A Different Kind of Procession

It is noon and the hills and valleys in the Western Ghats are scorching.  We walk  up a small stream - my favourite one -  in the shade of a gorgeous canopy and the air is cool, the water inviting.

These are quiet, subdued streams now in these hills and valleys, far from their raging versions in the rains.  The monsoon last year was scanty and, as summer sets in, coffee planters commence their annual irrigation to help the blossoms along.  The picking of coffee is nearly done, the chatter of workers replaced with the sound of irrigation motors and the swish of jet sprays of sprinklers that reach for the sky: a six-hectare plantation will soak in about a million litres of water.  Yet, there are livelihoods and plants to take care of and the blossoms for next year's crop.....

As dusk and night set in, human footprints fade away along these streams.  And then the denizens of the stream take over, their movements soft, silent and cautious.  

A romp of small clawed otters,  civets - the small Indian civet (with rings on its tail) and the palm civet, a porcupine, leopard cat, a brown fish owl, these are the denizens of the stream ecosystem.

Why am I in the limelight?  Three small clawed otters aren't a crowd, but a romp

And there are the bigger boys too who visit.

The streams and the trees along these streams are for them to hunt, fish, drink, rest, move, wait and hide.  The stream is theirs,  yet they take nothing away and leave nothing behind that can harm its flow, for it is their home.

Each is fabulously adapted to this system and moves with genetic dexterity; in its absence, they wouldn't have lasted the purge of evolution.  When these little streams dry out because they lose their tree cover or have their sand mined or we aren't prudent in our usage of water, or when they are empty of fish and crabs, these denizens of the stream fade away, their lives overturned.  And how does that affect us?  We do not know what we do not know, yet we do know that our world becomes impoverished in every possible dimension, not just the biological chain. 

Only when we truly understand this will we accept that owning land by the stream isn't a right, it is a responsibility.

Of stewardship.