The need of the hour is to have more and more and more of us to become Saalumarada Thimmakka who can initiate action against climate change and also people like Greta Thunberg who can make sound loud enough to reach every deaf ear
Saalumarada Thimmakka, a lady from Karnataka, is a name often found in school textbooks, found herself in the news when she was awarded the Padmashree for she planted and nurtured around 8000 trees and plants. Hers is an extraordinary story where she and her husband fetched water from a faraway place on foot and bicycle.
Greta Thunberg is a school going girl who started off single handedly on the streets of Sweden and then went on to warn the world leaders about climate change in a UNO convention. The phrase “How dare you?” can now be unofficially attributed to her and it immediately paints a picture of a young angry girl asking everyone to consider climate change instead of blindly chasing the economy and money.
Immediately after the “How dare you” moment, Greta Thunberg started attracting a lot of attention world wide as well as in India. But it took the Indian internet by surprise when Saalumarada Thimmakka appeared alongside Greta Thunberg and wonder what?! We saw the message floating around saying “If you want climate change to stop, be like Saalumarada Thimmakka and not like Greta Thunberg”, and in the first instinct it actually made sense. How will a fancy full of red hot anger speech given probably in an air conditioned convention hall amidst the loud claps and cheers from people around the world create an impact even as much as a point of a needle.
On the other hand, planting trees and nurturing them to life will for sure have an impact even if it is of the size of a needle point, or may be less than that. But yes at the end of the day impact does exist.
Then why Greta? Isn’t it better if she goes back home and starts planting saplings instead of standing on the streets with her friends and placards in hands? The answer is as simple as this: “Probably Yes but No.”
It has been easily over 15 years or more that Saalumarada Thimmakka planted those trees and they stand tall. But the advent and efforts of her came to a scathing halt after she had to stop. There are people who got inspired by her and might be doing something but hasn’t probably created a huge impact. So we can say that the outcome of a full life struggle was of the magnitude of nearly a few needle points if not one needle point. The same goes with Greta Thunberg. She might have inspired a few people to take environment friendly actions and its impact would be somewhere around a few more needle points given the fact that she attracted worldwide attention, credits the internet frenzy times we are living in.
Considering the magnitude of the problem of environment change as of today and the rate at which it is evolving on a daily basis, we need to think if the impact brought about by both or even both together is large enough to overcome the larger than life devil called Climate Change.
The need of the hour is to have more and more and more of us to become Saalumarada Thimmakka who can initiate action against climate change and also people like Greta Thunberg who can make sound loud enough to reach every deaf ear, put them to thought about becoming a Saalumarada Thimmakka and also bring together all concerned climate change workers to act on it.
But ultimately who wins Saalumarada Thimmakka vs Greta Thunberg Game? The answer is — it really doesn’t matter. The game is now between us and our planet. Greta Thunberg vs Saalumarada Thimmakka can wait but “we people vs earth” which is defeating us and earth equally horribly should end and end sooner the possible in a draw or rather in a win for both.
By
Nachiket Jamadar