Friday, June 17, 2011

Elements of Nature



Elements of Nature make us realize our nature. And there is nothing unnatural with that…we being beings intimately entwined with it. Yet we fail to acknowledge this fact. Only when faced with some extreme expressions of Nature, we remember that we are not apart from it, but very much a part of it.  In such moments, however fleeting they might be, we are forced to recognize our own misdeeds towards Nature. How we have been ravaging it in the name of progress becomes very apparent –most importantly to us.

We have misgivings about the nature’s mood swings and Natural calamities, but hardly do we spare a thought for what we have been doing against Nature. It is also a fact that nature reacts only after having tolerated our protracted atrocities. And these reactions cause us to take note of what we should have noticed earlier.   

Hence with self-enforced responsibility, nature reminds us from time to time of the most common human folly: our failure to appreciate what we have, taking it for granted. We wait till they cease to be, or are endangered or we ourselves have a narrow escape. 

Why do we prefer for extreme conditions to realize the simplest things?
Maybe because we are super-intelligent species capable of tackling hard tasks, which makes for us easier to learn the hard way…and comes in the way of our ego if we learn through easier ways or it could be the process of evolution at work. Well, reasons aplenty can be forwarded, but not here.

Coming back to where I had started, the elements of Nature, it is one such expression of nature that has catalyzed this specific bout of writing. Though I had intended to devote attention to some very urgent and at the same time pending work, the force of nature and its nature, left me with no option but this. I could not be doing anything other than this.

With the city in the grip of torrential rains accompanied by gusty winds, even though I would have loved to stay indoors and enjoy a wonderful time with my pen and diary and a cup of tea sitting beside me, I like many others had to respond to the call of duty. And if the onward journey was an experience that would have been photographer’s paradise and poet’s incubator of creation, the journey back was, in one word, humbling. The major portion of the journey was covered by car, with the car splashing through the knee deep water like a surgeon’s scalpel…yet unfortunately drenching a passer-by…adding to the deluge from above.

But when I got down for the rest of the journey to my abode, I realized the significance of feeling the ground beneath the feet…the ground that has always been there for us as a solid foundation…the Mother Earth. Yet it has to either Quake or Crack or Hide itself under water to make us re-cognize that even standing atop our achievements we should not forget the ground…and remain earthy.

Though I was on a familiar terrain, yet submerged as it was it didn’t appear so. Wading through the water I was really grateful to feel the feel of the ground beneath. The ground which I hardly acknowledged earlier acknowledged me…and delivered me safely to my destination. Well then, it is we the humans who are vindictive and revengeful, courtesy our ego…which is absent outside of us.

The element of nature, with its overt expressions made me accept my ignorance. Ignorance begets the propensity to take the blessings for granted. Yet ignorance is something that cannot be ignored. The elements of Nature frees one from (the residual traces of) this very ailment…of ignorance.

This was reiterated to me by voice of Nature. Thus as I found the ground beneath my feet today, I felt how it feels to be grounded. Being grounded has an additional significance now. It is the element of Nature which communicated to me that wherever we go, the ROUTE shall remain the one that leads us to OUR ROOT.

Sushmita Mukherjee,
17th June, 2011.