Growing Up on the Mountains
The environment that shaped my childhood
I always believed that growing up in better surroundings such as in urban areas would impact a child’s life in a good way, but I was wrong. People always advise moving to urban cities to live a better life. I spent most of my childhood in mountains, rivers, and forests in a rural area and this shaped the way how I live my life today.
I spent my childhood in Rayagada, which is a district in the state of Odisha in India. Rayagada is full of greenery surrounded by mountains and experiences Summer, rain, and winter in a year.
During my childhood days, I spent most of my time outdoors playing with my friends. There was a mountain nearby which is just 1 km away from my house. There is a Hanuman temple at the top of the mountain. Every day I would wake up listening to the Hanuman Chalisa song played at the temple, listening to the song made me feel that someone at the mountain is looking over us. I would go to the temple with my friends every day just for the sake of hanging out at the top of the mountain. The staircase of the temple has 1000 steps. I and my friends would race with each other to reach the temple as fast as possible climbing the stairs. Climbing the stairs of the temple became a habit for us which eventually made us stronger physically. We were not like those urban kids who would spend most of the time indoors or playing in a garden inside an apartment complex.
There was also a temple of God Shiva just at the foothills of the Hanuman temple. Many people would come to the shiva temple for offering their prayers and doing meditation. There is a river behind the Shiva temple at a distance of 500 meters. I would go to the river with my friends once a week for swimming, my parents would always hesitate when I ask for permission to go to the river thinking about my safety. Thanks to the river, I learned swimming in my childhood. There is a dense forest near the river. Local people would always say there is a demon in the forest and advise their children to not go deep inside the forest. That is just a myth and we would always go deep inside the forest just for the sake of hanging out and having a good time.
Children who are living in the apartments of urban cities could have all the safety and necessities but could not have the freedom and joy of a child living in rural areas. Urban children spend most of their time going to school and playing in a constrained environment like apartments and playgrounds, they are not able to connect with nature completely. Urban children could enjoy all the tasty and packaged foods but they cannot enjoy the real organic foods available in rural areas and mountains. Urban children could have the milk of cows which are grown in an unhealthy and constrained environment where the cows don’t have the freedom to move around and eat what they want. The nutrition of fruits and vegetables grown in urban areas differs hugely from the vegetables grown in the mountains of rural areas. People living in urban areas always count their steps to make it to 10000 steps every day for a healthy heart, but people living in rural areas commute most of the time by walking. The fresh air which is available in the mountains cannot be compared to the polluted air in the urban cities. The physical activity a man would do who is living in a rural area is incomparable to the man who is living in an urban area.
Today when I think about my childhood days spent in the mountains and forests, I see it as a blessing. Although I did not have the comfort and lifestyle of a kid living in urban cities I was more joyful, playful, and physically active than any kid living in the cities. Today I feel more strong, active, and more immune to diseases because the environment where I grew up was very close to nature and organic. Nowadays people are shifting towards urban lifestyle thinking of living a better life but they are more prone to diseases when they move far away from mother nature. There is a spike in Covid-19 cases of people living in urban areas than the people living in rural areas because rural people are connected close to nature and consume food and water directly from nature. Today when I see my friends who grew up in an urban environment look clean and healthy from the outside, but they get cold and flu frequently due to their poor immune system, most of them have poor vision and wear glasses. It is surprising to realize as my friends who grew up in the rural areas have not worn a spectacle and never had poor vision till today. The food we ate in our childhood days were 100% organic and healthier than the packaged foods available in cities. We also had access to a variety of organic foods such as millets, wild fruits, and pulses in the rural areas whereas the urban children only ate rice, wheat, and refined wheat as their staple food most of the time.
Conclusion
Today I am living a healthy life and more immune to diseases because I spent my childhood days close to nature in an organic environment. However everyone can’t shift their children to a rural area for living a healthy life, however, it is possible to make our environment as close as possible to nature. Also, it would be great if we cut off from the digital world and urban lifestyle once in a while and spend some time living in the rural areas close to the mountains, rivers, and nature.
Life will be so easier if we spent most of our time with mother nature.
