A Full Belly Speaks Persian

thank u Sgul40 ... u cant begin to imagine how good it makes me feel to read wot u wrote about my article...:)

excellent!keep churning good articles for us to read

erum

Hmm being Zeejahs self appointed PR person ..I have to plug her web site :) http://www.bitsmart.com/zeejah

and her e mail address is zeejah@usa.net

besides that you can ask her how much shes gonna pay me when u do e mail her ;)

Zeejah:

A verytimely subject and a difficult one to come to grips with.Not an easy one to write.Your efforts are truly praise-worthy.

A good movie made in the 70s or 80s was ``The gods must be crazy``.Produced by the aparthied South African government as a propaganda peace,it backfired!.As you know majority of cine-goers do not care to read between the lines(or watch between the takes?) so it ended up an extremely popular comic-thriller.The basic theme of the movie was laudable but for completely different reasons,because that was not the original intent of the producers.

As I drive I just cannot get over the vulgarity & the garishness of concrete & asphalt all around me.Now listen to this:The motor car is so much a product of petroleum that it sometimes escapes our attention.The asphalt,the fuel,the additives,the upholstry are all petroleum driven and a major portion of our earnings are spent repairing these extensions of our driveways called highways & combating pollutants and their `side-effects`.Like an Organism Cancerous this I think will be the undoing of lands of vast frontiers.Ghalibs observation---``Miri Taameer mein soorat--etc etc.is almost prophetic of this aspect of ``entropy``.

wassalaam.

I lived near Abbotabad in the late 1970s and enjoyed visiting it. We also used to spend a few weeks each year up in Nathia Gully every summer so I too have great memories of the place. some of the most beautiful scenery in a generally arid and not exactly scenic land. I enjoy Sind and the Punjab but there is a limit to how much dust and dryness I can stand.

I would completely disagree with you in so far as your last two paragraphs are concerned. This is indeed being pennywise and pound foolish in the extreme. The damage, once done, will take many, many years to fix and cost an immense amount of money. It is surely much, much better to avoid it in the first place. I can agree that purley esthetic considerations should be clearly secondary (I too hate roads destroying pristine beauty but I can see why we need roads!) but much of the damage done was/is for purely selfish reasons.

Sustainable development is not quite an oxymoron although some of its extreme advocates are indeed moronic. The damage done to the NWFP and other parts of the country by the developers and the hordes of Afghan barbarians is a tragedy. I agree with M. K. Junejo that its not just 3 million Afghans but their 5 million goats that were a problem. Of course, a first step on the path would be to reduce population growth and reduce the need for such massive environmental destruction. Norplant, vasectomies and tubal ligations all around?

Regards.

Dear Zeejah,

I agree with you 100%. It`s very easy for us lot, the fellows who take hot water, microwaves and electricity for granted to say that that native of jungle should conserve his/her abode. At that time the hills, valleys, mountains, rivers and lakes become our private property. We would like to see it conserved so that we may give our eyes an outing. Then we head home and throw the chewing gum wrapper onto the grass.

The `natives` in turn are meant to remain as animals or beasts, part of the ecosystem. But humans were never part of the ecosystem. Just like we progress, so do they and eventually `your hills and mountains` are forever lost.

It`s a shame such beauty should go to waste because it took earth millions of years to make something beautiful which we are going to destroy in years. It`s still not too late though. Beauty like this is priceless. If the government decides to do something positive (please please please) then maybe something may survive.

Best wishes

Omar Phoenix

``the more I think of it, the more I question my moral right to deny the simple hill-folk comforts of modern life. How can I expect them to value beauty when they lack the basic necessities that I take for granted? It was then that I realized a truth that seems to have escaped the policy makers of the world. The environment can only be saved from destruction after the basic needs of people are fulfilled.``

One can go even a step beyond that, friend Zeejah.

On what theoretical proposition, if any, is the whole environment rigmarole founded?

If one is to believe the evolutionists, man has been around on this little planet for a few million year. One of man`s direct forebears, Homo Erectus was around some 1.6 million years ago. The culture of Homo Erectus included stone tools and the first use of fire. Meaning that insaan alai his salaam had started tinkering with the environment and changing it according to preconceived and premeditated designs that far back.

It can follow that if man`s handiwork of close to two million years hasn`t spawned the apocalype, one can say, on the strength of historical evidence that nothing he`s doing now will.

Another interesting avenue of inquiry that aught to be taken up is, what exactly exactly is the greatest agent of change that makes man tinker with the environment and ``endanger`` it?

Civilization itself.

Settlements. Man`s transition from a gatherer and hunter to a cultivator and herder/breeder of livestock, poultry etc. Whence grew the embryonic settlements which over time have grown and progressed to become marvels of conurbation.

From tree-dwelling and caves, we learned fashion dwellings for ourselves. That, probably was the first major ``panga`` with environment that man undertook.

And which, in terms of spread and magnitude, still constitute the single most common and durable modification of the environment.

If your bricks and mortar, your cement and steel and glass do not constitute any threat to the so-called ``finely tuned`` balance of nature, neither do a few thousand transmission towers, a a few thousand kilometres of roads, few dozen nuclear power stations, half a dozen dams, gas or oil pipelines or a score of more basic industries such a steel mills or any such thing that can help improve the lot of man in this country.

By the way, wasn`t it perhaps intended by nature, in it`s infinite wisdom, that some of the creatures it has blessed with life and intelligence, modify nature itself.

Don`t the dam`s beavers build, tinker with nature??

Which leaves us with the question, why all this hullabaloo about the environment??

Which is asubject for another day.....

Zeejah,
from one whose childhood home has long
ago been demolished to make room for progress, I can relate. But it is not just that which is
painful. The failure of ones fragile ideals
so carelessly lost for material gain in my place of birth is also difficult to revisit.

Ras