SOLOMON Islands: Cursing the Tree In the Solomon Islands, when the people want to clear the forest for planting or development, they just gather around the big tree, stand around it holding hands and hurl abuses at it the tree – they curse it. Slowly and surely the tree begins to wither and it dies on its own. This is a story that I heard from the movie ‘Like Stars in the Sky’ and it set me thinking about how we have been behaving and the way we have managed the things, is rather appalling. Sometime our thinking is sufficient to bring the bad omen” Vakh Vakh dani Bairavee”: This story also reminds of the work of Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, author of The Hidden Messages in Water. Using a special photographic technology, he is able to capture the details of a water crystal. He did an experiment to see how thoughts and words affected the formation of untreated distilled water crystals. He typed phrases onto paper, and then taped them onto the bottles and left them overnight. Here are the effects of the words on water: Kind words turned the water into a beautiful “snowflake” crystal, whereas the insult resulted into an image that resembled diseased cells under a microscope. And since we’re made up of 75% water, think about the effect of words and intentions on people. The words we say to trees, water and people always create an effect. These analogies, if I relate our current dispensation and today’s election outcomes, the scene is disappointing. Let me clarify, why elections, because, my strong belief is that Political & Social Institutions play a critical role in the transformation of any community, culture, if it is tactfully leveraged by a collective intelligence of a community. Instead of cutting down, what we see is that we could had nurtured the ones provided opportunity in this election and facilitated our voice inside the assembly by gainfully getting them, or at least one, elected. It was a very different situation this time, given we had a government at the center that was led by Modi, who has been concerned for KP’s right from the day one he entered his office and by showing our collective will and intent we could had leveraged election success for seeking a better tomorrow ( e.g safe return or homeland or education, employment etc). But what we saw during this entire election process was, blames, abuses, curses, etc etc being hurled over each other. Knowing very well that we are very few in numbers, that can be counted on finger tips, we did not give up our ego driven aspirations to have a consensus for one candidate and then rally behind him with all the energies. I sometimes wonder that do we really need someone to destroy us? We are self-competent enough to harm ourselves and this election has proved that. So Politically this election has signaled to every organization, that we are in-significant and hence they can change their priorities , specifically ones who had a plan for KP’s I wonder: Do we really have a problem, or in last 25 years most of us, our children, grand children have got settled and Kashmir issue is no more a concern?. Do our fractured and divided leadership get really pained by community sufferings or are they just running their party shops and annual calanderised programs as a tick in box activity and measure their success by showing/monitoring how they were able to gather more numbers in their programs compared to other KP organizations? Do our Young generation (millennial population), really feel and understand the issue or are they completely disillusioned with the factionalism, lack of direction and clarity of purpose amongst the community? Do we really care about going back or is this just an issue to keep some KP organization offices running? But then how long can we afford that as well? By the way we are already having a silent Demographic Problem creeping in that many people have not even thought of. For a culture to sustain, the science behind it says that the minimum fertility rate (FR) to sustain for coming 25 years, must be 2.11 children per family and a FR less than that, the culture would decline. So not sure, whether these KP offices will have any KP to man after few years from now. Does anyone have an idea how we will look like as a community in next 25-50 years from now? It is a wakeup call. We need to have a political presence in the J&K state or we will die a silent decline. Can OUR LEADERSHIP come together, handle the bull by horn, instead OF DOING THEIR ANNUAL PROGRAMS & Criticizing each other.? Can we shed our egoes and embrace each other, irrespective of what organization we belong to and create a common action program that sends a message of collectivism and purpose and works as a gluing factor for this fading community. I am sure we will have convergence some where or else we will have to meet the fate of Solomon Island Trees Raj Nehru
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 15:52:37 +0000
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