Sharing my Space with some Natural Claimants

 

Time is frozen in the leafy green verve of a fresh breezy morning. The night blooming jasmine is clad in bright green new set of leaves, after the spell of autumnal detachment when it shed each and every leaf and looked like a brooding old man. Now it's young again and sways to intoxicated gusts of monsoon winds. A beautiful moment gets copied one year down the line. The natives return. It's a spotted munia couple. They are striking rusty brown birds having a chessboard pattern on the breast. They trill even more beautifully.

It's the same branch and the same section of twigs where they had set up a nest last year. I am sure, it's the same couple. If I am right then birds seem to have more fidelity than humans because meantime millions of men and women must have parted ways on bitter notes over trivial, funny things. Well, none of my business to comment on our foolish ways.

I enjoy the making of this irregular globular nest. It's a masterwork in deception. To a predator it would appear like a broken, abandoned nest. In reality, the eggs will be safe in an inner chamber. The father ferries big sinews of grass. He has to pay for his lusty overtures...haa haa. The mother is busy in decorating interiors. She has to pay even bigger for her emotional surrender. Last year, the hatching wasn't successful. A squirrel came—she still does—visiting the tree. She is just a guest, not a resident of the tree. I enjoyed the sight of her old-womanish tiktikking. Little did I know they are egg stealers also! So she must have been the culprit last time.

With this addition to my knowledge about the ways of squirrels, I’m better prepared this time. I will keep an ear for the agitated notes of the little birds to find out the cause of distress, like I did yesterday around noon. Busy in writing, I heard the plightful softest of notes and ran out to find out the squirrel scouting around the new house in making. Recalling the last year episode, I chased it away, lost my meditative balance also by the way. What to do? Have to support the underdogs. She is no longer a welcome guest. A birdie life saved is more important than a squirrel missing a meal. It seems so at least till I cross the final hurdles to beat the paradoxical plays of duality to see everything in the same way. Well, till then the squirrel has a tough time I tell you.

The spotted munia is a little docile bird that can manage faintly trilling notes even at its agitated most. Wait, the tree cannot miss its typical birdie song and dance. They co-share the little tree with a pair of tailorbird who have crafted a masterwork by stitching leaves to make a nest cup. They shout pretty loudly for their size. So the tree is under double occupancy. I hope they don’t start fighting like cantankerous humans in residential colonies.

I am determined on my mission born of emotions for the underdogs. If it results even in a bump on the lined back of the irritating tiktikking nuisance, whom I found cute earlier but now find a villain due to the addition to my knowledge, I hardly care. I have turned mean in following my basic instincts guiding my emotions for the beautiful birds. I know it will play truant many times. I am but ready for the job. I have a weapon also in mind to punish it with. In fact, I have taken out a flexible single strand of switch from my mother's bamboo broom. It's waiting for the culprit. Though it won't harm the squirrel critically, but I see it can definitely give her a painful back, if she messes with my birdie friends. All the best little couples. Let there be a successful episode in your love tale.

Things appear pretty normal with the usual humdrum till there is an itchy-tailed intruder on the scene. There is a literal blast of chirpy protests against this unsolicited visit. The bully, a male Indian Robin with rusty red rump and its itchy tail flicking, arrives on the tree. Probably it has not so fair intentions, otherwise why would the hosts raise such a storm of choicest abuses against the intruder. The tailorbird pair, half the size of the intruder, can fight—verbally of course—with more tenacity than even the most cantankerous aunty in your neighborhood. Their shrill notes have sharp talons man. What proficiency in quarreling!

Well, they have a right to do it. After all, they own this tree under the birdie constitution. They have their nest sewn up among three leaves. The tree belongs to them, of course. Even I, whose courtyard happens to keep rooting of the tree, have surrendered my rights of ownership after witnessing their vehement show of abusive lung power in protest against any effort to prune even those branches that are well away from their little nest and are of inconvenience to me. But then I can't match their quarrelsome capacity, so I have resigned myself to the fate of my face and head getting some brush against the irksome caressing of the branches. What to do? They own it completely as long as they have their family here.

The spotted munia couple also try to contribute to the protest, but the cute chocolate brown little beauties having chess pattern on their breast have such feeble jingling notes that you can't even make out their contribution to the noisy protest. It's like their sitar notes get lost in the humungous, buttock-busting notes of the biggest drums in the loudest discotheque in the maddest part of the world. Anyway, they also protest and flick from branch to branch. It pays to have quarrelsome neighbors sometimes. Isn't it? So the bully gets intimated. He flows away with a jarring note of typical chhhrrr accompanied by its ever-flicking tail.

