88888
What is this? Eighty eight thousand,eight hundred and eighty eight of what??? Does it involve any money? Well, if it does...then lots of people will be hooked to this number with majority of them hoping to get the money, with each expecting the same amount (88888) :-D. Seldom people realize the joy of giving.
All right, enough of this digression(intentional ) from the context of the topic. 88888 stands for a time line - 8th August (8th month) of 2008, starting from 8 pm for a time period of 8 minutes a wonderful thing will befall the citizens of the Chennai city - Yes, they will get the immense knowledge of themselves. Yeah - I mean it. Do you want to dare differ with me? well give a try ;-). The knowledge that they would get in this 8 minutes would be of a women who has taken care of all of us in all the ways possible, she has fed us, she has given us shelter, she has has given us the place to stay and she has given us, ourselves - the real AMMA in true sense. Our Mother Earth. Pardon your weak intellect if it mistakes this reference to any particular political party ;) :-D
88888 - is a campaign organized to highlight to the people the harm they have done to earth in the form of pollution of land,water, air - the environment on the whole. As a result of it we are facing something called as GLOBAL WARMING - wow kewl jargon. What is global warming - globe warming. Simple :-D. But the issue is not any laughing matter.
Why is it raining in Bangalore and Chennai during mid summer?
Why is Ooty and Darjeeling getting progressively hotter year after year?
Why are our monsoon getting erratic?
Most importantly, why did so many catastrophic natural disaster seem to occur more often in the last 10 years?
Some of the disasters I can remember on top of my head are :-
- Gujarat Earth quake
- The Tsunami
- Kashmir Earthquake
- Hurricane Katrina
- Myanmar Flooding and hurricane (last week)
- Earthquake in China (yesterday)
Have you ever wondered why these things are happening? If you have not so far - then please do. Mother earth is reacting for whatever bad that we have done in the only way she knows - through storms and weather and climatic changes. Now hold it - What bad have we/I done? Hmmmmm...Good question....what bad have we done.......If you don't really know....then as the old age saying goes...it is better late than never to know of them....
First step that you can do is support the campaign 88888 (http://www.88888.co.in/)
For 8 minutes, on the 8th August 2008 at 8 pm, turn off the lights, wherever you are and look at the beautiful sky. We only got one Atmosphere and one land to stand on or build yourhouses or skyscrapers upon :-). Please do this much for her.
Ok - switching of light does what to mother earth??? You save so much on the usage of electricity. Imagine Chennai city completely dark and quite, with the knowledge for 8 minutes....wow. This is such a huge and symbolic gesture that as people of this city..that you can do....Nothing else. The Tamil nadu Government will take notice of the people's action, The Indian Govt. Citizens of various cities in the world would be watching us with inspiration and will take this forward. Your chance to be the change you want to see in the world.
Switching of your light wouldn't enable you to save any electricity coz you can't store electricity in the first place :-D...How many of you didn't know this simple fact??
88888 is a campaign aimed at switching of the lights of your house or work place but it switches on your awareness - that is what it is all about. What do you want? A bulb that runs on electricity or the glow of your knowledge?
The choice is yours.
