Mountain Afternoon

You sit under pine trees, the breeze cooling your face and damp blades of grass crushed under your feet. The book you ambitiously carried to read outdoors sits forgotten next to you because everything else is so much more appealing – the clouds, the birds, the flowers. 

You have to make sure to breathe in all that fresh air so your lungs can hang onto it. Clear blue skies stretch for miles above you, making you wonder how people get any work done around here. It’s all so distracting; the beauty of everything. The rather persistent chirping of crickets that would normally annoy you feels like a pleasant background score. The tea you would have gulped down in the city takes on a magical quality here: it soothes and refreshes and makes you pause. 

You doze off, wake up and are still very much on schedule. There’s no hurry to get anywhere, do anything, be anyone. You stare at ants briskly moving in line. How ‘city’ of them.

Goodbye Sparrows (and Other Creatures My Kids Probably Won't See)

I've grown up listening to sparrows chattering. I've run away from bees on numerous occasions. Watching peacocks dance at my grandparents' home during the monsoon was probably one of the highlights of the rainy season. Spiders always made webs behind certain pots in our garden no matter how much the maali was told to keep things tidy. Butterflies were all over the place when you went for picnics.

It breaks my heart to think that perhaps my children or grandchildren may not know the pleasure of shrieking at a frog that has suddenly appeared in your house, or gaze at a snail’s leisurely pace while wondering how people consider it such a delicacy. That these little things may not be part of the lives of the generations to come is deeply saddening.

I don’t think we’re fully aware of what we’re doing to the planet – even though we’re constantly hearing about it. And now even the little creatures are going. Perhaps this list will strike a chord . . . 

Pollution, global warming and habitat destruction from human development have taken a serious toll on frogs. We’ve lost an estimated 170 species in the last 10 years alone, with 1900 in a threatened state, which is one step below the endangered designation, meaning extinction is imminent.

The disappearance of these creatures has been pegged due to bee pests, diseases, pathogens, and, of course, habitat loss. There is also the perplexing phenomenon of colony collapse disorder.

The population of the house sparrow is fast declining due to radiation from thousands of mobile towers and rapid change in habitat conditions.

Pollution and habitat destruction have caused the extinction of a considerable number of snail species in recent years.

Spiders are suffering due to lack of insects to eat and global warming.

Monarch butterflies are severely affected by rising temperatures and may be wiped out if global warming continues to escalate.

As if habitat loss, contamination of food sources and habitat destruction wasn’t enough, the peacock population is also suffering because of poaching.

As Frank Lloyd Wright rightly said, 'I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.' If only more of us felt that way the earth would be in far better shape than it is.