What did you see in Avatar?

Did you watch Avatar? You would say, Is that a question! Who hasn’t? Well true, one of the biggest box office hits and Golden globe award winner, you have to be blind to miss it! Well that truly is worth a thought, can’t it be somehow made available to the blind! I mean those who are literally blind not those who choose to turn a blind eye. Oh! Well, but this is stirring away from the plot of this post, so we can give it a thought later.

Did you know that it has come under fire from various interest groups and nations! There is a whole bunch of them starting with the Church, who is against the movie because it is supposed to propagate ideas of worshipping nature. Now, since when do we have the liberty to decide what should aliens worship? It’s their choice, their land, they can pray anything they want. For that matter even on Earth we have various faiths that believe in worshipping some form of nature or the other. If the church is worried that suddenly people might start praying trees in their backyard. They can chill, for that’s not going to happen. Had we earthlings been that sensitive, the issue of global warming wouldn’t have aroused!

That brings me to the second group. A certain section believes that the film overdramatized the possibility of environmental catastrophe on earth. Well this statement itself is so guilt ridden. If environmental catastrophe hadn’t been real would we have been equally scared to see its visualization? We can easily digest a movie that is based on assumptions of doomsday theory but are reluctant to see that probably the doomsday (environmental catastrophe) is man- made.
Then there are loads of others like feminists, anti-smoking groups etc. Now even China has a problem with this movie. Chinese believe the imperialist themes of the movie that shows the natives, being forcefully evicted from their homes by industrialists, is a parable for Chinese people whose dwellings have been forcefully razed to make way for new constructions. I don’t get this one. Shouldn’t they be happy that even if that is the case their plight is being projected in front of the world. Well, who am I to say anything in this.

However, I left the theater on a sad note, because it made me realize how much forest cover we might have lost for want of industrialization. And was it warranted ? How many animals did we render homeless, how many plants have gone extinct. For once it was a movie that projected man as the evil and probably that is what has made many uncomfortable. We are ‘ok’ with movies that depict aliens as the evil who come in spaceships to take over our planet. We are the heroes, why should we have a problem. But the moment we see on screen what we have been doing to our planet. A dying planet, the only place where we can survive, we are all jittery. I hope for once we open our eyes and make a conscious effort to recycle, reuse, plant more trees and use resources judiciously. Stop pushing the issue under the carpet and raise to the occasion.

Responsibility towards nature- something that we can learn from our ancestors

Have just started to read a book ' Indias Unending Journey' by Mark Tully. Among many other things that he discusses he also talks about Hinduism and its way of acknowledging nature.

It surely made me think. Most of our basic practices that were followed by our ancestors are now ignored or considered 'uncool' to follow. Yet it is those practices that have taught us to be humble and attribute some part of our existence to something beyond our control.

For instance, our ancestors never assumed nature to be just another resource available for consumption. They regarded it as a gift and believed it deserved respect and not irrational hording. They worshiped plants, animals even rivers and oceans. It was their way of acknowledging natures contribution in our existence and also a way of saying that these resources are precious, which need to be utilized ingeniously.

Now suddenly with issues of global warming coming to the fore, everybody seems to be giving their views and trying to device ways to conserve energy and resources. Yet we cant acknowledge the fact that in the name of modernization, we did commit a folly. While running the race of development we happily threw all the practices to the wind. It was suddenly uncool to follow those beliefs. Many even labelled it superstition. We conviniently forgot that there is a fine line between superstition & belief.

Accepting the presence of other factors in our success certainly does not attribute to superstition. Nor does it belittle our achievements if we respect the nature that is our only source to sustainance - something that we never created and might never be able to regenerate!