This post is a trip down memory lane. And it might not be very accurate since it reminisces my childhood days and today I am much much older and might miss many of the beautiful things I might have noticed as a child.
The first thing that comes to my mind on my visits to my native Kerala these days is the change in the flora and fauna since my childhood days.
Not drastically but still quite subtle changes.
The weeds that lined the country roads then were some type of fern like plants that folded their leaves on touching them. We used to call them the "touch-me-not"s. I have never come across these plants lately.
The farmlands used to teem with insects and it was not rare to find a couple of scorpions hanging by their venomous tails, the sting being tied with a string to a banana shoot by some naughty schoolchild who didn't want to decimate the poor scorpion but neither let it escape his torment.
There were these huge centipedes that crawled anywhere and everywhere and which would curl into a spiral on physical contact, making them look like bulbous one rupee coins - the "atta". The roads teemed with them during the rainy season and vehicles and pedestrians using the road squashed them pretty hard. The scorpions are no longer to be seen (for the good?!), and neither these centipedes and millipedes.
If you dug the earth it would be impossible to go a few inches deeper into the earth before scooping up these giant earthworms. Earthworms, they say are good to keep the soil fertile - for vermi-compost. Now they use fertilizers in the tonnes. During the rainy season the rivulets sprang from springs that were almost perennial. No longer! Now the water table has sunk deep and to get water the year round you would need a very deep well. The streams are a once in a week affair that dry off soon after the rains.
I remember as a child we used to play a little game. When we visited our uncles and aunts in their houses in the vicinity we first checked the water wells. And since it was in the monsoons that we visited Kerala, the water table being quite high we could touch the water surface in the wells with our small hands. No longer. The water no longer comes to arm level now and the traditional mode of using bucket and rope is now replaced by motor pumps to reach the receding water table.
And the ants. I remember at least three varieties of ants - the big black ants, the small red ones - which you could never avoid getting bitten by if you used the small trails that crisscrossed the farms, and the smaller harmless ones that could be found all over the kitchen and store rooms.
And how cam I miss the sparrows? The chirps of the sparrows is now just a figment of memory - they are nowhere to be seen.
I remember one night, one of us kids had a cold and one electric light in the house was kept on in case of an emergency. I got up that night to a sight I have never seen before. The light in the room had attracted thousands of migratory locusts so thick that you would think there was snowfall. In suicide missions they rammed themselves against the light as their wings fell off and they lay twitching on the floor. Seems my grandfather was accustomed to this sight and he let loose the Alsatian dog we had and the two cats, and all the three pets had a sumptuous feast of butter soft locust meat.
I wonder whether we are actually changing the world around us in a time bracket of just quarter of a century? Traditionally cocoa, pepper, tapioca (kappa) and coffee were grown along with banana plantains in the midst of rubber trees. But now the cash crops are solely rubber, pineapple and vanilla. The rubber trees tend to draw a lot of ground water, the pineapple and vanilla in addition to the coconut trees, are protected by massive sprays of insecticides.
All these chemicals that we inject into the soil, are they changing the face of the earth? A point to ponder.