W. E. D.

Contrary to popular belief, this article is not about the institution of marriage. It's about the World Environment Day. (For once, I did not have to come up with a funny acronym!) As usual, the World Environment Day came and went by without anyone noticing it. Okay, there was the occasional spurt on the telly about the W. E. D, but in general, it was given as much attention as the spread of the bubonic plague on Antartica.

Reporter : This is Mr. "Freezing to Death" Ramamurthy reporting from Antartica. Recently, an outbreak of the dreaded bubonic plague has hit this frozen continent, forcing all the mammals residing here to go on an indefinite hunger strike against the reservations.

Newsreader : We seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties. We will be back with Mr. Ramamurthy as soon as possible.

Thanks to the reservation issue hogging so much of the limelight, we have been spared the agony of listening to appalling headlines such as plague in antartica, ozone layer gone over the poles, India losing another one-dayer (okay, that is old news, but hey! the channels like to regurgitate), kangaroos dying in Australia, Tigers disappearing from Sri Lanka (not the LTTE, you moron!) and other such non-essential and miscellany that could hardly affect our lives in any conceivable manner. Who cares what happens in the jungle, as long as the 8:15 local is on time and I make it to the office before my boss does?

Coming back to W. E. D., it's seriously high time we took up the cause of the environment. It is the environment that gives us so much, right from the potatoes for the wafers to the potatoes for wafers! I mean, isn't the environment the source of all the good things in life? We get coffee beans, cocoa beans and many other beans (including bean laaden) from nature. Without the plethora that Mother Nature has to offer, life as we know it would be quite mundane and uneventful. We wouldn't have stories about people being mauled by bears, bitten by snakes, eaten by piranhas, etc, etc. It is definitely important to preserve these species to add some zest and spice to our daily news.

News Reader : We are back online. Mr. Ramamurthy, what is the status of the plague in the Antartica?

Mr. Ramamurthy : Currently, the spread of the plague is quite rapid and we are seeing some wild antartica foxes huddled together, in what seems a meeting to decide the cure for the reservation issue that is currently troubling them. Correction, it seems that they are huddled together as a measure against the cold. But what the heck, they seem to be...

News Reader : We seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties again. In other news, Mr Arjun S. said that blah blah blah
(News Room Director : Get that Ramamurthy back here and post him to outside Mr. Arjun's house!)

As I said, W. E. D. came and went and nobody noticed. Not that my article made any amends by talking about it in any detail, but at least I made a sincere attempt! You gotta give me credit for that! Pretty soon, because of the global warming and the associated problems, we are going to have to live in Antartica. Mr. Ramamurthy and his reserved animals are waiting for us.