One of the sweetest moments of our life is home coming experience. Wherever one may be, his home and her native land and neighbourhood is closest to her heart, however ugly or dirty the home and native town may be, it remains perched in the green land of our memory, forever lovely and refreshing.
On this subject, I posted a comment on one of the posts in Arunachal Diary. I am re-producing it down below because I felt so nostalgic about it when I read it again this morning.
*************************************************************
Cho, you have captured the basic essence of Ziro life in a concise and lucid manner. It still gives me goose bumps as we start to ascend the hills from Yazali. As one drives through hairpin bends, cool breeze is felt smooching your cheeks and gently weaving through your hair as if mother is running her loving fingers through hair while we are asleep in her bossom. One can smell the pine trees and feel freshness of mountain air coursing down your lungs.
But this magical scenery lasts till one reaches Ziro town proper. As soon as one enters Hapoli town one starts his life on a war footing, as you have to negotiate with numerous pot holes, dirty drains, spilled sewages,unplanned and ugly houses littering the lovely landscape, pigs, cows dogs and numerous four legged animals fighting with you for teir right to way. Town itself is no better than any slum. I wish we could do something to tidy up this dirt.Whenever I come over to Ziro, I spend most of my time in tending my bamboo and pine groves and little forest areas that my father owns. I feel better being outside among the fields and trees rather than Ziro town itself.
The thoughtless deforestation is the sad part of modern Ziro. Forest conservation in Apatani society was one of age old social wisdom of Apatanis which they have lost to the greed for quick money. Lets hope the cast away wisdom is picked up by younger generations.Ziro has a beautiful landscape and if its growth is planned properly and strict regulations for construction of new buildings are imlpemented, may be it will attract decent number of tourists. But whatever is to be done has to be done with urgency, otherwise it will be too late and the place will be littered with ugly scene of concrete jungle.
