Francis
Beacon had once said that to know the nature outside, we need to know the
nature within. As
a child, the quest to know the nature outside started with the thirst to know
the nature within. While the nature within was lost in multiple conflicts of
gene, nature, culture, conditioning, hereditarianism, a view outside towards
nature got me back to within. It often happened, that when the answers of
nature within were not available, I got the same answers in the green fields of
West Bengal while travelling to Krishnanagar, Durgapur, Mogra away from
Kolkata.
Every
journey of mine in a train, away from Kolkata was actually bringing me near to
the nature within while being positioned in the larger frame of the nature
outside. The journey from Kolkata was therefore not a journey from the refugee
homes of the city but was being more close to the nature within and outside.
Each such
interaction of the nature within and outside through my travel to the rural
villages, towns and suburbs away from Kolkata was like a – “A Green Day”. The emotions of rage, despair, anguish, hope,
anxiety, light would all get mixed up to reach to a tunnel end after a
spiritual death through these pathways to the rural society. Urban society was
quite synonymous to me as a “A Grey Day”.
However, on
some days of monsoon or April stuck by Norwesters, my Grey Days of the City
Living would become “A Green Day” when I would plunge to ponds, muds after
football matches amidst high storm and rainfall. I could see the muddy color of
my despair, feeling of exclusion from the city privileges, elitism being driven
away by the muds of the monsoon football grounds of the refugee space and
habitation where I grew up.
Often, I
would do that in the middle of the football grounds within the TB Hospital
Campus of Jadavpur of 80s and early 90s which had the humans and pigs playing
together on the football ground amidst the mud. Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was not
applicable in those days of my childhood as in that Animal Ground, humans and
pigs had no hierarchy. They all would equally enjoy muds, smell of grass,
monsoon rains, cuts and bruises of life and body together. Truly, the rage and
despair would get converted to “A Green Day” in those days while playing
together with pigs on the football ground of the TB Hospital Campus at
Jadavpur. Then, one day, after leaving Kolkata and facing the city space of
Delhi when I had a cultural realization of the space within me, I found out
that the nature within me was – “A Green Day”. Such a Green Day was facing the
threat of extinction from the perils of human induced impacts of climate
change. I had no other way but to join people who equally had found out “A
Green Day” within themselves just like me through nature. I had to fight the
threat of extinction from the perils of human induced impacts of climate change
to safeguard the nature within me from becoming extinct, and a living fossil. There
was no other way but to collaborate with my Co-Editors, Co-Authors of The Book
– “A Green Day” published by Hachette India and represented by The Book Bakers.
I found out the same nature within and outside in – Mr. Jeevesh Gupta and Mr.
Chittaranjan Dubey.
The rage,
despair, hope of within expanded and extended its arms and joined hands with
many across the world and gradually the chapters of the book “A Green Day” were
born with the stewarding guidance and support of the other two co-editors too. The
journey of the book “A Green Day” has just begun as it is a journey of a child
to protect the nature within to see the nature outside and both are mutually
co-existing. This voice will only multiply in future and will counter question
every inner voice which often arises from our existential dilemmas of life
saying – “Why do we need to protect this nature inside to see the nature
outside or vice versa”?
Hence – “A
Green Day” is not just merely a book that I was part off starting from the
inception to publication but it has been an attempt to create a process of
winning the doubt that arises everytime, everyday which often tells us that –
“You should give up protecting the nature within and just be with the flow as
anyways you might loose it being too little in the larger scheme of things”!
A Green Day
is therefore an attempt to represent the voice of all such citizens and
individuals who are fighting and conquering such a doubt everyday from waking
up till they go to bed to sleep!
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