From jagged lightning

furious sounds emerged,

falling on the earth,

in drops so huge,

they transmuted

the entire landscape;

from which there was no escape.

They said the cracks

were due to a tectonic shift

and glacial debris;

notwithstanding the frenzy,

the earth who had long

been held captive in silence,

could not withstand

the enormity of the violence.

She finally spoke,

‘You have invented the new Ma!’

‘Who is that?’ I asked in awe,

‘The new Ma-chine!

now watch the sheen

of the glacier fade,

the clouds overfill with water,

as you bade them

to envelop me

with heat and gas;

for it was money, alas,

you tried to amass.

Don’t tell me now,

you can’t stand

the land’s slippage,

the oceans’ warming,

the sinking of the town.

Did you take me,

the living Earth

to be a noun,

of passive voice;

while you kept raising an invoice,

with cash registers ringing;

it is you, who have been bringing

in, the sixth extinction.

You have the distinction

of feigning dismay,

but remember the mountain will not

remain a silent witness;

the mountain speaks,

it issues cracks,

with a whip lash.

It smashes your bullying

and dozing development;

your tunnel vision,

fracturing the land

into a fissured division.

It tells you,

to go back to the plains;

it tells you plainly,

live simply,

or simply,

all this will

come to an end.

(Sagari Chhabra is an award-winning author & film-maker. She is the director of the ‘Hamaara Itihaas’ archives. Courtesy: Mainstream Weekly.)