And who benefits?
If we didn’t know better, we would believe that we are in the middle of a jungle. Crickets, frogs, birds of all kind, no airplanes, no trains, hardly any other traffic. When I am on the phone with kantharis, friends and family, I hear everyone saying: “The sky was never as blue, the rivers never as clean.”
Some of our kantharis are environmentalists and thus are able to see the positive sides of the lockdown.
Ragunath, a 2019 kanthari understands the seriousness of Covid-19 but he also is not getting tired of expressing his observations what such a drastic measure like a lockdown means for the trees that now have a bit of a rest from us humans. “currently, no streets are built, no chainsaws!”
Ragunath comes from Tamil Nadu, a neighboring state of Kerala. Ragunath has seen a lot of the world; He grew up with his grandparents in a village, with clear streams and beautiful forests. Then industrialization came and at some point, his family had to move into the loud and polluted city. Ever since, Ragunath was in the search of clean, fresh air. The movie Titanic and his urge to breathe freely, led him to work on a cargo ship. For the next 10 years he sailed seas and the seven oceans. The dream of fresh air however died an early death, being a technician, Ragunath spent a lot of time in the engine room, so Fresh air? No way! However, he enjoyed life on the ship, during tough times and calm weather. Only when we begged him to tell us more about his adventures, he says, almost a bit shy, “Well, of course it was dangerous as well sometimes.” Then he spoke about storms and monster waves, pirate-attacks, fire on board, and finally he mentions a traumatic period during which he and four other crew members were kept locked up on the ship that was anchored in Nigeria. Due to a legal problem that needed to be solved, the crew couldn’t get on land. And while the captains and officers were flown out, Ragu and his fellows had to stay on board with hardly any food, little fresh drinking water and the constant danger of getting Malaria.
After this experience, he had enough.
Upon his return to Tamil Nadu, continuing his search for fresh air he met two new passions; forests and bicycling.
He founded Aaranya, an organisation that promotes re- and afforestation.
For Ragunath, the lockdown has a silver lining, he is happy for the forests that are being left alone and have time to grow undisturbed for 21 days.
Originally around this time he wanted to cross India by bicycle, “From Kashmir to kanthari!”, 5000 km in 45 days, from the north all the way down to the south of India. He wanted to travel from school to school in order to plant thousands of trees together with students.
“And what do we learn from this crisis?”
Ragunath laughs out loud, “Let’s take a minute, hold our breath, and we will understand, how important it is to have clean, fresh air.”