The Age of New Realisation

‘Grandma! Grandma! Tell me a story!!’ my young granddaughter said to me, jumping up and
down with excitement.

‘Sure, my lovely Lola. Long time back, when the world was made up of greed and sloth. When
there was less and plenty and the time when we were at the apex of development. When the
buildings touched the sky and you could acquire anything that you wanted with just a click. 

The heights of such evolution had made us rich with all the materialistic objects but we had lost the love, the attachments and intimacy of our relations. When the children and the parents never talked and nobody cared about other people. Our existence had become a mere race for more money and success. We ruined nature and then nature ruined us, to make us realise what we had become. Monsters in the skin of humans. With too much greed and poison in our lungs.

Nature thought to teach us a lesson for the treachery we had done. It unleashed the most
powerful weapon in its possession. The disease. That disease spread like a wildfire all around
the world. The leaders told the humans to stay within the confinements of their houses. To close the doors and stop meeting other people. The disease was contagious. The humans hid, in the safety of there houses. And while they were hidden, they started acting upon their instinct.

They started to pick up the activities that they had forgotten in the race of evolution.
The families started to talk and laugh together, the parents started reading to their children
again. People became health conscious. They started to smile again, talking to their parents
and their grandparents.

Soon the earth began to breathe again. New life rejoiced. As humans were caged in their
houses, new life kindled. Animals started to reclaim their land that humans had once made
barren.

Also, in the constraints of their homes, people started taking up new hobbies, some started
singing, some started dancing and some started writing. Leaving behind the greed, sloth an envy, we discovered love and passion.

Mother nature saw the change in the humans, a new and brighter future was in the making. She then started to make the disease go away. And then when the epidemic started to fade, the
humans came out of the confinements. But they were changed, more free spirited and down to earth.

They forgot their old ways and started anew, with their loved ones by their side and a new future in the making.

Now my lovely Lola, close your eyes and sleep, wander into the dreamland and think about
what comes next. Dream of tomorrow and everything that you can do.'

'Hm...' she mumbled as she slept peacefully, diving in the dreamland, living in the wonderful world her ancestors had made for her, not realising that the story her grandma told was her own life experience.

(By Aadya Kapoor, Volunteer at Editorial Dept, Adolescence Development Club)