Breaking the silence

In this fast paced world, we are all going blind at the subtle magic of life around us! If you are reading this, you are probably in front of a trivial screen, which you are, while just outside the window, there so much happening. The changing shadow of a tree over the day, the wind shuffling the leaves, chirping birds, flowing clouds, the beauty of the silent cycles in nature and so many mazes of life are all unnoticed. Slow down, breathe, enjoy the smell of the air and look at the life around, which we are part of, which we seem to have started missing. We have slowly started behaving carelessly about systems we naturally belong to and worry too much about abstract-meaningless-linear systems we have created ourselves and have started believing that it is the only way of life.

Everything in the natural system is connected but we have just started pretending that we can survive in isolation. You are connected and also part of the dinner you had last night and the food is connected and part of the elements and so on, that is the simplest way I can tell that everything is connected. And there is a cycle too, your food and you being the food (while alive or after dead), everything is a cycle. It would probably not work for long if we break out of the cycle and try to find an alternative. It is our stupidity and we will fail and we will fail miserably. The only way we live is to accept that we are part of the natural system, everything is connected and respect that interconnection and we live as part of the cycle. Otherwise, the natural system will find a million other ways to thrive without us.

The 600 odd trees which were cut down in Mangaluru city was probably not a big deal at all. We have a much larger forest to back it up and hundreds of alternatives. The tree huggers in the city cry their hearts out when there are only last few trees left which are taller than 50 feet and an 80 year old tree branches were trimmed in the heart of the city. Everything is fine, because it was masked in the name of the development. Shouldn't the development be an inclusive plan? We are just cutting down the interconnections and breaking the cycles, which we are not realizing right now. This is not a sustainable development, we are cutting ourselves out of the cycle and nature is powerful enough to run without us, we are the ones who will suffer.

News coverage - The Hindu, TOI

The sad sight of the tree felling at Padil

Quoting one of Tagore’s poem from ‘The Gardener’ -

"I plucked your flower, O world!

I pressed it to my heart and the thorn pricked.

When the day waned and it darkened, I found that

the flower had faded, but the pain remained."

We have assumed that the world is ours and have been plucking all the flowers out of it. We cannot pluck all the flowers from the world, it will hurt us back someday for sure.

It is high time to act, no matter how small but should be a sensible act. We haven't lost all our human nature yet, it is just shadowed by an illusion. I am sure we can all connect back to the natural systems and realize we are part of it. We can all do much better at this!!