“April is the cruellest month,” wrote the poet T.S. Eliot in his iconic The Waste Land.
Well, April has descended on us, and the words return to haunt. Today I ponder the cruelty that we have let loose. Cruelty of different hues. Of the worst kind is the cruelty we have subjected nature to. And April is the time when she shows us how she has, like a silent sufferer, quietly withdrawn from us.
Once upon a time, April was a time of spring showers and storms. On mellow summer afternoons, Bengalis would wake up suddenly from mid-noon siestas, with the distant sound of thunder rolling. The sky would have darkened and on the ashen horizon, one would witness sights and sounds, scents and sensations that would be nothing short of a spiritual calling. “Come out, come out of your day-to-day existence, and experience the vastness of the universe.” But the mundane would nevertheless interfere, and there would be a mad rush to shut windows and doors, rattling in the wind sweeping through neighbourhoods and announcing its arrival.
Men, women and children would run up the stairs and sprint to the terrace to take down drying clothes from the lines lest they fly away. “Taratari”. Hurry. And then there would be drops of rain. First, a pitter-patter, enough to drench the dust, which gave off a scent of fresh earth mingled in water. This would be followed soon by the steady stream, which would sometimes last for an hour. Sometimes two. Sometimes three. There would be an uncanny calmness. A cool breeze would blow through the leaves of trees, whispering soothing, sweet nothings. April heat would be washed away. And with it, perhaps dozens of humdrum emotions: hatred, hurt, humiliation, what have you?
But where are the Kaalboishakhis now? Where are the Nor’Westers? Alas, nature has taken it all away from us.
And why would she not? Our cruelty knows no bounds. Like the proverbial proverb “don’t cut the branch you are sitting on,” we have quite literally chopped off the branches of her trees, which provide us with life, axing off her limbs in untold cruelty, leaving her silently bleeding and brooding. In the process, we are choking, but that has not stopped us from razing her forests to the ground. A towering tree that once stood free and proud, stretching its neck to the sky, is today a lowly chest of drawers, bound in a dingy living room, lifeless and still. We have punched holes in the horizon with our greed for things we don’t need—the car that guzzles and gobbles up the last drop of earth’s succour; the fridge that emits hot air into the atmosphere, angering nature and making her fume; the list goes on and on. We have cruelly dug up her earth to extract whatever we can get our hands on—iron ore—depleting her of her nutrients and rendering her hollow, crumbling. We have rendered birds and beasts extinct with our cruelty, from hunting to poaching to destroying habitats.
We have subjected nature to so much cruelty that she has turned away from us. And it is her turn to be cruel. So today, when we cry out in pain for a little pity, a little rain, it falls on deaf ears.
And April is the cruellest month.