City living or is it slow dying ..?

I went back to visit my mother and my motherland India. A sense of anticipation and longing was building up in me. The tug of the land of ones birth is very strong. No matter where in the world one goes, an invisible umbilical cord ties you back to your motherland. I stepped foot in Bangalore, the city of my birth, a place I love dearly!

This time, it was not the skyscrapers, malls or hoardings that caught my eye. I was looking at the birds, the trees, the people, the weather, the mud, the lakes, the vegetable market, the street vendors, the mangoes. The more I looked down and deep, the more I was saddened at what is happening to my home. Every stream and lake is polluted with sewage and dumping. Every bit of empty land is teeming with rotting garbage. Cows and stray dogs were eating from the dumps. The air was thick with dust and smog.

We have forgotten that man is meant to live in the midst of nature with clean air, pure water and serene surroundings. When everything that meets the eye is ugly, when the only sound you hear is constant noise, when nothing fragrant and only stench hits the nose, when the nerves are stretched and the mind is stressed from the daily turmoil, it is indeed hard to believe that life is beautiful and living is a joy.

The words of warning from the great Native American "Chief Seattle" more than a century ago is now the state of majority of us humans. “Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.” City life is not living. It is where we slowly die...