Members belonging to a minimum of three generations live in a small and cozy house. They wake up before sunrise and finish their morning duties as the birds chirp and the farm animals welcome the day. Each person takes care of one duty. When one member is busy cleaning up the cowshed and milking the cows, another is busy cleaning the front-yard with water and cow dung. Another is collecting flowers for the puja, while the women are busy cooking breakfast on firewood stoves. The morning air is fresh with the smells of green fields and trees, of delicious items being cooked and the lovely scents of various kinds of flowers.

All members sit in a semi-circle and eat their breakfast, happily chit-chatting. Then, the old and the weak members retire to cozy corners attending to light errands like making cotton wicks or peeling beans or making brooms or taking care of the infants at home, while all the strong members set off to the farms  or fields for the day’s work. Children go to the nearby government school, without any fuss about uniforms, shoes, ties, badges, tests or exams.

In the evening, the children listen to interesting stories from their grandparents, aunts and uncles; play around with their cousins and neighbours — without anybody forcing them to do their homework, attend tuitions, or spend hours over difficult subjects. Then all family members jointly do some chores relating to their farm, dine together and happily go to bed.

This was the life that most farmers led until a few years ago. There were problems like caste discrimination, failure of rains, floods, autocratic attitudes of rich landlords, poverty and so many other issues. But they were all faced collectively by the families. At least a majority of the farmers were leading contented lives in their villages.
As life got more and more complicated, wants increased. People started migrating to nearby towns and cities. Technology and materialism wooed many people from the villages. Little did innocent people realise that they would soon become paupers, condemned to live in the dirty slums of the cities. Their rich knowledge of agriculture, their land, their peace, their dignity, their contentment were all taken away by the so-called developers, who went spreading their evil tentacles wider and wider.

Now, let us focus on the city dweller. Are we all happy, contented and prosperous? What are we spending our days, running like rats in a maze? The glamour, the money and the facade of the city are just very temporary. This consumerism, this mad rush and this growth are only widening the gap between the haves and the have-not’s and causing disharmony in society. Simple lifestyles neither hurt the society nor the planet. But the vulgar show of the wealthy people today, wins all the negative attention possible and attracts even the lower classes, who were otherwise content with their lot.

I wonder if there are even a handful of countries where everybody is living in peace without fear of attack from others, within or from without the country. How can anybody not want peace? When will this cycle of vengeance ever stop? When will good sense prevail in our hearts?

How far have we travelled from those days — when our life was simple and we cared about saving the planet? Today, no one cares and all we humans do is hurt mother Earth. We are digging our own graves and speeding up the process of the end of the world. An eye for an eye only makes the whole world go blind.
Are there any Gandhis around to lead us out of the dark to see the light?