For the sake of Vizag's beaches -- Chief Seattle's speech

After witnessing first-hand (yet again) how Vizag's beaches are getting filthier, shittier, and scarier (from an environment / ecology perspective), after witnessing countless empty Beer, Whiskey and other liquor bottles, polythenes and plastic glasses (a large number of them unused and un-crushed), after spotting fleas and bloated, rotting, very-dead fish on the stretches that are the nesting sites for Olive Ridleys (and ironically enough, barely 100 kms from Srikurmam where Lord Vishnu's tortoise / turtle avatara is worshipped in an amazingly splendourous, ages-old temple), after witnessing the sea turn (and stay) red where a stream / rivulet flowing down from one of "Wounded in red cuts..." Vizag's Hills meets it, I give you Chief Seattle's speech. Though I am not too hopeful that humanity will learn to be less greedy, less consumerist, less wasteful...I hope some of the nature loving people who walk Vizag's beaches more occasionally than visiting me, will see a blotted, rotting very dead fish and realise "...whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected."

"I do not know. Our ways are different than your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of the insect's wings. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine.

The air is precious to the red man for all things share the same breath, the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days he is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.

The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition - the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.

I am a savage and do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be made more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected."

Read the whole speech here, there is another version here and by the way the speeches (or rather these translations) are not exactly "verified to be true" or backed by any "epigraphical evidence" and in fact supposed to be "fiction". But sadly there is nothing fictional about how the beaches (and hills) of Vizag are getting raped. And looks like no one is really bothered since all this is "development" or whatever the fuck it is called.