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.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anita SabatDecember 21, 2013 at 11:37 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2013 at 8:37 AM

      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. Words KraftDecember 22, 2013 at 8:51 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2013 at 3:28 PM

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

      Delete
  3. PallaviDecember 22, 2013 at 10:28 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2013 at 3:29 PM

      What a boring world it will be if there are only human beings?

      Delete
  4. UnknownDecember 22, 2013 at 11:25 AM

    nice Snap!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2013 at 3:30 PM

      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. umashankarDecember 22, 2013 at 6:00 PM

    "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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 23, 2013 at 8:00 AM

      Interestingly, yes, the bees give the image of a cross.

      Delete
  6. ArtiDecember 23, 2013 at 9:46 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 23, 2013 at 12:53 PM

    My pleasure, Arti.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UnknownDecember 23, 2013 at 5:50 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 23, 2013 at 7:01 PM

      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
47 comments
Read more

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...
18 comments
Read more

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...
7 comments
Read more

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...
11 comments
Read more

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...
14 comments
Read more