Village Rituals: The Lost Wisdom of Water, Earth, and Air

Earth: When walking barefoot sustained lives, but then Convenience Replaced Care

The little steps we once took were careful enough to protect other lives.
Walking on soft mud did not require footwear—only consciousness. A consciousness that has quietly disappeared with the advent of footwear.

Village mud roads, now replaced by cemented ones, remind me of a time when every organism in the soil was protected simply because we chose not to harm them. Ants, worms, insects, and tiny creatures wriggling in the sand—seen and unseen—were allowed to live.

We were once conscious.

Life in the soil generated energies that transferred to our bare feet. We lived healthier lives, connected to the earth beneath us. Today, roads built in the name of infrastructure have turned living land into cemeteries—meant only for shoes, and racing vehicles that carry pollution forward.

Celebrated as progress.
Marked as civilization.
Yet quietly recording the death of ecosystems—and with them, our own well-being.

Once, waste was minimal because life itself was mindful. Old cotton cloth was used for menstruation and as baby diapers—washed, dried under the sun, and reused. Nothing was thrown away thoughtlessly. Everything returned to the cycle of use and reuse. Groceries and vegetables were sold loose, wrapped in paper or leaves, carried home in baskets. What had entered the house returned harmlessly to the soil.

Today, soil pollution wears many layers: pads, diapers, plastics, industrial waste, e-waste, and chemical toxins in the form of landfills everywhere.

What we gained in comfort, the earth lost in life.

Soil no longer breathes.
Landfills grow like silent mountains.
Toxins seep into the ground, poisoning what we eat.

This is not progress. This is accumulation without responsibility.

Water: When Life Flowed Responsibly

Village life treated water as effort and limit; city life treats it as entitlement. Water was drawn by hand, used sparingly, reused with care, and released gently back to the earth. Even waste followed nature’s rhythm—public open toilets in bushes and open pits on the outskirts of settlements, exposed to sun and air, allowed organic matter to decompose naturally, returning nutrients to the soil.

No chemicals.
No flushing.
No wastage.

Comfort costs rivers their soul.

In cities, water is bought in tankers, pumped from borewells into sumps, showered twice a day, and wasted through daily mopping and water-hungry machines. Shampoos, soaps, and chemicals flow into drains regardless of season or scarcity. Added to this is the hidden loss—water filters rejecting liters of water every day in the name of purity, sending usable water straight into drains. Summer or drought makes no difference—comfort does. Gallons of clean water now carry waste into rivers and oceans, poisoning aquatic life and breaking natural cycles.

Groundwater is extracted faster than it can be replenished, aquifers collapse silently beneath concrete, and rivers are reduced to channels of waste. Cities continue to grow upward and outward, but water sources shrink and retreat. We call this modern living, yet it survives by borrowing from a future that will soon have nothing left to give.

 Trees, Air, and the Race Toward Nowhere

Then comes deforestation.
Planned residential layouts.
Smart cities.
Concrete replacing forests.
Dust rises from endless construction, coating leaves, soil, and lungs.
Our success is measured by what we hoard.

Highrise apartments to commercial properties and residential layouts.
Not need—but investment.
Are we so insecure that one home is no longer enough?

Every blow we deliver cracks the heavens

In this blind race for accumulation, we erase forests, displace animals, and push flora and fauna toward extinction. Trees fall. Oxygen reduces. Air becomes toxic. Greenhouse gases rise. Climate changes accelerate. Diseases multiply. Rivers clog with sediment and industrial runoff. Birds and insects vanish. Heat waves scorch lands that once held shade. And still, we call this growth.

What exactly are we racing toward?

A materially rich world with no clean water to drink?
A future with no fresh air to breathe?

A civilization destined to perish in sickness—surrounded by possessions, yet deprived of life itself?

This is the true cost of unchecked materialism, a  growing debt that future generations will inherit.

So, the question remains:

What matters more—
a sustainable environment,
or wealth that rots in landfills while life itself withers?

Without clean soil, pure water, breathable air, and forests to moderate climate, no civilization survives — no matter how rich it becomes.