These four residents of the small Parijat tree also throw expletives on the baddy squirrel who tries to get away with their eggs. However, she stands little chance as long as these noisy defenders are there. Agreed that they can't physically chase the fur-lined snoutish nuisance, but their verbal fight draws my attention sometimes and I go to add resources to the defending army. The very same age-old instinct to be with the underdogs! By the way, sometimes even a pair of purple sunbirds, the male's metallic blue sheen looking over the mundane dull colors of the female, joins the protests. A pair of oriental white eye, their notes hardly distinct among the commotion, also arrives on the scene. But they make bigger statements with their beautiful white-ringed eyes and flit with their square tails from branch to branch. Once in a while, even the most garrulous babblers also join the protesting chorus, thinking there must be a bigger common enemy to all, for example a snake. However, when they find that these tiny birds are overhyping the threat over almost a non-issue, they just take off angrily.

But man at least you expect a bit of reciprocation for your help. The other day, I am removing some wild growth in a corner away from the tree and there go these tailor birds again throwing choicest abuses in their birdie language. I even feel irritated. I have even surrendered my right to the tree and now you don't want me to touch anything in the whole yard, I whisper to myself. So now I am open to the idea that they have at least equal right over the courtyard also. What to do? These tiny, shrill loudspeakers can definitely send down jarring notes when they are angry!

In any case, it’s my gain. Once you learn to share these things with the natural claimants, life and living becomes easier. There will hardly be any big issues with a person who has learnt to let small birds and animals have their share of the environment around.

Read the Unwritten Stories

 

Sometimes reading the unwritten stories presented by mother earth can give more satisfaction than the tomes of tales we read in books.

There is a little story of an abandoned nest.

It is a little tale of refurbishing an old nest and the story of birdie care. Well, not all abandoned nests go unnoticed. While the rains lashed in August and September, a scaly-breasted munia pair (spice finch or nutmeg mannikin) set up an irregular, oval nest of grass and straw lined with feathers and strands of cotton wool. The cycle was completed and the hatchlings flew to take their chance on life on the tightrope of creation and destruction. The parents, however, are known to use the dormitory off and on while on the way in their birdie sorties. I see them a few times sneaking in for a restful night.

The nest stands jolted after more than a month since the nestlings left. The rains and wind shook it. But then the old house is still fit enough to catch the eyes of a pair of white-throated munia (Indian silverbill) who are a bit lazy and sociable little beauties open to move into the used house. They have white throat running from beak to undertail, brown plumage and blue grey beak. So letting swift chirrup trill, the lady on house hunting is seen inspecting the rain-lashed nest, evaluating how much of refurbishment might be required.

Quite incidentally, the original house-owner, scaly-breasted munia, also happens to be there on a nearby branch. Perhaps it has come for some noontime nap. The silent and peaceful bird with bright cinnamon head, full brown plumage and scaly patterns on breast just looks on pensively. Possibly it understands that laying eggs by someone is more important than her sleep. So guys, there is no fight. It just looks at the would-be-mother with a strange detachment and allows the inspection of her former house. Hope we humans can learn something from these birdie guys.

Don’t you feel that primarily love is ingrained in the photons of the cosmic energy pervading around?

Empathy, Solitude and Love

 

Feeling lonely? Solitude is somewhere in the same garden. With a lonely feeling you are depressed, which perilously borders on being destructive. Solitude, on the other hand, is creative. There is an art of changing your loneliness into solitude. You can even start with a peacock like I tell you.

Finding it difficult to empathize with fellow human beings due to many setbacks and disappointments? Well, don’t feel too low. Start with nature and its constituents who have been pushed to the corner due to our onslaught. Empathy is the mother of compassionate self. Nurture her well, and she will deliver a healthy, kind and considerate baby. As a gift you hardly get brooding moments to feel lonely.

Instead of just killing time, and as a result kill my own prospects to being better, I willingly sympathize with the evening guest, even though he won't have tea. I accept my share of the collective sins against Mother Nature. This very acknowledgment lays the first brick of the building of redemption. The biggest of trees sprout from the smallest of seeds. Similarly, mightiest salvations, and resultant boons, rewards and achievements, begin from tiny sensitivities. Sounds miraculous? Well, not to me, because I understand that they make up the persona over all. With the warmth of empathy, my solitude turns full of love.

