Natural Lessons Of Differences

The magic of trees, open skies, meandering rivers, thick forests, playful gardens with visual bridges through it – all these can teach us to look at the variegated patterns of life in the colours of nature.

- Siddhartha Das

As a child, in school and at home, there was a ritual every monsoon to plant seeds and saplings. The excitement that followed to see the little shoots become bigger was difficult to define. It felt like I had created something meaningful, even if my own role in it was perfunctory. This joy wasn’t unique to me. In school, many of us who had planted seeds and saplings would return to the scene regularly to see how they were faring and if they needed some more love and care. Over the weeks, months and years that followed, most of them perished, and it felt like I had somehow failed them. A couple of them that survived, I remember a neem and a palash, filled me up with a quiet pride. As years went by, I realised that the truest beauty and art is nature. It’s incredible; left to its own devices, it endures and always surprises. Trees, unlike humans, have no anger, violence or cruelty; there is complete generosity. There isn’t an off day. In an age where all of this has reached a crescendo, especially in our country, the refuge that nature affords is incredible. Across the country and the world there are gems, gardens, forests and countryside.

In an attempt to discover parts of the country less known to me, I was in one such gem, Satkosia in Odisha, where the Mahanadi languorously slices through forested ghats, with towering trees intertwined with one another. The air was still, birds chirped, and the spluttering motor boat surprised the fish swimming gleefully in the river, as the blue kingfishers sat attentively on the low-hanging branches by the river banks. On the banks, even the crocodiles that otherwise filled me with horror, lay docilely in the sun, their head on the sand. Everything was well with the world.