I am very, very confused. Alright, stop sniggering you already knew that, and help me sort out my thoughts.

This last month I was running furiously across town because ALL the schools wanted me to come over. At once! No, these weren’t invitations to feed me laddoos (oh! I wish…). They wanted me to lecture their students on how important it was to celebrate Earth Day. They would probably not call me ever again, because this is what I said to all those kids who sat solemnly listening. “What is all this drama about Earth Day, Sharth Day, huh? If you want to ‘appreciate’ Nature don’t just make a song and dance about it, do something real. And then make a habit of it, so you end up doing it everyday,” I ranted.

But now I am sitting and scratching my head. Do I know the meaning of real myself? I just read about school students in Bahadurpur, an unknown village in UP, who sang bhajans on Climate Change to mark the E Day. Was that real? Then I heard how the US Environment Protection Agency did its bit by staging a mega expo on sustainable architecture in Washington. Was that real? Then there is this tiny school in the hills of Himachal Pradesh, which taught the local panchayat leaders how to harvest rainwater when the local river dried up. It took a year for them to do that. Not a day. Was that real, then? You tell me.

— Pandit Gobar Ganesh