The Lost World

Delicately the soft white snowflakes were descending from the glistening silvery sky. Malik spread his hands out to touch the falling blessing and felt a tickling sensation as the snowflake melted against his skin. It was beautiful to see the gray roads and the green pines get covered by the icy white blanket of snow. He wanted to stay and watch the glory till the last moment but was rudely awakened by the loud sound of obscenities that brought him back to the scorching reality of the present.

Malik was 16 and worked with five other boys around his age. He was the most enthusiastic about Old Riaz stories about the time before the “Changings”. The time when there was less heat waves, when floods didn’t hit so often, when nature was kind. It felt like a blissful dream even to imagine the time when climate and temperature hadn’t evolved so much. He always asked Riaz about the people before the Changings but Riaz either changed the topic or stopped speaking until Malik himself had to talk about something else. He began to wonder why Riaz did that and how good it would have had been to be living in such favorable climatic conditions. As he began to imagine he again engulfed himself with the thoughts of a blessed World but this time a stinging slap of Master Luke was enough to erase his beatific smile and put his attention back to work.

His work was simple but time consuming and attention required. He had to cut the rough cedar and oak wood in smooth sticks that was later supplied to the only ship building company of the country. He was underage for the job but the protests for child rights and against child labor had long lost their essence and importance.

Hundreds of others, aside from him were forced to do such work to survive even if all their efforts only meant a meager meal two times per day. Food was costly because it was hard to yield crops with the ever ready floods to destroy it. There were only two ways to survive it either work like a maniac for some foreign supplier or escape the country like the rich did to the other parts of the globe where still the fineness of nature was notable. There was another way too to escape all the painful punishments of nature, to enter the peaceful abyss of death; to die.

It wasn’t Malik’s choice to work there but a necessity. After sawing and smoothing the wood for what seemed like hours, he was called for the day’s meal. It was his favorite time because all the workers aside from him were given an hour’s break with the meal.

The meal was a nearly stale piece of bread with pulses on top it accompanied by a cold glass of water-mixed milk. To complain was useless because it was better than starving or sleeping hungry, better than many who would be dying out of hunger outside on the streets if they were spared by the heat. He took his steel plate and sat beside Old Riaz who was soon to be seventy-five but was still kept at the supply office because of being a close friend of the supplier’s manager.

The room in which they were provided with food was bare of any furniture except for an old television set in the corner. The time had not developed technology enough in the country or it was the change in climatic conditions that got all the attention. The television set as always was showing the news of the southern part being the prey of the flood from the treacherous sea of the Indian Ocean, people dying, screaming without the hope of any aid. The Central part as usual was the dying ground of people from the scorching heat waves while the Northern part’s glaciers were on their verge to diminish from the map because of high rate of melting.

As the television continued to convey all the despairing news of hundreds of people dying all around the country and thousands around the globe, Malik decided to ask the root of this entire problem from Old Riaz. His disheartened spirit instead of simply questioning erupted in a quiet anger.

He almost screamed, “Why Riaz? Why are we the one facing problems? It isn’t our fault that people are dying! It’s the Nature’s.

Riaz wasn’t surprised by his outburst. He himself had the same opinion but he knew that it wasn’t completely Nature’s fault but a major part was played by the people who were the part of the generation before him. The people who had made him have bitter feelings for them .To calm Malik he started to change the topic but today was not his day as Malik was having one of his tempers.

There was only one way left to tell him the reason that he was always hiding about the cause of climatic problems whenever Malik asked.

Hardly stopping himself from using any acrimonious swords he said, “Malik, the fault is not of nature but of our own people. If they would have been a little careful and responsible for the climatic conditions, we wouldn’t have been facing these problems”.

Malik was surprised by Riaz bitter tone but he was more astonished by his answer, as Riaz seldom discussed the time and people before the Changings , let alone accusing them for playing major role in making their lives miserable, he wanted to press the issue to know the whole story.

“How can it be the people’s fault Riaz?” he asked.

Riaz took a deep sigh and started to tell all the incidents from the wondrous time to current destruction.

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The World wasn’t like this generations back, it was the epitome of beauty. The glaciers up at North were the supply of fresh water and the source of scenic beauty. They were not a thin like of ice that we recognize as glaciers now but never-ending blanket of white. The floods didn’t hit this often , there were floods but aid was always supplied .The rivers were blue like a sweep of painter’s brush enhancing the country’s beauty ,helping with agriculture and attracting tourists nothing like this grey filthy liquid we have now. There weren’t such intense heat waves scorching skins just summers giving a sweet taste of heat. The heat was there, near areas of Equator but it wasn’t that harmful like it is in our fate. There was not such a high rate of hunger and starvation that is currently because of the never ending droughts.  The blessing of snow was often experienced in South of our country too and the weather was enjoyed. Winters and summers were there but not with such intensity like they are in our World today, freezing some to death while scorching others.

But as it always happens, too much good and blessings spoiled the people. Made them careless and negligent towards the environment. Time passed and the people started to get more and more irresponsible, fulfilling their needs from the natural beauties and forgetting what their recklessness would mean for the future generations. The trees that colored the Earth with its greenery were cut off so often that the land soon turned barren, the floods that seldom came at that time destroyed hundreds of crop as the trees weren’t there to store the silt or absorb the water in the soils. The water hit with such intensity that only destruction was left behind but it was only the beginning. People were still busy in the other matters of life disregarding such disasters as natural cause. They forgot about replanting this blessing that could have been helpful to the future generation, they ignored the prospect that the future generations will be devoid of any natural asset. This is the reason why there are so less trees around now and those few are so precious that they are only used for important works. Thinking about that time seems like a blissful dream only. Slowly the lands turned barren, droughts started to come more often, people started to die at a high rate. This all brought the attention of many; geographical changes, natural disasters, weather conditions all became the highlight but they didn’t realize that it was too late. They were still lucky to enjoy the last bit of nature’s mercy, the last survivors who didn’t curse the nature as they closed their eyes for forever.

After that everything was chaos, every country tried to save itself. Deaths were common, people started to migrate to cooler regions as the climatic conditions had changed, and the carelessness finally brought the consequences. It seemed that the Earth had heated several degrees as if the end was near, the once hot temperatures now felt more cooler as compared to the new scorching temperature. Time passed, several measures were taken to stop it, quite were successful too but now things are beyond redemption. It was like you drop a bottle of milk because of your own recklessness and then try to put back all the dropped milk back in your smashed bottle; you can try all you like but nothing is saved except a few drops, the damage is already done.

Exactly that happened with the people, the fruitless try to revive back the same climatic conditions resulted in only one absolute answer that let the things be as they are; let the climate go to its extreme. That’s all child and here we are tending to our bones and dreaming about the lost word as we crawl towards our end.

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