Chief Seattle said it well, and no one has said it better in the century and a half since.

Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. Nature gives us a long rope, in the hope that good sense will keep us from despoiling her. We mistake the long rope for Natures forgetfulness. And when the hanging comes, it is painful. On the 26th, when the reckoning came, many innocents, inevitably, paid the price. On one side of the Powai hills, many lives were snuffed out, some crushed under boulders, others washed away in raging waters. Many were young, with no comprehension of why their time on this earth was to be so short. Many experienced the torrent of waters bearing down on them in the dark, electricityless night, filling their huts with mud and their hearts with terror. Most of them have borne the wretched aftermath stoically, painfully rebuilding their lives, believing that man is powerless in the face of Natures fury. On the other side of the hills, many of the residents of the proud streets of Hiranandani Gardens were reduced to wading through calf-deep waters, as thousands of tonnes of mud unleashed by an angry hill refused to let the waters dissipate. Inches of mud caked the streets long after it was all over, and as I write, massive machines are hard at work, trying to move the gift of the hill back to the hill. But the hill will not be appeased so easily, and if the terrifying experience does not cause all of us to wake up, Nature will, perhaps sorrowfully, but inevitably, arrange another lesson. It will be easy to say that Tuesday was freak accident, a recordmaking day of torrential downpour which was bound to cause widespread misery. It will be easy to dismiss the role that we have played in making the tragedy become real. It will be easy, but it will not be the whole truth. The massive landslip above the pool in the hill above the studio happened long before the rains. It told us clearly that the hill was becoming fragile, knocked about by the incessant quarrying, the frequent blasting, the continuous probing by intrusive earth-moving machines. The hill was angry and showing it. We were busy celebrating the development of Hiranandani Gardens. The large swathes of brown on the face of the hill are telling a compelling story. Huge quantities of green cover have been removed from its face and little holds the rest in place. Every day, an ever larger proportion of the water that falls on it threatens to wash into our living rooms, unchecked by even a blade of grass, much less the trunk of a tree. Every day, the precariously balanced rock will sway drunkenly, until a nudge by another deluge sends it down to snuff out several more lives. For those of us who are actively participating in this rape of the hill, it is time to ask how much silver pays for one life. It is time to ask whether there arent more honourable ways of making a decent living. It is time to wake up. For those of us who are so absorbed in the day-to-day that the rape hasnt registered, it is time to be anguished, time to wonder what will replace the hills when they have been completely converted to the metal surface of JVLR. It is time to wake up.

For those of us who have with pain, but silently (or perhaps not so silently) watched the depredation, it is time to recognize that standing up and being counted has more impact than merely being anguished, time to believe that one man can cause an empire to stop if he simply refuses to move, and that fifty such can keep mountains from being moved. It is time to wake up.