Skip to main content

Natural Lessons



Nature can look bizarre sometimes.

It may indeed be bizarre.

Death and life coexist at times.

Life longs to thrive,

not just survive.






Even in the hollow

of a tree trunk

life can be born

and may thrive too.





When there's no nature left
the wild bees may come in hordes
and besiege the concrete jungle
with its synthetic light. 


PS. All three photos were taken today, a very hazy day in Delhi. 

      I'm longing for sunshine.

Comments

  1. Sir, You have shared apt images and the right messages.
    "Give me some sunshine, give me some rain.
    Give me another chance, I wanna grow up once again"- Song from 3 Idiots Movie.
    May we all 'live' rather than 'survive'. - 'Jee le zara' - song from Talaash movie.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Anita, for adding more nuance to the post.

      Living rather than surviving is what really matters. Ironically, we are far richer than our previous generations; yet we haven't learnt to 'live'.

      Delete
  2. As you mentioned Life strives to grow and flourish , paying no heed to resistances...This is one example...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isn't it amazing to see life growing out of dust blown into a tree hollow by the winds?

      Delete
  3. When there's no nature left

    the wild bees may come in hordes

    and besiege the concrete jungle

    with its synthetic light "

    How true..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What a boring world it will be if there are only human beings?

      Delete
  4. Replies
    1. There was not a ray of the Sun in Delhi for the last 3 days, Gowtham. Otherwise, the pics would have been much clearer.

      Delete
  5. "Even in the hollow / of a tree trunk
    life can be born / and may thrive too.
    "

    Beautiful lines, potent message. Somehow the bees convey an image of a cricifix, or is that one?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interestingly, yes, the bees give the image of a cross.

      Delete
  6. Beautiful pictures and equally beautiful words to go along with the pictures, there is so much to learn from these lessons in nature. Thank you for bringing them to us.

    ReplyDelete
  7. True...nature finds it own way in the concrete jungle too :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's nature's way, Pankti. But I'm scared of people who argue about "natural ways" when it comes to many things like homosexuality. Is wearing branded clothes "natural"? Ah, too many things to discuss when it comes to being "natural". But nature has a way of surviving in spite of ridiculous people.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...