Every Indian will identify with the joy of feeling those precious drops of rain. Experiencing the life-giving drops on one's face and smelling that heavenly fragrance of water falling on parched earth is quite matchless. After two weeks of a forest fire raging in Silimipal National Park, it rained. This is probably why so many loved this joyous video of Sneha Dhal welcoming the rain.
Few of us may know about the fire that had been raging at the Similipal National Park in Mayurbhanj, Odisha for the past two weeks. Fire service personnel and teams of the state’s disaster action force had been battling to contain the fire for many days.
Young climate change activist Licypriya Kangujam tweeted this heartening video of a forest official literally jumping with joy at the arrival of the rain.
The tireless efforts of the people were greatly helped by the arrival of rain and hail which finally doused the forest fire.
In the video is Sneha Dhal who can be heard expressing her happiness at the arrival of the rain. It is people like her and other unsung heroes who actually make a difference.
As this tweet points out, we rarely have videos such as these – real, spontaneous, unaffected and joyful – going viral.
This is a beautiful part of our country, and few of us know about it. Getting the fire under control in this thickly wooded area is a difficult but necessary task to protect this precious habitat and all of its inhabitants.
While we hear about forest fires in faraway places like California and Australia, few of us probably knew about the Similipal forest fires that had been raging since February in Odisha. This speaks about the misplaced priorities of the media as well as our own indifference as citizens.
This received little media coverage and we as citizens couldn’t really be bothered to outrage about a fire in this poor and remote part of our own country --- even on social media.
This video speaks about some of the possible causes for these fires such as illegal mining, poaching and other human activity.
It is a little sad to think that many would still not have paid any attention to the Similipal forest fire – if that happy and uplifting video of forest official Sneha Dhal dancing in the rain had not gone viral.
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