Save the earth

I got this on my email today and feel compelled to share it with you. The speech that's transcripted below was given many years ago but still holds true today. Do read it.
This beautiful speech was given by a 12 year old girl to save Mother Earth. The following is the transcript of the speech that Severn Suzuki gave to the Plenary Session at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio Centro, Brazil. Severn was twelve years old then.
Hello, I'm Severn Suzuki speaking for E.C.O. - The Environmental Children's Organisation. We are a group of twelve and thirteen-year-olds from Canada trying to make a difference:Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg and me. We raised all the money ourselves to come six thousand miles to tell you adults you must change your ways. Coming here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future.Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come.I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard.I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go. We cannot afford to be not heard.I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in the ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don't know what chemicals are in it.I used to go fishing in Vancouver with my dad until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear about animals and plants going exinct every day -- vanishing forever.In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests full of birds and butterfilies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see.Did you have to worry about these little things when you were my age?All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I'm only a child and I don't have all the solutions, but I want you to realise, neither do you!You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back forests that once grew where there is now desert.If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it! Here, you may be delegates of your governments, business people, organisers, reporters or poiticians - but really you are mothers and fathers, brothers and sister, aunts and uncles - and all of you are somebody's child.I'm only a child yet I know we are all part of a family, five billion strong, in fact, 30 million species strong and we all share the same air, water and soil -- borders and governments will never change that. I'm only a child yet I know we are all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal.In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid to tell the world how I feel.In my country, we make so much waste, we buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to lose some of our wealth, afraid to share.In Canada, we live the privileged life, with plenty of food, water and shelter -- we have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets.Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with some children living on the streets. And this is what one child told us: "I wish I was rich and if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter and love and affection."If a child on the street who has nothing, is willing to share, why are we who have everyting still so greedy?I can't stop thinking that these children are my age, that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born, that I could be one of those children living in the Favellas of Rio; I could be a child starving in Somalia; a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India.I'm only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this earth would be!At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us to behave in the world. You teach us:not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures to share - not be greedy.Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? Do not forget why you're attending these conferences, who you're doing this for -- we are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we will grow up in. Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying "everyting's going to be alright" , "we're doing the best we can" and "it's not the end of the world".But I don't think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My father always says "You are what you do, not what you say."Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you for listening
(Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been active in environmental and social justice work ever since kindergarten. She was twelve years old when she gave this speech, and she received a standing ovation. Now 23, Cullis-Suzuki spearheads The SkyFish Project and continues to speak to schools and corporations, and at many conferences and international meetings. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.)

Little Woman

She looked derelict, like many of the homeless children who abound on the local trains of Mumbai. With two flattened stones in her hand, she was on the lookout, in an almost empty first class compartment, for a willing ear to listen to one of her out-of-date, out-of-tune hindi film songs. Many women, may be for the lack of change or empathy, pretended to sleep or got busy with their mobile phones. In a few seconds, she gave up and took advantage of the luxury of being able to sit on one of the cushioned seats of the first-class compartment. No one said anything to her as she waited for the next station where she could get down and run to the more crowded, and lucrative, second-class compartment. Suddenly the ladies in the compartment got a pleasant surprise. Our little woman dressed in rags, with shabby hair and equally shabby buck teeth began reciting a nursery rhyme. The women, including the ones who had pretended to sleep were all ears as she recited baa baa blacksheep, jack and jill and twinkle twinkle little star -- all in one breath.
They were sure impressed by the sudden outburst and she did get some "chillar" and some biscuits for the recitation, but before anyone could ask her where she learnt that from, her station was in sight and like many of her ilk, the little girl got up and hung around near the door, only to be admonished by the lady standing next to her, who told her that she would fall off a moving train. Turning to her, the little lady gave an angelic smile and said: "Thank you for your words auntie, but we children are used to this life and we know how far we can lean out before we fall."
The auntie gaped at this sudden onslaught of the English language from a girl who sang tuneless Hindi songs with the help of two battered stones for a living. And just as quietly as she'd come, she was gone.
We will never know where she learnt her impeccable English, or for that matter the manners, like saying thank -you and sorry, that the much more privileged children have kind of forgotten. But, what we do know is that someone, somewhere out there is making a difference to a little girl's life, who otherwise may not stand a chance in this world. And at the end of the day, that's what matters.
(This is a true incident that happened on the train a few days ago and I was one of the ladies in that compartment who had the good fortune of watching this little lady in action.)

Happy sad...

The title for this blog (which I am writing after a gap of about 9 months) may be inspired from the movie Cheeni Kum, but there was nothing more apt to describe my visit to Pune this weekend. I was happy, I was sad and both the diametrically different emotions had diametrically different reasons for me to feel so. But first, for those who are probably reading this blog for the first time, here's some background.
Two cities have shaped my life so far. One is Mumbai -- the city I was born in, where I spent my formative years, where I went to school and where I came face-to-face with my future when I came back about three years ago.
The other is Pune -- a city that I hated when I first moved there from Mumbai, a city that I hate to leave now that I am in Mumbai, a place where I made my friends for life and where I spent those tumultous teenage years, I got my first job in Pune, wrote my first article for a Pune-based newspaper and joined the first gym (in a string of gyms) in this city.
So why did I feel Happy sad when I went back to Pune this weekend? Lets begin with the happy thoughts:
1. I saw progress -- true to god progress -- in this once laidback city. You could feel the pulse of a city that's more than ready to come into its own thanks to the young blood that flooding to this erstwhile pensioner's paradise. While the potholes still rule, you have flyovers coming up around Pune that are a boon to the harried commuter.
2. Shops, which at one time strictly remained closed between 1 and 4 pm have now woken up to the new-age threat that malls and large retail stores pose. They have changed may be a centuries-old ritual and remain open. Oh by the way! Even if they are closing and a customer walks in, he's attended to unlike the old times when closing time was 8 pm sharp and if you happened to come in at 8.01, too bad, you had to leave only to be on time the next day.
3. The monsoons in Pune are still magical and can get me to spend hours just watching the rain come down in a gentle drizzle throughout the day. If its a weekday, a drive to the outskirts or a trek to one of the many forts around Pune still leave me rejuvenated.
4. Onto more personal things, The first one of my friend circle to have taken the plunge has also now experienced the joys of motherhood and it was a beautiful experience to hold the latest addition to my family in my arms even as we spoke about the fun we had in college.
5. My room overlooking an extremely well-kept lawn still gives me that surreal feeling of being in heaven when I wake up everyday.

Now what made me sad?
1. The scars of progress have begun to show on the green Pune that I knew as trees are replaced with a concrete jungle with buildings and hoardings that sell 'luxurious flats' replacing those tree-lined roads.
2. Traffic, which was always very bad in Pune has taken a turn for the worse with two-wheelers and cars screaming for some space on the narrow roads that still aren't ready to handle that kind of traffic.
3. What used to be a great driving experience has turned into a nightmare thanks to the traffic jams.
4. My friends, like me, have all gone away to different places so going back to Pune makes me feel a little lonely as I travel through the streets, or go to the restaurants that we frequented.
5. The area I stay in has so far avoided replacing its green canopy with monstrous buildings, but I saw the first sign of things to come and since then, I've been praying that I can still wake up to magical mornings in my room.
And it is with these Happy Sad thoughts that I get back to writing on the blog again. So stay tuned.