DEAR FB FRIENDS

TWISTED NURSERY RHYMES OF TIMES.

ON PRESERVING ECOLOGY

West Polluted – We Are Paying.

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every
man's greed.”- Mahatma Gandhi

Earth’s climate has become warmer. This in turn means more

evaporation. When more moisture goes up, more comes down. It means
more destructive storms and more flooding. Worldwide economic losses,
during 1998 for example, from floods, storm, droughts and weather
related natural disasters totaled some $ 72 billion.

The most dramatic numbers come from India, where withdrawals of

under ground water are now believed to be double the rate of recharge.
With massive aquifer depletion in prospect, some speculate that this
could reduce India’s train harvest by as much as 25 percent. In a country
that is adding 18 million people per year, this is not a good news.

Human numbers are four times the level of c century ago, and the world
economy is 17 times as large. The western economic model – the fossil-
fuel based, automobile centered, throwaway economy is in trouble.

In 1990 only a few thousand barrels of oil were used daily. By 1997 it
was 72 million barrels of oil per day. Use of metals has increased from
20 million tons per year to 1.2 billion tons per year. Use of paper
increased six times between 1950 and 1996 reaching 281 million tons.
Production of plastic, unheard of in 1900, had reached 131 million tons
in 1995. The human economy now draws on all 92 naturally occurring
elements in the periodic chart, compared with just 20 in 1900.

Today there are 501 million automobiles.

29 new diseases, including HIV, have been identified in the last quarter
of 20th Century. By AIDS alone Africa is feared to lose 1/5 to 1/4thof it’s
population within a decade. More than 4 million people in India are
infected with AIDS.
The key limits are fresh water, forests, range lands, oceanic fisheries,
biological diversity and the global atmosphere.

At present 70% of all the water worldwide that is diverted from rivers or
pumped from underground is used for irrigation, 20 percent is used for
industry and 10 percent to residence.

The economics of water use do not favour farmers. A thousand tons of

water can be used in agriculture to produce one ton of wheat worth $
200 or it can be used to expand industrial output by $ 14,000 – 70 times
as much.

A combination of logging and clearing land for farming and ranching has
weakened forests. A healthy rain forest will not burn.

Fisheries actually preceded agriculture as a source of food, but ours is

the first generation to reach – and perhaps exceed – the sustainable
yield of oceanic fisheries. The welfare of more than 200 million people
around the world who depend on fishing for their income and food
security s threatened.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere have reached

the highest level in 1,60,000 years.

All this raised the living standard of one-fifty of humanity – giving them
diverse diet, unprecedented level of material consumption and physical
mobility.

It is clear that this economic model is neither equitable nor viable for the
entire world and not even for the west over the long term. It is simply not
sustainable.

A solar-powered, bicycle/rail centered, reuse/recycle economy –

one that uses energy, water, land and materials much more wisely
is needed.

Parents everywhere are concerned about their children. In their

efforts to ensure a better life for them, they invest in education and
medical care. But unless we now assume responsibility for the
evolution of the global economy, our short term investments in our
children’s future may not amount to much; our principal legacy to
them would be a world that is deteriorating ecologically, declining
economically and disintegrating socially.
Building an environmentally sustainable global economy depends
on a cooperative global effort. No country can do all these things
alone.

The challenge is to reverse the last decade’s trends of rising

international inequalities and shrinking aid programmes. It is in
this perspective When camped at Chennai or elsewhere in connection
with organizational work , incarcerated in the four walls of the room ,
keeping myself busy in attending to domestic chorus such cooking etc ,
in addition to my union research and work , I squeezed in some time to
pursue my intellectual pursuits by writing that I had penned these
nursery rhymes
. I am sharing with our group some of the writings on NURSERY
RHYMES OF TIMES.
which have treasured. Hope it may interest you .kindly convey your feed
back
Ali, Ali Farmer Extraordinary

Ali Ali farmer extraordinary

How does your garden grow ?

With herbicides

Pesticides

And poisoned broccoli al in a row.

All the trees are falling down

All the trees are falling down,.

Falling down , falling down ,

All the trees are falling down.

Not fair, lady !

Stop the logging with civil laws

Civil laws ,Civil laws

Stop the logging with civil laws

Your cry baby!

Civil laws they bend and break

Bend and break, bend and break

Civil laws they bend and beak

With hush money.

Stop the loggers with barricades

Barricades, barricades

Stop the loggers with barricades

Nice and easy

Just what the natives did

Natives did, natives did

Just what the natives did

In our country

Now the natives’ are behind bars

Now the natives are behind bars

End of story!

Diddle Diddle Dumping

Diddle, diddle dumping …

How many million

Tons of toxic waste

Most pour into our ocean

Before industrialists

Call a halt to pollution?

Don’t diddle with dumping

Demand immediate action!

Ding, Dong Hell!

Ding dong, bell!

We’re all in hell!

What put us in?

Loss of our green

What will get us out?

Deforestation shut out.

What sort of earth pests

Are we, to destroy rain forests?

Those do us no harm

But we need like a right arm.

