But while the man's ever increasing lust for that 'green' wad continued, most preferred to forget that with privilege comes responsibility. Making money became the sole focus, to hell with responsibility and the impact of what you do in order to make that money!
A case in point is the California gold rush of the 1850's. Opportunists swarmed the Sierra Nevada range like parasites, rearranging its ecology, its rivers and streams, choking them with mining debris, polluting them with everlasting mercury, scalping hillsides, logging forests, overfishing, overhunting, overrunning meadows with livestock, introducing diseases, displacing native plants, ousting thousands of environmentally conscious American Indians and forever shattering the primeval stillness of the mountains.
Closer home and much closer in time is the Bhopal gas tragedy. A human and ecological disaster that beyond every reasonable doubt occurred because of the incessant need of a handful of people to make money at all costs! 25,000 people dead, lakhs maimed for life and even today we continue to pay the price of this travesty with children being born deformed. And we are not talking about the environmental impact as yet - only the human collateral.
What makes it a tragedy of insurmountable proportions is that, on that cold December night in 1984, when at least 27 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, the company involved in what became the worst industrial accident in history immediately tried to dissociate itself from legal responsibility - lest they lose MONEY! Not only did they murder thousands, they murdered without remorse!
And that brings me to the question of the day - what really is the colour of money? We've always heard and been made to understand that money is GREEN, but in today's day and age would it be fair to call it the 'GREEN' bucks?
I firmly believe the colour of money is RED from all the blood spilt in order to get rich - knowingly or unknowingly. In the case of the Bhopal tragedy, we could even assume that money lost its colour and instead acquired a smell - that of methyl isocyanate & death.
An organization killed thousands of people and deformed generations to come and now talk about compensation (which by the way is a hilariously low amount). What could, possibly, be the compensation or punishment for mass genocide; of damaging the air and soil for years to come? That is beyond me! And while the company murdered, the politicians and the collective consciousness of our society killed the memories of the dead by the lack of any long-term compassion for the people of Bhopal.
The Bhopal disaster is just one example of how greed has overpowered all human senses and is nothing but a callous disregard for the environment and human life.
We haven't even begun talking about other examples of why the colour of money is now red - like excessive mining at the cost of ecology, excessive fishing, hunting rare and protected animals, and contamination of our water, air, soil, the atmosphere, and even the food we eat!
Though this blog (and a few more in the 'Colour of Money' series) I urge you, the reader, to voice your opinion, voice your protest and perhaps even suggest an action that we can undertake to actually do something than just speak and write about it. A movement of sorts, perhaps?
So tell me, my friends - what, in your opinion, is the real colour of money?
About the author: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is a critically acclaimed filmmaker and screenwriter. He is best known for writing and directing Rang De Basanti (2006), for which he won Best Director awards at the 2006 Filmfare Awards and National Film Awards and received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. He is also the writer and director of the critically acclaimed Aks (2001) and Delhi-6 (2009).
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