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I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.

No matter how many times I watch The Matrix , the one snippet of dialog that resonates the best with me is this. Even the first time I saw the movie, I turned this over and over in my mind and could find agreement with this.

In the microcosm of my little World, to one side of my house was a sizeably large tract of land lush with greenery. There were trees abound and they buzzed with the activity of birds. The place had quite a lot of rodents, snakes and cats and the occassional dog or two.Weekends and early mornings were a sight to behold for to see the sun shining down on that wonderful carpet of greenery or the rain falling on it were totally blissful. One evening, coming back from work I was treated to a most horrifying scene. The trees had been felled and the grass cut away and it looked a wasteland to my eyes. To my questions of what happened, the answer was An apartment complex is coming up there . Imagine waking up to a concrete monstrosity looming above you ! There was nothing more heartbreaking than not hearing the birds or the little creatures anymore.

A few months ago in the northern district of Calicut and specifically at a place named Wayanad in Kerala, men mercilessly hunted down and killed a wild Tiger. The animal was proclaimed a menace to society and a witch hunt was pronounced to hunt it down. Instead of tranquilizing and releasing to the wild, they shot it dead. Do you what the crime of the animal was ? It killed a cow ! And where did it kill the cow ? In a town which bordered the forest ! There are hardly 1200 Tigers left in the wild now. Poachers are never too far away and if we add such bloodlust to the mix, this King of the Indian jungle will not live for long. I do not live under any illusion that my children would some day see a Tiger in the wild ! They might be images frozen in the memory of people by that time. Jungles and greenery disappear and apartments and shopping malls take their space. Water shortage is acute now and draught is no longer a distinct possibility. As nature comes full circle, we have slowly begun to reap what we have sown. I do not share fully the aggressive judgement of Agent Smith but yes I do believe that man's insistence that the world was made for him will bring about our collective downfall.

Ishmael became a favorite to me for it spoke in the same language that I think in. The question it poses has been relevant for decades now : Does the World belong to Man ? Or Does Man belong to the World ? In writing, this involves just the interchange of two words but in reality it could mean the survival of this planet and countless species. The ideas focus on the struggle between an agrarian society and a society that lived in harmony with nature. How inevitably the more powerful agrarian part inserted itself as the rulers and slowly but surely began the destruction of the Earth. I however, see a more evolved threat now for we have even started swallowing up our farmlands. A large number of farmers in India commit suicide after being fully swallowed up by financial debts and most farmlands get converted to multistoreyed buildings overnight. So is the agrarian society the antagonist now ? For a multitude of reasons, it has got to be a technocratic society that has assumed this mantle of being the rulers of Earth now. At first was the agricultural revolution and then came the industrial revolution and silently but surefootedly came the technological revolution which now holds the planet in its sway.

The ideas in this book were powerful enough to unlock a lot of angst that I had buried deep within me. Highly recommended ! Those who love nature as much as humanity should definitely read this one !