Sarma, an Industrialist, a Bird and an Elephant
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
I’ve tried to let each voice be distinct and internally coherent.
Dialogue on Machines and the Living Earth
Characters
Sarma – Advocate of emotional-ecological theism
Industrialist – Defender of mechanized civilization
Bird – Voice of the air and immediacy
Elephant – Voice of memory and earth
Scene:
At the edge of a forest where a highway is being planned.
Sarma:
Before the first machine enters this forest, let us ask — does it belong here? This forest breathes. It has its own symbiosis. Every intrusion wounds that delicate exchange.
Industrialist:
Wounds? Roads connect villages. Machines build hospitals, schools, irrigation systems. Without them, millions would suffer. Are you asking humanity to return to caves?
Sarma:
I am asking humanity to return to breathing. You have replaced participation with control. Every machine extracts, burns, cuts, displaces. You call it development. I call it amputation of the biosphere.
Bird (circling above):
I ride the thermals. I do not own the sky. I need no engine to cross continents. The air carries me because I belong to it.
When your towers rise and your smoke thickens, my winds change. My migration falters. You do not see this from inside your cabins.
Industrialist:
We monitor air quality. We use satellites. We innovate cleaner fuels. Technology can solve what technology created.
Elephant (slowly):
I remember the old paths. My herd walked them for centuries. Now fences divide them. Rails cut them. My kin fall beneath wheels.
You say progress. I say forgetting.
Industrialist:
And what of human memory? Do you forget plagues, famines, infant deaths? Machines reduced suffering. They extended life expectancy. They allowed art, science, culture to flourish.
Sarma:
But at what scale? At what cost?
You have amplified human power beyond ecological reciprocity. Nature regenerates slowly. Machines accelerate endlessly. There is no equality in that exchange.
Industrialist:
So what is your alternative? No machines at all? No surgery? No electricity? No communication across oceans?
Sarma:
The foundation must change. Breathing and emotional intelligence must guide action. Forests must have absolute sanctuaries — no intrusion. Technology must be subordinated to symbiosis, not profit.
Bird:
You measure value in output. I measure it in currents of wind. When forests fall, the air itself forgets its rhythm.
Elephant:
When waterholes dry because rivers are dammed, memory becomes grief.
Industrialist (pauses):
You speak as if machines are demons. But machines are made by humans. Are humans unnatural?
Sarma:
Humans are natural. But disembodied amplification is not symbiosis. A spider’s web does not poison the forest. Your factories alter the chemistry of oceans.
There is a difference of magnitude — and of consciousness.
Industrialist:
Then perhaps the issue is not machines — but scale, intention, and regulation.
Sarma:
Regulation within a mechanistic worldview only slows destruction. The root error is Cartesian separation — treating matter as dead, exploitable extension.
If nature is living relation, then mechanization must be severely limited, not optimized.
Bird:
You breathe the same air as I do. Yet you trust sensors more than lungs.
Elephant:
You trust models more than memory.
Industrialist:
And yet — without models, how do we understand climate change? Without machines, how do we detect deforestation?
Sarma:
Tools for diagnosis are not the same as systems of domination. But the line has vanished. The machine no longer serves life; life reorganizes around the machine.
Industrialist:
Is complete rejection practical?
Sarma:
If collapse continues, rejection will not be philosophical — it will be forced by ecological breakdown.
Bird:
When the wind grows too violent, even steel bends.
Elephant:
When forests vanish, no wealth can purchase shade.
Silence falls.
The highway markers stand between the forest and the city.
Industrialist (quietly):
If we were to begin again — what is the first principle?
Sarma:
Breathing is participation. Emotion is knowledge. Symbiosis is law. Any machine that violates these must not enter the forest.
Bird:
Leave corridors of sky.
Elephant:
Leave corridors of earth.
Industrialist:
And humanity?
Sarma:
Let humanity remember it is not an engineer of a dead planet — but a participant in a living one.
If you would like, I can now:
Make the dialogue sharper and more confrontational
Make it more poetic and symbolic
Turn it into a short stage play
Or intensify the philosophical depth
Tell me which direction you prefer.