While travelling on a road enveloped by fields of a golden hue, I noticed dense white wisps concentrated at a place, spiralling towards the blue sky. It was quite far away, so I wondered what it was. I thought it must be a tornado. But I have never seen a tornado, so I wasn’t sure about it being one. A few miles further, I saw another one. And then another. There couldn’t be so many tornados together, I mused.
The next one was adjacent to the road. So I didn’t have to imagine further what it was. But my heart sighed knowing what it was. It was the smoke of the remnants of a field set ablaze after the crop had been harvested. I looked at the dirty white clouds of smoke rising and obscuring the pristine white clouds of the sky. I looked at the scarred sky. It was hazy. I looked at the scarred land. It was black.
I tried to count the black fields and the white spirals of smoke, but after a while I lost count. I had often heard of straw burning, but I hadn’t seen it from close quarters before and seeing it made me sad. The scarred land and the scarred sky looked sad. I felt sad being only a mute spectator of the sad scene that my eyes were witnessing. I just wished someone could do something to stop the land and the sky, from getting scarred by man.
I also noticed a local grain market. It was aflutter with activity. I looked at the mounds of the fresh harvest laid out by the farmers.
They were of a beautiful golden hue. Seeing it, I remembered the white and the black hues that I had seen before. The food that comes on the table comes after scarring the land and the sky. We nourish ourselves by injuring nature. This thought made me sad. I didn’t know who was to blame, the burdened and ignorant farmers who opt for the most convenient way or the authorities who should look for more convenient alternatives.
After a while, I noticed a specialised tractor, which is used to carry stacks of the crop residue, plying on the road. A paper was dangling on its back, fluttering in the wind. ‘On government duty’, it said. I looked at the empty vehicle. The men in it were looking helplessly at the burning fields. But they still looked hopefully at the ones in which the crop residue was still left, piled up in small stacks, for them to carry. Seeing it, they felt that all hope wasn’t lost. I too felt the same. All hope isn’t lost. One day, the sky and the land won’t be scarred to replenish us, there won’t be any burnt fields and hazy skies, and we would read about the term ‘stubble burning’ only in a history class. Amen.
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