I see groups of peacocks and peahens on rooftops and terraces foraging for survival in the concrete jungle. Farmlands cover almost all the countryside now. And there are hardly any reptiles and insects to feed upon. Landholding is decreasing. Population is increasing. Agriculture is becoming unviable. More and more chemicals are used to increase production. Commerce sees only the outstanding stats of production and profit-loss equation in financial terms. It overlooks the shadows under the shiny lamp where ecological destruction is writing newer and newer tragic tales. Chemicals give diseases to humans in the medium turn, but they kill reptiles and insects straightway. So where will the peacocks go? They take refuge in the concrete jungle. Ironically, almost every species now stands at the mercy of we human beings.

Well, the winter is slowly building up and the sunrays are losing their pinch. And the moment they lose their hot potency, your skin pines for a warm kiss. Welcome early winters! I have been writing for my blog almost through the day. Then feeling tired I decide to move around to take a tea break in the evening. And here comes the guy, the bald Romeo who has shed his plumage hence bothered more about food than peahens. No spare chapati, his favorite, this evening. So I offer biscuits. He takes a few unwelcoming bites. I try wheat grains. Lo, here he is savoring his evening snack. But I feel sad that he cannot have tea and be my tea party partner.

He has learnt the lesson: to survive you are at the mercy of humans. With his natural feeding ground, the countryside, turning into a chemical bowl of monoculture where poison kills insects, rodents and reptiles immediately in the fields—and humans also, slowly over a period of time as the toxicants enter the food chain and punish we humans for our collective sins—this beautiful multicolored wonder of mother nature enters houses, beating its natural fear of the two-footed most dangerous animal on the planet, and stands there like a well decorated beggar. What else to do? No option left.

The struggling farmers pour chemicals, pesticides and weedicides in the fields. Nothing is thus left for this free forager in the open countryside. So it lands on terraces and yards to get survival morsels. Sometimes when its hunger is unbeatable, it follows people well into their rooms, like a cute kid hankering after elders for chocolate. The last time it came, it had a huge bunch of shining and shimmering plumage, just on the verge of shedding it away. I could hear my mother requesting, "Arre pagal pankh hamare ghar gira ke Jaana!"

However, in this he is the master of his own will. So here comes the colorful Romeo without his burden. He has shed his plumage and looks like a nimble, flirtatious teenager. Moves freely, flies with lesser effort. But it comes at the cost of love. Peahens won't give him a damn look without his decoration. And of course my mother is angry that he didn't shed even a single feather in our yard. "Go to them whom you gave your feathers!" The poor thing gets reprimanded. She starts with her household chores, but not before handing over a chapatti (so it was there after all; or mothers have better eyes than sons in these regards) to me to honor the colorful guest.

With a sad smile on my face, I look at the guest eating the chapatti pieces. Possibly we have already done irreversible damage to the ecosystem. But then there is always hope as long as one sees such colorful wonder of Mother Nature. I decide to be happy and hopeful as it completes it belated lunch. Stretches and shakes its shortened plumage as a mark of contentment and majestically moves to the far end of the yard where it can spot a bucket of water. It always takes water after the meals, by the way. Cornered in a tiny eco-space, it may well be the last in its lineage, but then the sight is so beautiful that all the doomsday scenarios get dispelled. I smile with a contended feeling as it hops onto the wall and goes away.   

So brother and sisters, life is lying around in countless forms for us to provide a bit of meaning to our own self. It has unlimited potential to give love; has limits for our greed though. Go, pick up the small wares and build the palace of your happiness.

My Mom is still there to help us!

 

