In recent times you would have heard the following buzzwords global warming, water scarcity, no seasonal rain, more pollution and few other relating climatic changes. Everyone starts to debate about it and try to solve these issues with various new ideas. But me on the contrary thought of the lesson which came across during my school days. Yes, one of the most memorable moments in my life took place when I was in 4th grade.
One fine day my sir Mr. Purushotham explained about the benefits of trees and the importance of planting it. Everyone present in the classroom were so amused on the fact that our Guru taught us. We really wanted to take this message to the entire surroundings, but it’s impossible to assemble everyone and teach them this. So, we planned for a campaign of planting tree saplings in our surrounding areas. We collected the samplings of neem seeds around our school playing area with the samples covered in a bag with full of soil. Then, we have planted the samplings around our class initially and started to water it regularly. The process continued for a couple of weeks, one day a small sampling started to come out which made everyone happy and all faces were filled with smiles. We then started to measure the saplings which has grown tall and had great fun. We just repeated the same process, now planting around our school with the encouragement and support from our most beloved Purushotham sir.
After this my years went running busying myself in my academics and career. In the year 2012, i got the opportunity again to contribute in building the natural beauty of earth. Yes, with the support of Pillars of India an NGO at Arani, Thiruvallur Dist., we have planted tree saplings. But this time we had to face difficulties such as hot sun, negativity from the people around and the comments they passed on us. But we never gave up, we completed our mission successfully.
Now recently I have visited the same place, and am really happy to see the trees grown which accommodates a lot of people by spreading shadow to long extent, giving cool air to beat the hot sun and some trees with healthy fruits for us. A small sampling planted before 7 years, with the lot of crisis have now grown well and helps the people who never believed that this will happen. This really is the happiest moment for me, making myself proud for making such a good to happen to the environment and also to the people.
Now what is the point of sharing this story, the question in every reader’s mind. The reason is simple “Love for buildings is more than the love towards trees” among people. Now a days we are seeing increasing in buildings, factories, malls etc everywhere. People say this is because of population growth in our country so all these are increasing year by year. But most of them did not realize that in order to do so they are killing so many trees which were there for years.
I am not saying don’t build your own houses or factories but when you build any concrete buildings try to have a space for garden where you can do by planting from small plants to big trees depends on the space you got.
The climate is changing drastically which made our life more vulnerable. (example for this is we faced heavy rainfall during Dec 2015 in Tamil Nadu which is unusual and every year we are facing extreme temperature during April and May. And Dec 2014 Cyclone came in Tamil Nadu and lost lots of tree which is saved years of years)
Our previous generation grandfather and grandmother left this world with good and clean environment which made us to live happily but now we made the environment with more pollution and trying to find a place, how to escape from this by going inside AC room which is not at all a healthy place to live when compared with sitting under a tree by getting a natural air. So it’s our responsibility to give similar way to our next generation. If we ignored as like earlier days, our future generation also struggle with water and pure air that what we are facing now.
In order to control this climate change let us begin with small step by planting trees. (In Tamizh there is a proverb called “Siru Thuli Peruvellam”) If we do so that means we are giving a good and comfortable space for our next generation to live a peaceful life.