A great deal of people had died lately and the mourning for the dead had lasted quite a while. The semi-apocalyptic scene that stretched along the bank of Phewa was achingly gruesome. It’s been days since Shaman, a boy in his early teen last visited the lake for fishing. As he produced his fishing rod, the thoughts of his father ran through his head which made him shed few drops of tears involuntarily. He had died a month back, like many others, being prey to the incurable disease that had hit many cities.

Shaman was brought back into reality by the load he felt on his rod. He hoped that a fish had stuck to the bait. He drew the rod up, but only to find a large piece of plastic stuck on the hook. As he pulled the rope closer to him with an intention to free the hook from the plastic, he saw that something was written on the plastic. He had never seen the fonts as such! It read:

Year 2350, Autumn

Hi! I don’t have a name. I mean dolphins don’t have names. We think names are just some tags for those who lack their identity. If you’re reading this, I guess you’re a human. There aren’t many of you nowadays; and only a few other creatures can read or write. You can look back through the eyes of time upon the history of civilization. Humans had risen from the grounds. Once, they had inhabited the caves, but their virtue escalated so fast that they imposed their greed and hunger upon every corners of mother earth. Within a short era of 3-4 centuries human civilization started, flourished and reached a point when nature had to resist their tenacious growth. There used to be billions of you, tormenting and spoiling the delicate balance of nature with giant machineries of destruction. Your forefathers, who once survived with the mercy of the forests, had easily chosen to forget where they came from, and cunningly dug deep holes into the earth’s heart. They had cut a major fraction of vegetation, they had drilled each and every mine, and built so many industries that produced stuffs that we don’t understand what they used for.

You must be wondering how is it possible for dolphins to read or write. Given your level of intelligence, you shouldn’t merely be amazed to know this; but some of you might even find it unnatural and might be having a hard time coping with the fact. Well, given the vicarious nature of human race, I believe, it is obvious for you to feel so. For centuries you’ve been at the pinnacle of civilization; which compensates for the fact that, as generations passed, the whole human race took for granted the idea of what is natural and what is not. I am obliged to offer you an explanation for this. You should keep in mind that humans too, couldn’t read or write readily when their existence started. It was through their dynamic progression that they had acquired a special position of superiority among all the inhabitants of the earth. It’s marvelous that the human brain is a biological masterpiece with infinite capacity of thinking and reasoning. A prolonged phenomenon of evolution had gifted human beings with this fascinating possession. But evolution itself is a part of nature, which being misunderstood by the humans, planted a belief of chauvinism in their soul. With the virtue of such a capacious brain, languages were introduced, followed by techniques and tools of agriculture and then the systems of cohesive existence. But then the growth was not free from the dark sides of greed, selfishness, and ignorance. Infinite numbers of wars were fought, millions killed and injured for nothing more than the clashing ego of the humans themselves. The uprising of human civilization was soon bound to be accompanied by the downfall itself.

As I write to you, at this moment, I am residing on a lake at the foot of the Himalayas. There are many of us here. My grandfather says that they swam all the way up from the Indian Ocean few decades back. I mean they had to. The ocean was so polluted and alarmingly growing in size, and the temperature so high that it was in the verge of being almost inhabitable. Feeling the urgency to save their legacy, our grandfathers had commenced a search for a cooler place to continue living. We’ve always possessed special abilities to identify the signs of nature. They say that with a great struggle of swimming against the currents along the rivers, somehow they had managed to reach this place. But the discovery in itself was cruel enough to reduce the whole dolphin population to almost a half.

Meanwhile, the world outside the water was even more devastated by calamities brought about by the reckless action of humans. They were so divided among themselves and so deeply indulged in the flawed acts of derision and indignation that they couldn’t foresee what nature had planned for times to come. It’s pathetic, how the conjecture of their upheaval was not understood by them. Even with the brightest brains and the strangest instruments they couldn’t stop nature from playing its part. The whole time they had been so apathetic to the wounds of earth that she had to revolt with a stronger force. How can a creature so thoughtful be so indifferent? Had they ever chosen to act rationally so as to save a fortune for the generations to come, and so as not to consume every ounce of energy for the sake of fulfilling their own selfish greed, they would still be prospering and living around in contentment.
I reckon that there are barely a few thousands of you inhabiting the earth now. You should be grateful that you’ve survived several pandemics and disasters. The loss of such a vast population of your race accounts for diseases, wars and calamities like floods and quakes. There have been viruses that spread so swiftly that even the most advanced drugs couldn’t resist them. This might have been a way of nature responding to the sins committed by you all along. It’s ironic when you see that the fellow humans, who in the name of God, fought and killed and slaughtered, often prayed to the same God with a faint hope of miracle by which they could outlive the disasters! They had so many religions and accordingly many more Gods which they believed they followed, and hence, despised every other human who contradicted with their beliefs. They thought they knew it all, while in fact, they were all hollow from inside and ignorant of their very own fate.

Unlike you, the humans, we are constrained by our physicality and intelligence so as not to pursue the higher degrees of civilization. Though we’ve adopted the techniques of education underwater, I don’t think it would be possible for us to prosper as your forefathers once did. As there are only a few of you living around the globe now, by this time I think you’ve realized the fact that not a single creature is stronger than the nature; for every creature in itself is a drop while the nature is an ocean. All that we can comprehend from the shameful history which your race beholds is that greed is evil. Love all and you shall be taken care of. The lives of your children and their children relies solely on your shoulders now. I believe that the mistake your ancestors committed will not be repeated, and hence get corrected by all of you that have succeeded to survive. Peace...

Having read this, Shaman felt an urge to show this message to his fellows back home and started rowing towards the bank. A flashing strike of lightning on the horizon signified the eternity of the moment, followed by a sound of thunder unlike any other he had ever heard.