Killing nature, killing us
By Arefa Tehsin
While looking for a house in Colombo, I fell in love. It was with the small lake made by the convergence of canals, tucked away at the fag end of Rajagiriya’s Lake Drive. A green patch, the lung of this suburb and house to an astounding variety of critters, big and small. But love often results in heartburn I’m told and that’s what happened.
One of the best things about this lake is the peace. Not silence, of course. The roll call of birds is the first thing you hear in the morning. As the day progresses, pelicans let out a guttural cry now as they waddle by clumsily. The jungle crows caw trying to steal some sticks from the garden broom for their nest. The squirrels let out a sharp with jerks of their tail if someone as much as eyes their famous nut. The mynahs go about looking like bandits but when they open their mouths they are nothing but songsters. The crying parakeet smooches his girl as if there is no tomorrow. (Our current protectors of morality will faint at this grossly impolite behaviour!). The purple moorhens scold in a grandmotherly voice if you go too close. Our local Mozart, koel, reaches hysterical pitches trying to impress a girl who just eyes him critically. A Brahminy kite lets out a scream from the skies just for kicks.
And there are the silent ones too. Like the water monitor lizard who tries to approach an egret waiting for fish with clumsy stealth. Like the gentle fireflies who rise at night like little twinkling faeries. A reality show of animal lives hap- pening all around you (drama, squabble, sex, haggling, luring, deceiving, hunting and being hunted), if you have the patience to watch long hours.
A porcupine was spotted in the area. Some claimed of seeing the resident croc too. This was all rosy, but the heartburn came soon enough. When reality struck. When pungent waste, which looks toxic, came floating by for the first time. And then again. And again. When water hyacinth, that thrives in dirty waters, spread and took control of the lake.
“So what’s new?” the older residents of the area shrugged their shoulders. There has been a constant war that wages between the workers who clean this lake and this water hyacinth and floating waste.
During the recent floods, when Lake Drive was flooded and our garden submerged in water, the biggest concern was the rancid water entering our pump. All the vegetable plants in our garden wilted and died with the first touch of that water. I wonder how the myriad of water and land birds and animals are surviving on these polluted waters.