I am your mother, Earth. My neighbours, such as Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, say that I am blessed. I am blessed because I am home to a thing that needs no emphasising. It is life.

I am home to a varied number of flora and fauna. I am blessed with bulky seas, oceans, steep mountains, vast plains, lush green forests and mighty glaciers. Above all, it is you, the Homo sapiens, who I am proud of.

I was proud of you when you were in caves, protecting and caring for everything around you, whether it be, animals, plants, glaciers, et al. You cared for everything around you because you knew that killing a tiny beetle would have a drastic effect over you.

Sadly, when you started to prosper, everything changed. You, in greed, started developing instruments that could cripple a mighty monster into ashes. You developed the hydrogen bomb and atom bomb, not knowing that they are lethal for your own survival. By now, you have turned out to be so gross that I am suffering because of you. Tens of thousands of flora and fauna have encountered mass extinction at your hands.

You have poured pollutants in the waters, turned colossal forests into barren deserts and fumed so much harmful gases in the air which have become a challenge for my own survival. Now, whenever I look inside me, all I see is grief, sorrow, suffering, pain and ignorance.

Why are you proud of yourself when all the bad things that are happening are because of you?

I have warned you many times in the shape of calamities — like rain, storm, landslides, tornadoes, whirlwinds — to stop your wrongdoings, but all in vain. Why don’t you understand that glacial melting would cause flooding which affects you? Why don’t you bear in mind that cutting forests would be the cause of drought and famine which affects you? Why don’t you understand that harmful gases would not merely cause bronchitis, but would raise the amount of ultraviolet radiations of the sun which affects you?

If everything sits squarely on your shoulder, why don’t you stop? Why do you want to destroy all life on me?

I feel downcast when I witness wives losing their husbands, mothers losing their sons, sisters losing their brothers in catastrophic wars, accidents and bloody incidents.

I feel very discontent when I witness the young ones toil day and night while the adults reap off the fruits of their struggles and sacrifices.

Right now, you are living a chaotic life where lawlessness, terrorism and chaos still prevail. World peace remains a distant dream since getting to peace is a long journey but not impossible.

Being a mother myself, I want the good of my children. I want the wind of peace and harmony blow everywhere. The word ‘peace’ would be impossible without co-operation and togetherness of my children. I wish a world where a bird dwells merrily with a human, a lamb with a lion and tigers with the humans together.

I wish to see a peaceful world with no tears, wars, terrorism, drug abuse and child labour and where all life is respected. Let there be no boundary between the living beings on me.

Ignoring your differences. Why don’t you want to live in peace and harmony?

From your mother, Planet Earth

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 10th, 2020