What will Project 35 Trees talk to students about?

Planting trees is fun. It is fun to dig holes in damp soil with a heavy instrument. It is nice to get hands dirty in a childish sort of way. It is an ice-breaker. It gets people to talk, smile, open-up and share.

While planting trees in urban areas is a necessity, it is various other issues that consume the attention of many wildlife conservationists in the country today. These must be gradually instilled among young students so that they do not repeat mistakes the earlier generations have done.

CATCH THEM YOUNG | They must be weaned away from the lavish use of plastic. It is not easy. But they must be told of its dangers.  Tell them while they are in school. Let them learn about this while they learn what’s in their schoolbooks.

You might tell them to save power; to switch off the lights and the fans when you don’t need them. They might not really care for it because they haven’t been told why to switch off the lights and fans…why it is important to save electricity…how precious this power is.  

But tell them about their favourite animal – the tiger, the fastest animal – the cheetah and beautiful national bird. Tell them about the homes of these gorgeous animals – the forests. Then tell them how these forests are being cut down to make coal mines. Where does all this coal go? This coal is used to generate the electricity that comes to all of our homes. The tiger, the cheetah, the peacock…they all sacrificed their homes, their lives for this electricity. Grim…but the young ones must understand this.

In Kashmir, rich kids probably have a Shahtoosh carpet at home or their mothers might have a family heirloom of a shawl of the finest quality of silk, the kind that exploited the Chiru (Tibetan Antelope) to extinction.  

Jeans? The denim dyeing industry is known to be a major polluter of the Ulhas river in Thane District.

Millions of families that flock to sea-shores and beaches for vacations return with painted sea-shells and decorative pieces of corals- souvenirs. Little do these innocent souls know that the creatures are collected from the sea and boiled alive. The dead remains are scraped out, the shells are washed in detergent, polished, painted and sold to you for twenty rupees. Is that the cost of a sea creature’s life? And how do you expect to hold out a tsunami when you have been breaking pieces of the boundary wall – the coral reefs?

Who will tell them all this?

I will.

Why?

Because this is the knowledge growing children must be equipped with in order to make clear choices while they grow up to be responsible citizens.

If there are a few changed minds, if students learn to turn off the lights before nodding off to sleep or return home from vacations with tribal art items instead, Project 35 Trees will consider its job done. 

Open Letter To Indra

Dear Indra,

Dude, what’s wrong, man?

You used to have a brilliant system going on there. You had Surya to heat the oceans... and people to carry all that steam upwards (and run that little super sauna for you!) Then you had those brilliant cloud-making artisans! What happened?  

Are you tired? Do you need a pay hike or something?  Or are your employees striking?

Or will you only make it rain if Gracy Singh and a tanned Aamir Khan beg for rain while doing a cinematic number?

You must really consider doing your rock star thing soon. Let the clouds break into a medlee of classic torrential rain and put us earthlings in a huge mosh pit of sorts. That might make some snobby South Bombay types shut themselves in and screw up their noses about how they hate getting wet but that's all. The rest of us will only be happy that we'll have water to wash our buttocks every morning in the coming year and that farmers will have enough water for their fields.

But that cloud burst thing...I am guessing that happens when you are really pissed at us? Sir, very scary. We don't want that also.

Remember Milan Subway, Kalina? Yeah.

Tell me, did you guys get a good laugh when we attempted cloud-seeding? See, if you don't let it loose in another fortnight, we'll want to try that again! Don’t you let us make fools of ourselves.

Also, how is it that when I am in Ambarnath, you give rain to Bombay and when I am in Bombay (chal na, Borivali is Bombay too!) I am not complaining, my trees there must love it! But dude, what about Tulsi and Vihar – the reservoirs inside the Sanjay Gandhi National park that the English made? Who’ll fill them up, your daddy?

Oh, I almost forgot this one thing. What is going on between you and this Murphy guy? How does it really work? Does he Whatsapp you every time he sees me leave home without an umbrella?    

So they are saying we cut too many trees because of which there’s less water in the oceans or whatever… and you are mighty annoyed about this and all… any truth there? See, I understand your problem. You can’t really take the water from Mithi river anymore… it’s so f…um…filthy and who wants dirty rainwater anyway?

Give my love to Airavata please? Tell him his earthly cousins are fine now that Veerappan is gone but every now and then a train that passes through their forests dashes down a few of them.

P.S: There was a little confusion as to who to address this letter to - you or Varuna. But I've always been clear that you take care of the rains; unlike popular belief in north India, because Varuna is in-charge of the oceans department, right?