Where is my home?

I read about the experience of a social activist when she visited Nagapattinam to help the tsunami victims. The government authorities did not allow her group to put up a temporary hospital there and she was about to leave along with all the things that they had taken for distribution. Just then a girl, aged about 11, came running to them with tears in her eyes. She seemed to be from a middle-class family. She had lost her home and all her family members. She looked shocked and lost and sought a steel plate to collect the free food that was being distributed nearby.

Even now I cannot sleep when I think of that little girl and all the millions of children who get orphaned in natural calamities or wars. Children are the worst affected because they are not trained to face such extreme situations and they are not empowered too. They become vulnerable to exploitation of different kinds by cruel adults. Just imagine the shock that a child will get when he suddenly loses all security. There are many NGOs working for such children, though there is not enough to cover all of them.

I am overcome by the same feeling when I drive around Bangalore’s roads and see hundreds of felled trees. Thousands of living organisms, made the threes their home. Just imagine the shock and despair that these innocent beings would have felt when they returned from their sojourn one evening to find the entire tree missing. They do not know how to cry for help. They too miss their little ones for whose sake they fly miles in search of proper abodes and make their little homes without disturbing any human being in any way.

A couple of eagles build their nest on a tree top in front of my house every year during summer. It is fun to watch them fetching sticks and twigs to build their nest. When the eggs are laid, the birds keep watch over the nest taking turns, keeping at bay the crows and squirrels. Similarly, some colourful parakeets build their nests inside the branches, by boring neat round holes. I was surprised to find one of them squeezing itself into the branch one day through that small hole. These birds do not disturb each other or the human beings down below. They go on with their lives religiously.

All their hard labour is ignored and the cruel and greedy man just brings down the trees destroying hundreds of such little homes. Do these helpless beings have no right to life? Don’t they have the right to share the same planet with us? Nature has always helped man and yet man tries to trample over nature, thinking that he is the sole owner of this beautiful planet.