Man and Land

By Vedanth Mohit

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People have always come to me for sustenance. Nowadays, you see buildings rise up all through my body. The government says that it brings employment and money to drive the city. But I never needed any money to live or to sustain myself. As these buildings rose up, I noticed they wounded my body and took away what I had for years. They took my trees. They continue to build around my trees and cut them from me like a sharp blade through one’s skin. They think it will grow back, but they are a minute fragment of my existence. They think of themselves as a central owner of my “land” yet they preach diversity when they play footage of me on a screen. 

I have seen large billboards showcasing upcoming housing projects where gated societies are being built. They are so clean and huge. I have always wondered if they can build such clean areas for people to live, why don’t they tend to those areas of me where people live so close to each other with no running water, where people are prone to diseases and do not have basic shelter. Who knows they may have forgotten and in time they will erect a building in these areas  for the people living here?

People who were born in me, or have lived in me for generations try to ascribe a language to me that I don’t understand. I have never spoken about it yet they claim that it's rooted to my body. A lot of people come here especially after the White Man left 78 years ago. The White Man started a lot of what happens to me today. But, after 1991, I could not handle what the Brown Man started doing to me. I thought I would never see the White Man again but the Brown Man and him entered into some sort of agreement with each other. The White Man started bringing a lot of his buildings, they call them companies, to my body. I never liked it but in our nature class we were always taught to provide. Now, I flood when water drops on me, the black smoke on my sky makes it difficult for me to breathe and they keep taking my trees. 

Different Brown Men keep coming here to live in me, but they are attacked by the Brown Man who was born here and who claims to speak my language which was never mine. I never knew that language since I never spoke in that tongue. The White Man never attacked another White Man for a language but I have seen the Brown Man in me do it. I asked my friend Bombay and he told me that his Brown Men also fight for a language they made. I hope Man tends to his problems so I can be left at peace.