Joy is every time I am at the place where I was born – Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, India. In the Hindi language, we express this as phule na samana ( Not to be able to contain oneself with joy or Joy knowing no bounds). It is where the king of all fruits hail from – the Alphonso! The picture above is me in a sarson ka khet (mustard seed farm) at Ratnagiri. Fresh air, cool breeze, trees, and hornbills all exist near our house. I never got all this in Mumbai. My family and I used to go there multiple times in a year. I miss it.
If someone asks me to choose between Ratnagiri and Mumbai, I’d say I can’t unless there’s something apocalyptic happening. Mumbai has given me the education I need and has helped my parents overcome their problems too. It is grappling with pollution and overcrowding, but it also has its pros along with the cons. Ratnagiri on the other side is the perfect vacation I can ever take – free of noise and dust but maybe not free of superstition that education eradicates. The conclusion is that we need to make Mumbai a greener and cleaner place for me to not choose being these two.
A few environmental things about Ratnagiri:
- A proposed and a much-debated nuclear power park is at Jaitapur in Ratnagiri honing to be the largest nuclear power station in the whole world
- A biodiversity hotspot, the Western Ghats pass through Ratnagiri.
- Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) will someday install a solar plant at Ratnagiri.
येवा कोंकण आपलोच आसा ! (Yeva Konkan aaploch asa!) This is a greeting in Konkani dialect Malvani welcoming people to the region. :)
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