Will we live to see it vanishing?

It’s our Doing, We need to clean this!
While Driving to office and listening to FM, I heard one advertisement about the sale of apartments next to a 200 acre lake and it went on asking to act fast as they are going away as fast as shooting stars. I am sure the advertiser meant that his apartments are going away that fast. However my first thought was “is he talking about lakes?". Yes, lakes are going away from Bangalore as fast as shooting stars. We are down to 60 lakes in Bangalore from 200, less than a decade back. I will be wasting your and my time and money if it’s just another great statistics for you to throw the next time you are sitting with a drink in hand, talking in a party to show your knowledge. Have you ever realized who the culprit is, it’s “you” and “me”, and it’s “us!

Ever thought of what happened to the trees which were on the plot our home is now? If pictures speak; look at them, now you know where the trees are gone. They are gone and your and my houses are looking like dark red infection spots on Bangalore city. This is our city, did we replace those trees? Did we ever ask builder? What? No, my convenience and better life were more important to me and my laziness and apathy are too big to bring them back or give them space around me.
Once we understand the damage, we must realize that it’s our turn now to support the environment. We have enough dooms day warnings from environmentalists. This is surely not the kind of future we want to leave for our next generation.
For me one of the ways was to start planting trees, and I found my soul, in a project “Green Dream” sponsored by my Rotary Club. The project plans to plant 100,000 trees in a year. When we started the project soon we realized that planting a tree and nurturing it is more difficult than taking a 100 year tree off the ground in the name of development. We can talk about it some other day.
Involvement with this project did provide me with some great insights about areas in and around Bangalore. I think it did complete me as a person or as Bangalorean more than many other things in my life. While going to villages in outskirts and planting trees, I came across humble village people fighting and losing battles to save lakes and trees against death threats from land mafia. I found shop-keepers coming out and pledging support to nurture trees planted within 50 meters of the shop. I came across some corporates who were more than willing to go extra mile, but some completely lost in bureaucracy and whims and fancies of few.
Above all, I found myself, I found my bearings, and standing on a dried lake bed I felt like standing in a grave yard. This is the grave yard in the making of which I was involved. Standing below a large tree next to the dried lake where one clap caused 1000’s of birds flying all over, I realized they would have had 100’s of trees just a few years back. As I stood there on lake bed with my seven year old daughter planting a tree, she asked “Papa jab barish hogi to pani aayega, to ped kaisey bachega” (“Papa when it rains, there will be water, then how will the tree survive?”). I looked at her, and didn’t have heart to tell her that there will not be any water on this lake bed again. I just told her; in that case we will plant more trees with a smile. The twinkle in her eyes was worth thousand smiles. Now it is 9.00 AM and she was planting her 4th tree and she started around 7.00 AM. She loved it, being with dad, out there in open air doing something of value. I could sense her imagining a jungle growing with birds and trees some years later. In my heart I knew the enormity of the task. We planted 20,000 trees till date this year and we want to reach 100,000, and even that won’t be enough. On given day, we get about 50 volunteers and that’s not sufficient. We need a movement; we need an awakening in every area, every corner to save this city, and its trees and lakes.
Lets be part of it as individuals, as families to save this city!
Will you ask, the next time while buying a house or getting into a commercial complex, “did I mess up the environment?” How can I replace this, how can I support or save this. If we don’t, its coming back to us, we forgot Tsunami, though it did come back after 170 years. If nature hasn’t hit us for 1000’s of years, it doesn’t mean that it won’t do it again.
May be next time I hear the advertisement I will not mistake it for lakes going away, since we will know that all of us are awake to the fact that we need to save our environment.