A miser and a conservationist

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.