Dowry Lakhs
Dowry lakhs, dowry lakhs

Soon will be mine

Once she’s washed the dishes

After I dine

Right here in the kitchen

I have a scheme

How to set her on fire

With a tin of kerosene!

Note : the allusion here is that mysterious malady afflicting Indian homes where newly wed brides are
found burnt to death in their kitchens while their husbands coolly pocket their dowries

Dumpty Democracy

The forces of democracy

Sat on the wall

Under the pressure

It began to fall

And now all

The powers of repression

And all the agents

Of fear and pain

Will never be able

To put that wall up again

Note: about the Berlin wall of course

Hot Nuclear Bombs

Hot nuclear bombs!

Hot nuclear bombs!

One for Bobby, two for Spassky.

Hot nuclear bombs!

Hot nuclear bombs!

Hot nuclear bombs!

Put them in your bombers

Annihilate your sons

One for Spassky, two for Bobby

Hot nuclear bombs!

Jack ’n’ Jill

Jack and Jill

Went up the hill.

When they got there

They fund it bare

Stripped of all vegetation.

With no protection

From the sun’s radiation

Jack contacted skin cancer

Jill followed soon thereafter

FM, PM Climbed

The Carla hills

To fetch a pale of dollars

PM knelt down

Offered his crown

And the FM came tumbling after

Note: when the IMF tranche was accepted by Indian government in 1991

Winnie Had A Little Lamb

Winnie had a little lamb

Its fleece was white as snow

But everywhere that Winnie went

The lamb could not go.

It followed her to school one day,

Which was against the rule?

For white and black can still

Not attend the same school

Twinkle Twinkle Wars

Twinkle Twinkle little star

Now I know what your are

Another satellite sent to spy

And spray death from the sky

Uncle Dunkel IMF Star

Uncle, Dunkel, IMF star

Don’t we know what you are?

Just a trap to squeeze us dry

Patent our genes and leave us to die.

File My Case! File My Case

File my case, file my case

Lawyer man!

Win my case

As fast as you can.

Inflate it and pad it

And mark it up forty

Percent for the commission

You’re squeezing from me!

- Prescribed for all school of dissent

Old Mister Milliard

Old Mister Millard

Went to his stockyard

To get the hungry some food .

But he could not do so

It was a diplomatic no-no

His actions would be misunderstood.

So he went to Parliament

To get Their approval for aid

By the time the house said “YES”

The poor children of famine were dead !

FM, PM talking tall

FM, PM talking tall

Till the market had a great fall!

All the IMF men ,

And their purses,

Could not give the PM

The gal again

Old Mother Goose

Because of that hole

In our ozone layer

Old Mother Goose can

No longer wander

Or ride through the air

On her very fine gander.

If she did so today

Poor mother goose

Would be burnt to a cinder !

Once Our Sky Was Painted Blue

Once our sky was painted blue

And the earth was painted green

With such a lot of nice, fresh air

All sandwiched in between.

Now our sky is painted grey

And our earth has been stripped brown

With a cloud of carbon monoxide

Hovering over every town.

Peter, Wife Beater

Peter, Peter, the wife beater

Was served with a court order

From the women‘s crisis centre

To keep well away from her.

He disobeyed that as well

And how sits in a prison cell!

What Can The Matter Be

Oh, dear! what can the matte be

Oh, dear! what can the matter be?

Why are they

Chopping down every other tree?

Oh, dear! what can the matter be?

Oh, dear! What can the matte be?

Why are they felling every other tree?

Hectare upon hectare.

They promised a programme

Of reforestation

They promised a programme

Of reforestation

They promised a programme

Of reforestation
But it‘s all a bunch of hot air!

Old King Coke

Old King Coke was a bad old bloke

For cocaine baron was he

He pushed t kids and women folk

Through his drug – dealing company .

On every deal he made a bundle

And he was rich as rich can be

“Twee, Twiddle-dee” crowed King Coke

I’m above the law , you can’t catch me’’.

Yes, King Coke and his traffickers

Were sitting pretty high and mighty

Till the police and army joined forces

To bust Old King Coke and his Company !

SING A SONG FOR INDEPENDENCE

Sing a song for Independence ?

Nothing but a lie!

When the national debt is

Soaring to the sky.

When the SEZ was opened

Investors began to sing :

What a lovely people

To set about exploiting .

The P.M was in the counting –house

Counting out his money ;

The President was in America

Buying shoes and property

The critic was in prison

Recalling his woes

When along came the warden

Who punched him on his nose .

ALONE

When the day turns to night

there with your thoughts

your part of this fragile world

is settled into their own

Does your mind wander like mine?

Retrieving latent bits of broken dreams

Wondering what would have happened

if there was another path

Or would there have been a wall

to slam against till the pain

was unbearable, leading to

yet another sad parallel universe

But in that one, you die

not from violence or torture

unless one considers that

its self inflicted.

Alone is never so quiet when theres

no one to blame but ‘YOU’,

Laugh with the clowns

cry with the saints

Time is the only thing

that I know

because each step we take

Brings us closer to our end

Stars so bright in the sky

morning sun lights on the face as the dark sky fades away

moments frozen in time kept alive by every breathe

as another day You will survive

…You are alone until you don’t reach out