Tree's Call

"I woke up. It was still dark. I saw my father going towards the paddy fields. The air was dry and the sky, cloudless. I got up to go towards him."

I started following him to the paddy fields and noticed a thick black smoke (so thick that even an octopus would have been jealous) coming from the field. I saw my father going straight into the eye of the smoke. I had to run to catch up with him as the smoke was obscuring my visibility. As I reached closer to the centre of the smoke, it became tough for me to breathe. The air was pulling out all the oxygen out of my lungs and filling it with nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and mostly carbon dioxide. With every step my muscles were getting weaker because of hypoxemia (the disorder which I thought would never happen to me!) I had only seconds until my brain stopped functioning. I remembered all the sins which I had done in the following years –

Disturbing, arguing, troubling, annoying …. (I could go on and on) my friends, parents and teachers.

I tried to call my father but my voice couldn’t come out because of that stupid hypoxemia (I would definitely like to meet my science teacher after this for teaching me such a great word which helped me a lot in this situation)

So with my voice gone, I sought to use my brain. I used my feet to stomp on the ground so that my father hears it and comes towards me. But then suddenly the ground around me blasted into a Deep, wide black pit that went into the world of nowhere. After that, I could only recall myself sinking into the oblivion.

When I regained my senses, I was in a place that only could have existed in dreams even in movies people couldn’t create such a scene. There was much so greenery, vegetation available and the air was so fresh that it could easily beat all the high-quality air fresheners and purifiers. The rays of sun were seemed to be giving everyone new burst of energy. I was so engrossed in the beauty of the place that I almost forget that my hypoxemia had cured by itself and my voice oh! My lovely, melodious voice was back. Now, I seemed to understand why my father always urged me to go outside in the park when I had cold. Nature has the power to heal diseases both physical and mental.

But because of whom I am able to experience nature’s healing properties was nowhere to be seen. I yelled, “Dad! Dad! Where are you?” I looked ahead and saw a path that leads deeper into the forest. I decided to go into it because that was the only way I could find my beloved father. After an hour of wandering in the forest like Bear Grylls from Man vs Wild, I decided to take a break. In the forest, I saw standing majestically - a huge mango tree with lots of ripe mangoes (Thank God). I went to the mango tree, plucked two mangoes and sat beneath it.

As I was about to eat the mango, something crazy happened. A branch of the tree snatched the mango out of my hand (Seriously!) Then the mango tree jumped from its position (Literally!) and came in front me with some other trees which were not here before. After that OMG! The mango tree spoke (literally spoke), “How dare you sit underneath me? You have no right to eat anything from me. Because of you all my relatives, relatives are suffering.” Firstly a mango tree speaking (You gotta kidding me) I would have laughed at that joke. But this time seeing a mango tree with two of his bodyguards literally freaked me out. Also blaming me for destroying its relatives was wrong. “Bro calm down! How a little child like me disturb your relatives?” This time bodyguards spoke, “No, You fool! We are telling this to you because you are also a human. You, humans, don’t realise if you keep cutting us, you will only get extinct. We give you so much – Oxygen, our by-products like rubber, gum, etc. and we only ask for one thing in return that “We want to breathe.”

It took some time for my brain to process what was actually going on. I bent down on my knees and began to ponder. Who has to develop a solution to the problem posed by trees? It’s us who have to find a solution. The trees’ words jolted me from inside. After that I blacked out of the world of nowhere and ended up in my bedroom (I don’t know how). First thing I did after reaching my burrow was to find my father. But suddenly, I heard such a loud snore (Like a bulldozer at a construction field) that I didn’t need to find him.

My meeting and talk to the trees was still in my mind, I kept on thinking and thinking that what could be done and I ultimately came to the solution that Posters, rallies, street plays, conferences will not help, we have to do something concrete like sticking to natural resources, make one day in a week as a Green Day (No appliances, technology to be used). Let us keep small targets like one hour no mobile phones, one hour everyone in the family should go to the park, one hour switching off the electricity, one day green commuting in a week. And once these small targets are achieved, make bigger targets which will result in making nature a living cell for trees, eventually save Humans from extinction.