A few centuries ago when the world was slightly different than it is today, man in many regions built temples, castles, and romanced, and wrote poems under the tree – always by the waters. This water was visited by many a creature beside man. Beside man, many depended on it, for food, for breeding, for life. And so the harmony between man, water, and his neighbours, was in epitome of its relationship – until that day when we learnt to own wetlands for our purpose,...

“Everyone who has been into space and looked back at Earth have noted a sense of wonder and awe, unity with nature, transcendence, and universal brotherhood”, says the book Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective . This level of consciousness is termed the Overview Effect, coined by Frank White in 1987. Not many have looked back at earth as an isolated, vulnerable, negligible, closed ecosystem, but everyone has, at least once in their lifetime, looked into the blackness that lies beyond – into space – and the universe, through the eyes it has created – your eyes – has looked back upon itself. As Carl Sagan has rightly put it, “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself”. Yet back on Earth – we defile nature – consciously or subconsciously – and to attain the level of consciousness, to understand the scale of destruction of this only place where we can live, one has just to sit in one place, imagine this planet as your own, your neighbou...