Have a nice look at the image? Do you see a pattern? A
pattern that has been going on for the last several generations and still
continuing. The pattern has not only been denigrative but will insidiously continue
to degenerate the very essence of Mother Nature that we, the citizens of Assam
are proud of.
You think it might be just an ordinary image of a hill
slowly and steadily getting affected by deforestation but in reality it is a
sign of something reverential being crushed under the burden of greed and
desires of the human body. It’s petrifying to even contemplate the future of
North-eastern forest if these blasphemous scenario heads the same way.
The government and the forest department of Assam, whose
shoulders bear the responsibility of upkeeping these ethereal beauty claims to
have a tremendous success in their endeavours of managing the complex scenarios
of these forests. But this image erases every single doubt in the mind that the
success achieved is only partially true or totally false. The forest you see
here is a home to more than fifty different species of birds, elephants,
leopards and more than a hundred different types of butterflies. These had been
homes to numerous others as well before human intervention.
But we humans have also bred a species whose greed knows no
bounds. It will rip, kill, and destroy entire species if necessary just to
fulfill its desires of money and wealth. Just for the hunger of earning a few more
bucks, these autotrophs have been depleting ever since. The people living in
the shadow of ignorance prioritised a “non-living piece of paper” that we term “money”
when compared to those living beings who gives us the life-providing air.
But, it is more unfortunate that what you see is just the surface
of the problem. The source of this trouble goes more deep. It’s not a conundrum
of the intellect. But the way the intellect is developed. The group which has
been proactive in such cases are those who had been onto it for generations. That
answers a lot of questions regarding why and how are related to this profession
or stumbled upon it.
I am writing this today because today when I looked at it
and realized what was being done to it, I felt a surge of gloom inside me, as
if someone was trying to communicate their grief but I was incapable of
listening to it. As if the realization dawned upon like a thunderbolt and I understood
that there are only few more years to the existence of what remains after which
it will be converted into barren land for agriculture or building luxury.
The hard and cruel truth is this, “There may be a time soon
in the future that only the tales of such forests will remain in the minds and being
passed over generations instead of the forest itself.”
