From A Beloved Mother Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

If you can mine, why should I not

You discovered use of metals
Long back

Your civilizations are chronicled
By the unearthed material
That was at use that time
Like
Stone age
Iron age
Copper age

I was happy initially as
You were exploring me
With an attempt to extract minerals
For the use of common man
But now
You may not know
I am threatened by your
Ways of winning minerals and fuel resources
And by the quantum of them
You are consuming

You are planning to increase the consumption
And you do not appreciate how dangerous
It could be
What all you did manually
Have now been mechanized

It hurts me, the way
You drill, make bore and blast holes, blast
And what not
Your beneficiation techniques too
Devour my precious resources
And you have no concrete plans
To recharge the resources you are drawing

I thought
Why should I not demonstrate
As to how I take out minerals
From beneath

My process is very simple
No prospecting,
No exploration,
No drilling,
No blasting,
No shoveling,
No dumping,
No overburden

With the geothermal heat inside me
I melt the matter to be mined out
With imbalance created within me
By your activities on the surface
I build up pressure on the molten material
And pump the molten ore out
Like a fountain
In all directions
With no conveyor or other transporting facilities

I know some of you will be affected
But I cannot help it

The fact is that you people make me less sensitive
To your miseries
As you show no concern for me
And for the turbulence generated in me
Because of your activities

Remember, the more you dig
Bigger will be the fountain
Larger will be the quantum

If you can mine, why should I not

Your beloved mother earth