Friday 19 June 2015

TO NATURE, WITH LOVE
                                                                                                                     
I had never really loved nature. The thought of it really suffocated me. The tourists seemed vain to me.  The rains bored me. Until I got to experience this:
It was the summer of 2011, a very tantalizing and depressing one, indeed, for I had to take exams after exams. I took my second year Board exams and right after my last paper, with just a single vacation for spending at home, I started taking my coaching classes for the entry tests.
The more depressing thing was that I was not allowed to watch T.V. at all, or use computer. I would be mostly discouraged when I sat in the evening with my family for having mere a cup of tea with them. Life was boring, indeed, and I would sometimes get a feeling of death.
One day, I went to the terrace for some fresh air. It was then I found out some really weird thing on the adjacent tree near the railing. The tree had grown over and the branches touched our railing. At a strong stem near the branch, there were many flies sitting upon one another. It was a very strange sight. I mentioned it to everyone in the dinner and they thought they should have a look at it. When my mother saw it, she told me that they were honey bees. Since I had never seen honey bees like this before, so near, I hadn’t recognized them.
The sight of them would do something to me. They were so much together and formed such a black image that they seemed something like jelly, some semi-solid substance. Many a times, I imagined taking out a  knife and  cutting off this whole compact black mass off the branch. They made me depressed, annoyed, something I can’t put in words. They made me feel severely obsessed and suffocated.
One day my sister and I were looking at this swarm of bees, I told her how I felt about them. She told me not to feel so, and that it was a very good sign, a sign of good omen and luck, or happiness. It was nature’s miracle. I couldn't quite modify my thoughts about this sight, yet I kept observing it at a safe distance every now and then. The bees did nothing of harm or discomfort; rather they did their own work quite peacefully. I became so used to them that it became my habit to check on them. When I got bored of studying, I would go there and watch. It became my sole entertainment then onward, and I would get some change of air as well.
The bees kept growing in number day by day. The mass like thing got so big that it occupied almost the length of an arm. This whole layer of bees was attached to the tree only to the branch in the top, and the rest of the layer hung in the air. It was so big and flexible, that when even the slightest wind blew, it moved. Indeed, it was nature’s miracle!
This went on for about a month. Then one day, out of this very strong habit, I went to the terrace to see the bees. I was so absent-minded that despite I saw that the bees were missing, I didn't respond. I just saw the tree but nothing came into my mind. I resumed my studies, and it was then I realized what I had seen. I quickly went to the terrace again and found out that the tree trunk was as clean as anything. It seemed as if the bees had never even been there. There was no mark on it. The whole swarm of bees had flown somewhere else. It was sad for all of us, especially for me because it was my sole entertainment, and only then did I realize how much I had loved the honeybees, how used to I was.
From then onward, I see God’s art in everything, even in the internal design of a freshly cut tomato, or a fruit or anything else. I have been a sheer fan of rains and cloudy weathers since then. I love meadows, greenery, cleanliness, water and mountains. Nature is miracle! 

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