Away from explicit, rigid, non negotiable expressions of
disapprovals live a layman’s world where these two are inseparable and
coexistent like one’s shadow. I have often found a conservationist being referred
to as a miser in public place much to the latter’s amusement. These days the
educated form crowd, bringing into shape those invaluable existences into valuable
standards of behaviour. Every one seems to be educated in this age of internet,
ready to put forward his views like a cheap ‘ready to fry’ envelope of mouth
watering battered marinated fish. Silence is scarce, beyond reach of a gullible
magic box eligible to cast his ballot in an untruly democratic country. The
public is thickly populated in twenty-first century, much thicker than the
quiet listeners of the sixties of twentieth. You rarely would find people
listening to you and pay heed. We are all kings in this new world but not very
much like what Tagore referred to in “Amara sabai Raja amader ei Rajar rajotye”
(we are all free like king in our state).
My father’s
friend, already dead by now, quietly put off the electric switch behind a person,
carelessly leaving an empty room. People use to call him nuts, saving money for
no one. Improperly turned off taps would find him finishing the left out work.
It was one thing that made co-habitants see shades of red but they kept on reffering
him as hoarder . This half dead, lean, meatless man would save, torn pieces of
blank unused papers believing trees will be lost soon for making as few as half
a dozen paper.
Who is this
‘nuts’? I don’t know. I have often seen a scarcely read man, likely self
groomed, a self styled existence who persistently nurtures his nous, unnoticed,
an un-smart soul indeed, haunted at every corner of his living by his nonexistent,
tempestuous dumb countertenor.
In today’s world
where human interest other than in self is absconding, conservationism is in
exile making room for a miser impersonating others. This is likely the future
of modern man with changes coming faster than the speed of an ultramodern computer chip. He adapts to the
speed very much like the inhuman ‘transformers’ on screen unable to role back
to his basic self.
How many times in the recent past had you witnessed a comon man on the street, conserving? Conserving a clean environment, not throwing his empty chocolate wrapper or an exhausted cigarette packet on the pavement. Not honking an enormously sharp sounding exhibitionistic car horn without suitable cause. A rareity indeed you never even thought of some twenty years back. At one time, a quality which showed up automatically and no one botherd to call it humane as it came up without a conscious thought and willingly with maturity, is scarse and may be needs ‘Finishing Schools’ for a come back. So the water keeps flowing, unused and uncared for in government taps on streets, street lights keep burning at seven in the morning may be throughout the day, a noisy thoroughfare becomes a smarter avenue for the modern man, slangs flow down the lips in public places, newer babies keep seeing the daylight on pavements without their parents rarely using their brains, teachers slap their pupil without loving and caring for them.
Its time to conserve, not only
the water on the street but the slang too, you had memorised in your childhood.
May be the next door neighbour with whom you had never cared to talked to, is conserving
the air for your next generation. Its time to conserve the word ‘ miser’ you
often use for a quiet backbencher who keeps using his dusty gadget which has
lost its shine.