Ma is still around and taking care of us even though she left her body almost two and half years ago. The other day, one of my aunties in our extended family lost her gold earring. Now it’s a catastrophe for a woman to lose her gold ornament. Apart from the economic loss, they take it as a bad omen also. Give her two for her lost gold piece, she but will still be sad and sullen about the lost one. My aunt is a very hardworking woman. She has a set-up routine of household chores like my mother had. Aunty gets up early and her day involves morning walk in the fields around the village, visit to the temple, many rounds around the cattle barn at a distance from the house and the rest of the routine tasks in their sprawling countryside house. Given her large area of movement over the dusty village streets, even to think of pinpointing some specific location where the probability of finding the earring was higher than others seemed a futile exercise. She and the family looked into all nook corners of the house. The temple premises were scanned and so were the streets and paths where she had walked on that day. Much disturbed auntie tried to sleep at night but sleep was nowhere nearby. She was in tension. Around half past three in the morning, she got a short span of sleep and my mother appeared in her dream. Auntie says my mother was seen brooming the streets on the side of the house and the little square falling on the other side of our house. Mother always cleaned the surroundings after cleaning the house. Young women less than half her age won’t even think of cleaning the neighbourhood streets for others to walk. But that’s how mother was. She lived a life that wasn’t strictly chained by mine or your boundaries. Cleaning the street in front of the house, mother said to auntie, ‘Don’t take so much of tension. Now go to sleep peacefully. You will find your gold earring. It’s lying near the platform fronting the street in front of our house. There is a splinter of bamboo near it.’ Well, around eight in the morning auntie recalled the dream and went out to the said place. The earring was found exactly at the place mother had indicated. Just imagine dozens of people had been passing the spot and nobody spotted it. But nothing can miss a mother’s eyes. She is still around, keeping a watch over the proceedings of our follies from a higher dimension.  

The Path Leading to Silence and Solitude

 

Some sweetly humid moments on a rainy day in the countryside can provide more solace than biggest joyrides in concrete jungles. Nature’s bounties guys. Accept the offer. Like I do. It enriches you with observation, understanding, realization and glimpses of the ultimate truth.

There is a mystical silence behind all this little drama. The pathway to that zone of silence is through this amazing thoroughfare. Take your journey through it. You will reach the point of your solitude. There you will see your true self, the real loving self. I for one never miss a chance to allow the sonorous cooing touch the strings of my soul and feel the mystical harmony sizzling through my heart.

Life is never greener and more colorful in my small yard than during the monsoons: luxurious green of harsingar, motia, jasmine, duranta, guava, kari patta, tulsi, murva and the ubiquitous sadabahar blooming out of proportion. Well, the rains have been good. Butterflies dart around, flirting with flowers and their mates amid airy swirls. Even the irritatingly prickly and boring keekars are luxurious green like a new bride.

There are more birds breeding in the safe and overgrown greenery. I can even see a kite hovering in silent, serene majesty, its wings spread out in embracing comfort of Mother Nature. Even in the countryside the sight has become a rarity and I cannot remember many during the past decade. So it's a positive sign for the birdie world.

There are two pairs of oriental magpie robins chhrrring around. A treepie gives its strangely sweet ululation. A pair of Asian pied starling muses from the electricity line. A white wagtail flicks its tail and gives a sharp preening shriek of ecstasy as it picks up some insect from the ground. A group of bee-eaters dart and free-dive after the flies going footloose in the open skies. A bee-eater sits silently and swoops suddenly to catch a dragonfly. It then sits on a dry mulberry branch, the prey bigger for its beak, thinking over what to do now. It then starts beating the struggling pray on the branch, striking its beak on both sides by rhythmically moving its neck sideways. It appears more like bird yoga.

The bulbul family is still around, improvising newer and newer calls. The mother bulbul is very possessive of its offspring and entails it all the time. The wire-tailed swallow family is often seen with their swift dives and faint chipping sounds. There are lots of flying insects. So the young fellows are being fed well. Tiny tailor-bird tweets with the best effect among all. A lovelorn male Indian Robin is persistently sending love notes to attract a mate. The other day, it was drizzling and the lonely bird kept sitting on a high dry branch in the rain and continued with its pining notes. Well, let's hope lady luck smiles on it soon.

The unperturbed stoicism of the dove pair is inspiring to a meditator like me. The babblers and crows are noisy though. The stern looking mynah always appears with an air of aloof, single point focus on her own affairs. Another pair of spotted munia has set up a new nest in the Parijat tree's upper branches.

So the slow pace of life unfolds in its rustic majesty in the countryside. Then to top it all, there are the love notes of the lonely oriental magpie robin. Beautiful symphony of monsoonal love notes. The long drawn love notes are flying in air to catch the attention of an interested female. The guy is so absorbed in his love search that I reach just 3 feet from it. Only then it realizes that there are more important things than love and irritatingly flows away to continue its mate-searching song from a nearby tree.

Each moment is precious. Each instant is full of endless possibilities. Come on, try to observe all that is happening in such little moments. You will soon realize the richness of time. You will learn the art of getting the maximum of each single moment without feeling hurried and burdened with the daunting task. A natural effortlessness will seep into your way of doing things. But for all this to happen, you have to open your arms to the little wonders of life. These are the atoms that constitute the bigger dreams around.

