Can You Hear It Too?

Today is World Environment Day.

After returning from his cricket club this morning, Aadi came to me looking dejected and said, “Oh Daddy, I have to do another boring activity today. There’s a message in the school group saying it’s World Environment Day.”

I wasn’t surprised by his reaction. Yet deep down, I felt a twinge of regret.

After all, I was the one who had often told him that his school organized meaningless activities—drawing galaxies, working with clay, and other such projects—in this age of Artificial Intelligence, where everything seems available at the click of a button.

But today, June 5, 2026, when he was asked to create a project using dried leaves, I hesitated and said, “Son, it’s okay. Just do it today.”

He looked at me in bewilderment. I knew he was wondering why Daddy wasn’t siding with him for once.

But I couldn’t.

Today is a very important day—perhaps the most significant of all the days observed across the globe. It concerns our very existence, and the existence of every living being that shares this planet with us.

Ironically, even on June 5th, his school is operating online from home. The government has issued an advisory against sending children outdoors until temperatures return to normal. It was only 9:00 a.m., yet the mercury had already touched 39°C.

This morning, I read in the newspaper that global temperatures have risen by 1.5 degrees over the last 150 years.

A few days ago, I stepped out into the afternoon sun for barely twenty minutes. The relentless heat and scorching winds made my heart race faster than usual. That was the moment I realized that things were changing.

I used to think climate change was something distant.

Something discussed in newspapers, debated on television, and mentioned in reports that most people quickly forgot.

Extreme heat felt like a temporary seasonal fluctuation. Droughts felt like local problems. Rising temperatures felt like statistics that belonged to scientists rather than ordinary people.

Like many others, I assumed nature would somehow adjust, recover, and continue as it always had.

But standing under the afternoon sun a few days ago, struggling against the relentless heat and hot winds after only twenty minutes outside, I realized something had changed.

Climate change is no longer just something we read about.

It is something we can feel.

I have started to observe.

I have begun to understand the silence that descends upon the streets during a sweltering summer afternoon.

I now stop to watch reports about women in Indian villages who walk miles under the blazing sun, descend into deep wells, scoop up water barely fit for consumption, and carry it home in pots balanced on their heads.

I now read the small newspaper columns that report the deaths of beggars from heatstroke the previous day.

I no longer sweep away the ants and tiny insects that seek refuge inside my home, drawn by the cool air escaping through the cracks beneath my doors and windows.

I have begun to hear the constant hum of air conditioners and coolers—sounds that once disappeared beneath the noise of televisions and mobile phones.

I notice the silence that settles over the streets during the hottest hours of the day. I notice the ants and insects seeking shelter indoors. I notice the stories of people walking farther each year for water, and the reports of lives lost to heat that would once have seemed unimaginable.

And somewhere beneath all that noise, beneath the machines working harder to keep us comfortable, I think I can hear something else.