Raise Your Voice, Not The Sea Level
By Anitha S
18 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Students after planting a tree on June 5th - Photo- Gomathy,G
I am Vallarasu. 12 years old. I study in a huge school in the heart of the Thiruvananthapuram city called the Attakulangara Central High School. On World Environment Day- June 5th me and my friends joined a program to plant trees.We read in the papers that the Government is planting 10 lakh trees in one hour on this day. Though it sounds a wonderful idea, we were worried about the fate of the trees which have been bearing yellow marks and a number for many months. We are aware of the discussions that have been going on about the development project that the Thiruvananthapuram Development Authority is planning by taking over 2 acres of land from our school. This is to construct a bus bay and 100 shops. We also joined with the group who had come to plant trees. We took an oath that equated a tree with 10 sons and so on. But all the time in the back of my mind there was this gnawing fear that we will not see many trees for long.
While the decision makers and planners are talking about trees and protecting Nature, we also see that they are destroying age old trees and many hills in the name of development.
Recently near my mother’s home in rural Tamil Nadu, a whole hill was brought down by a huge JCB to make space for a private educational institution. This hill which was part of our landscape is now a big gnawing hole. The rich soil has been taken away to be dumped somewhere else. It scares me to think of the same JCB coming into my school and destroying the building we sit in. There was recent news that we will be shifted to another place so that the whole area can be developed. Then it will not be just the 48 trees that will disappear but the herbs, small plants and other life forms here.
We now see our school through a new eye which is based on the thought – For how long?
I like this school because I can study in my mother tongue which is Tamil. My mother says that if the school is shifted she will go back to her parental house in the border with Kerala. I do not like that thought because I like this place and the friends I have here. I do not want to lose the connection. Amidst all these anxiety and insecurity life has started well in the school for us- there is so much to look forward to here. We play a lot in the school.We eat good, fresh food. The teachers are kind and with the class being small, we are able to get a lot of attention. What more can a student demand? I cannot imagine the school in a posh modern setting within a small compound with no play ground or trees.
For me, the image of a school is this beloved space where I have been studying for 2 years now. I now know almost every corner of this school. I live in a 2 room house in an alley nearby. There are no trees or open spaces there. We play in the road threatened by drivers of passing vehicles. Sometimes when I wake up early morning, I long to stretch my legs and run. It is when I enter the school that I feel my mind and body letting go in the vast space and coolness. When we see the 48 trees marked and numbered we think how the school would be when the trees are placed outside and a huge wall comes there. There was a recent statement that only 10 trees would be cut for the project. We wonder which of the trees we know so well will face the axe. Each of us have some special memory associated with a tree.It was on tree no 13- the huge Raintree that I learned to climb. The small green Thespesia which is my friend Vishnu’s favourite refuge grows quite close to our classroom. Sometimes koels come there and call incessantly during hot noon days. There was also a note that for every tree cut more will be replaced and planted. Many of us know that a grown tree cannot be replaced by a new one, like we cannot compensate for the loss of a human life. The variety of benefits that a fully grown tree provides cannot be made up for by planting a new one.
Students around the huge Rain tree marked 13- Veena, M
On this Environment Day, the teacher told us that the message is Raise Your Voice, Not the Sea level. At first we did not understand the connection with sea level. But she explained about how the Earth is warming up and the polar ice caps are melting leading to raising sea levels. She also told us about how trees alone can bring down the heat by absorbing excess carbondioxide. This made sense to us as we stood in the cool school ground where we know the difference in temperature is more than 6 degree centigrade. It makes more sense to us to protect what we have rather than destroy and try to replace. We want all the trees in our school to stay as such for many years to come. We are ready to plant and look after new ones, but we need the old ones too. We have grown up with them and do not want to lose them.
As we stood out in the open on World Environment Day after planting many trees, we were convinced about the need to conserve this green lung. We can Clean and Green more but not to compensate for the trees planned to be cut. The bus bay and shops can be built else where. But we cannot ever create this atmosphere that the 100 trees, 80 species of herbs and innumerable birds and butterflies have made for so many years. This is my thought for the World Environment day. And I will raise my voice against the move to cut trees.
The students of Attakulangara Govt Central High School in conversation with Anitha.S
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