In this murky air, sing a song of resilience
Through the swathe of smog, I was looking for life.
Like a cement block, a pall of pollution has descended over many cities in India, unmoving.
It shouldn’t be surprising—each year before winter, the air becomes poisonous. We are living through so much environmental degradation that talking about it seems to be fatalistic, and ignoring it seems foolish. The word ‘solastalgia’ signifies a homesickness for the lost environment or landscape we loved.
Growing up has often meant the giving up of landscape features we held dear—the wetland behind the school which became apartments, the park you played cricket with a plastic bat in, which became a parking lot; the big banyan tree that was axed for a road, with a few potted bougainvillea erected as compensation.
Your parents might have their own sets of solastalgia—that was a generation that was physically immersed in Nature—swimming rivers and streams, tasting fruit from forests, knowing which season was right for which kind of forest forage. Over the years, concrete has replaced greens, blues have become greys, and densification of buildings and a combination of structures has been equated with a better quality of life.
We feel now that this quality of life needs ecological perspectives too—cities need green and blue spaces perhaps more than any other place, and children need greenery to run in before they can turn to screens.
Perhaps what we need most of all in our daily lives is a sense of positive environmentalism. ‘Joy is the Justice we give ourselves,’ writes American writer and poet J Drew Lanham. Even in the face of environmental despair, we must not lose our sense of joy and the pursuit of Nature. As we wait for various government schemes for pollution and footprint reduction, we must also keep alive our own rituals which have personal meaning. Many turn to gardens with native plants—which can thrive even in adverse conditions—others turn to the skies to watch the incoming birds.
Even with an AQI that has crossed 400, when the air is more smoke than oxygen, migratory birds are shooting towards wetlands, parks and forests.
A shahtoot sapling I planted in a pot had a little bird moving in it this morning. This was a Hume’s warbler, in India from Central Asia. In the fields near the city, a beautiful Siberian stonechat couple flitted between Celosia argentea plants. Slowly, the wetlands are filling with ducks, geese and wading birds, who have braved thousands of kilometres of flight to come to India.
A friend is collecting seeds of plants that are flowering now—the Vajradanti and Chitrak. These are native plants that often don’t get the attention they deserve in parks and gardens. She is collecting the seeds now, so she can sow them next year. Even if the air doesn’t clear up, she will have her set of new plants—blades of defiance in the murky air, a little song of resilience.
Neha Sinha
Conservation biologist and author
Views expressed are personal
Posts on X: @nehaa_sinha