They Came For Our Children

We grew up looking at the stars in the sky,
Every morning we wake up to the screeching sounds,
We happily lived in our beautiful homes that you derogatorily call jungle,
But one fine day they, came for our children.

Living with the forest is a way of life we cherish,
our ancestors have practised it since generations,
we were raised with the knowledge of seasons, trees, its medicinal uses and their varieties,
as a community, we understood the space and time, of the ecology we inherited,
but, one fine day, they came for our children.

We celebrated festivals that concerned life and living systems,
We Sang songs and told stories about how our ancestors lived,
our musical instruments generated enchanting rhythms, which were versions of nature,
we drank our local beer without any sense of fear and status,
but one fine day, they came for our children.

We spoke a language that made sense to us,
it required no text,
Our languages were living entity, derived from the landscape we inherited,
Our languages were lived visions of our sense of truth,
It taught us the wisdom of living with close proximity to nature,
We happily rejoiced being the children of nature,
But one fine day, they came for our children.

Our sense of evolution was different,
it was based on diversity and empathy and not on uniformity and strength,
Our sense of science was ecological and not industrious,
We understood inter-dependence and so practised self-dependency,
We valued seeds more than machines,
Our spirituality was linked to nature and not any religion,
Our notion of peace was sustainable,
But, one fine day they came for our children.

We hunt, we share and we drink,
We spent more time with our community and family,
we cherished leisure to be creative,
The smell of soil was our constant companion,
we walked miles deep into forest without any sense of insecurity,
Our navigators were trees, mountains and rivers,
We followed our elders who knew wisdom, with a great sense of respect,
But, one fine day they came for our children.

Rajaraman Sundaresan  is  the co-founder of student group named Rhythm of Nation. Currently, he is an independent researcher working in the field of knowledge studies.