The Fort-maker on a Rainy Day

 

Looking at the blisters on your hands as you slog out and feel like carrying the burden of the whole existence? Wait! Everything and everyone from the mightiest to the lowest is entitled to this feeling. We are doing things because rest of others are also busy with the same tons of sweat. Problem is we put too much of pondering over even the smallest of things that must be simply followed in a natural sequence. It saves energy for the pleasant aesthetics of life. Love and consideration are simply flowers in the garden of aesthetic sense.

I see a fort-maker on a rainy day, and all my extra sense of being a tireless worker scampers off. It has all the fundamentals of making a big human fort on the hilltop. Watching it I get to realize how endowed we humans are as a part of society and civilization, where our collective self guarantees so many entitlements and conveniences. A tiny insect on the other hand braves it all alone. It makes me feel protected and pampered. I feel gratitude. And gratitude is the loving buddy of your compassionate self.

Existence weaves the web of creation with endless patience and infinite diligence. Both are same by the way, not contradictory.

It's hot and humid, the sun sweltering over rain-lashed earth. There is a well-digger in my yard, sweating it out since early morning. The sand-wasp works more efficiently than a human earth-mover. No noise, no pollution. Simply going in and coming out in reverse with a sand-ball tucked between its snout and the foreleg pair that it uses with the efficiency of hands. And freshly hued damp yellow sand growing up like a tiny mound. It appears as a hill of its efforts. 

It's unmindful of me taking a picture from a close quarter. Given its single-minded focus, I wonder I may have a tiny hill and a spring—because water table is very high in rainy season—in my yard. Best of luck well-digger! But please don't dig too deep to make a hole for a small snake to fit in.

On further enquiries I find it's a friendly insect, doesn't aggressively bite like bees. Now I see why it's unmindful of my presence so near its sandy altar. It also preys upon mosquitoes and houseflies. So continue bro, dig a long tunnel for your larvae and then prey upon our common enemies. In full support with you! Cheers!

Now I see it closing the gates of its fort, for new life, new cycle. While closing the gates, it takes a few breakfasty bites at a couple of ants also. Possibly it has missed breakfast today. After closing the gates, it hovers over the mound with the elated buzz of a triumphant US military hawk helicopter. The fort-maker then scraps a depression around the freshly dug cave-mouth to close it temporarily. Possibly it is meant to, I am not sure, guard the site during its absence. It is then gone for the time. Not to loiter around, I am sure. There is something in store in its scheme, which I cannot understand at the moment.

And I am proven right. It's never chalta hai attitude in nature, unlike humans who take shortcuts and apartments and bridges collapse. The sand-wasp went out to get some preys that it collects nearby under the windfallen leaves. To keep its hole safe and guarded in its absence, it puts up a temporary earthwork by its opening. Coming back, it removes the part-time gate and gets into business again. It will lay eggs and leave food there. The larvae will eat, grow big and pop out into the world.

So that turns out to be its modus operandi: closing the fortress temporarily, digging an oblong depression around the opening, leaving the scene, and come back again after a couple of hours to start the task again.

In the afternoon it rains cats and dogs. A furious rainstorm jolts even robust farmers and big trees. After the storm I see the site lashed by rains, the small depression around the opening filled with sand and the sand mound washed away. I think it is over. In such a stormy blizzard, the little insect must have been blown away to a far place, I guess. Or most probably it is even dead.

However, the tough taskmaster shows that it is still around despite the storm. Back to business after the floods! The next day, I see again the trademark little depression around the hole’s mouth and gates temporarily shut. Well done! You teach me a big lesson in perseverance. I feel humble, and feel that everyone out there is doing his/her duties. A stone is lifted off my heart. It feels light. It then soars high to draw big swigs of happiness and contentment.

Isn’t everything around perspiring to pursue its destiny? So don’t feel burdened unnecessarily because that’s how things are all around.  

Love Spiced with Curry Leaves

 

Sigmund Freud: “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”

A bit scary warning by the great reader of mind! Isn’t it?

Well, suffering and love happen to be defined almost synonymously. Most often heartbreaks, anxiety, depression and tears are the recurring speed bumps on the so called love-road. These appear inevitable because the way love has been defined in human relationships, it draws its sustenance from our needs, to fill up our vacuums, by taking something from the other. It's more of dependence, and less of sharing.

