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Rains in Kerala are always beautiful, especially the monsoon that’s lashing all across the State right now. Even now, as I am writing this article, sitting at my desk at

Karmakerala, it’s raining outside. Indeed, I love the rains…

Sharaz, our software programmer here at Karmakerala, who is also a popular television anchor too, was asking callers, all of them working abroad,  in his TV show a few days back, “So, you like the summer or the rains?” The unanimous reply obviously was ‘The rains”.

Yes, we Keralites love the rains. With so much of greenery, paddy fields, rubber plantations, streams, rivulets, hills and hillocks etc, rains can’t be anything but beautiful in Kerala.

These days anyhow the scenario is different. Don’t we sometimes hear ourselves chanting away, like a mantra ‘Rain rain go away…’, trying to wish away something that keeps things ticking for us, something that keeps the bulbs burning and fans whirring and televisions blaring, something that provides us with the much needed water that we don’t know how to use judiciously and wisely.

Why such a sudden resentment? Wherefore this dislike? Every year as the rains set in, diseases like H1N1, Dengue etc too spread out, causing the loss of lives all over the state. This has been the case with us for the past few years, with the sway of these diseases and the death-toll too increasing rather than going down. The rains subside in a couple of months and the lives that have been lost, of course just statistics for our media and administrators, are forgotten. And forgotten is the fact that it’s we ourselves who are to blame. Is anyone doing anything? Discussions, debates and seminars take place; a big budget is outlayed and even spent (Don’t ask where and
on what!!). I remember a friend of mine making a documentary on one of these contagious diseases with alloted funds a few years back. I wouldn’t wish to reveal as to how he got to make it and all; I too got some money and of course credits too. But I just dont know what good that film did in containing and controlling the disease. The papers carry features, photographs, statistics, comments etc. And then, it’s all forgotten. We all sit back and let it happen, as if it’s all happening in some other world, in far away Mars or Pluto.

So, who’s to take the blame? The government? The politicians? The bureaucrats? Yes of course. All of them and all of us. No one is concerned and no one does anything. How many of us are repelled by the enormous amount of garbage that’s found heaped over? We avoid going to such places; but do we think of how to avoid such places coming to swallow us all? How many towns and cities in Kerala have waste management plans working properly? You won’t be surprised to find people in Kochi carrying bags with garbage and waste at night, only to be dumped in desolate places, drains and all. They can’t be blamed? “Where else can we put it all?- they’d ask. What do we do about canals and waterways dumped with natural and synthetic waste? These and many such questions face us as we still tend to love the rains that preserve us and all the other birds, animals, trees, plants, flowers and all those things that make this earth what it is. So, what’s the solution? Do we want a dictator who can command the rains to stop or a magician who can, with a flourish of his magic wand, make the rains stop? We’d even think on those lines..So selfish we have become that like Kalidasa in the story, we tend to cut the very same branch on which we are sitting.

Where there is a will, there is a way, says the adage. So, it’s the will that matters. As long as we are not bothered, we are not going to find a way, a solution to this menace, this real big menace.

Just remember…there were people who were living here, on the face of this beautiful planet when this monsoon began a few weeks back and who sadly aren’t there now, to enjoy the rest of the monsoon or the showers in the years to come. My heart goes out to them…Who killed them? All of us, perhaps…

So, now it’s time for atonement…Let’s pray for them and for their departed souls to rest in peace, let’s join hands to drive away this menace of contagious diseases that spreads as a result of our negligence. It’s not medicines and mosquito repellants and hollow shams of speeches and all that we need. It’s sanitation that matters. Each one of us has got to do our bit, each one of us. It’s awareness that matters; spread it the way you can. It’s sensitivity that matters; nurture it and care for others….

Hope Sharaz shares this concern with his callers and his viewers when he goes to host his popular show this week….