We try to love people in the same way we like our things. Suppose you have a chair in your room. Now you have every right to keep your permanent expectations from it because it cannot move of its own will. You can position it at the place of your liking and expect it to be there till you change your mind. Unfortunately, this very expectation crosses over from the lifeless to the sentient beings around. But then the living beings have their free will, they move, they change, they evolve. This change appears a betrayal against the fixed pole of our expectations. No wonder we feel pain.

We just presume relationships to guarantee love. We try and exclude others from the shower of our caring selves, taking it to be a duty for the exclusive people in our life, who are in turn duty-bound to not only reciprocate but return it with full interest. No wonder, we develop sharp edges to our persona in the effort. It hurts as much others as it does to our own selves.

There is a silent language of love and care in nature. Learn from it. It will broaden the horizons for you to spread yourself. And mind you, more space gives freedom only. It opens you up. The seed of compassion in you needs certain nurturing. It’s a matter of some practice. Learn from nature. Observe the love tales going on unsung around.

For example, I enjoy the love spiced with curry leaves.

Love is spiced with curry leaves. Love, love, love on the small kari patta (curry leaves) tree. The tree with aromatic leaflets adds a delicious aroma to various curries. It further adds taste to the precious moments of this tiny bird couple, a cute pair of oriental white eye, tiny, 8-9 cm, olive green birds with a distinct white eye-ring and yellowish underparts.

They pollinate flowers as they visit for insects, make a soft nasal cheer and love to bathe in dew and water on the leaves. What a beautiful summary of the feathered life! If we cannot spot godliness in such things, I have doubts about we getting it in mammoth size and forms.

In the afternoons, I spray water on the small tree, and they usually come and take a rubbing bath against wet leaves, prancing around, twitching their square tails, flapping their greenish-yellow coats. Then they peck and cuddle each other with their slender, pointed, slightly curved bills. Love is never enough. They raise their little heads in supreme abandonment, while the partner is busy cuddling the fur with its beak. Goosebumps, all pleasing and tinkling!

Let there be wars, hate, jealousy and bigger human issues around. Here they are, etching out a tiny, colorful love tale, with small dreams of a nest in their beautiful white-ringed eyes. They really love this afternoon bathing by the way. I have to spray water so that they don't miss it.

There are more important things to attend as well. After the lovey-dovey moments, they hunt gregariously among the foliage for insects and take sips of nectar from the over-blooming sadabahar flowers around. And of course in between are their softly jingling conversational notes, possibly taking birdie jibes at human follies of wasting time and energy in unnecessary hassles, while all that is needed is just to be in league with Mother Nature and get uncountable showers of happiness by default, as a rule of nature.

Play your Part on the Small Stage of Nature

 

In the pursuit of greater glories and bigger goals, we often fall faceward, hitting our nose in the dust. We have beautiful small eyes. They are not meant to capture the biggest shots reaching eternity. There are little points in nature possessing the summaries of the real meanings of life. Keep yourself open to such great learning provided by the unassuming teachress.

A huge megamall under construction will leave you with a sooty awe, making you feel trivial. The self-emerging pattern of nature through a 5-gram super-worker, on the other hand, will teach you the basics of building, in a charming, aesthetic way. It will not trivialize you. You will retain your smile as you muse over the tiny miracle. Like I do.

I have seen mammoth buildings under construction and small nests in making. Believe me basics are just the same. It’s merely piecing together the material in a diligent way.

I see a new home in making, the fabulous work of a small pair of greenish white-eyed wonder. A tiny hammock fixed to jasmine leaves. It’s a perfect mix of natural and human merchandise involving thin strands of fiber, cobwebs, threads, grass and rootlets. The olive-backed sunbirds succeeded in a coup, in that I could not spot the nest, but not this one. I have spotted ha ha.

Don't you think there is a supreme consciousness, sort of cosmic intelligence, which pervades across species and phenomena all over the universe, driving all of us knowing unknowing to the actualization of little, little milestones in the river that life is?

The owners are unbelievably agile and dart off at bullet speed, cocking snook at my amateur efforts to have them as models for my funny photography. So I give in. Also their tweets from a neighboring tree have started to sound abusive. Feeling a Gatecrasher, I just take my nose out of their affair. Anyway, best of luck you little oriental white eyes!

The story then moves on to end on a tragic note. These are mere happenings in the lap of Mother Nature. It’s we who define them as agonies or ecstasies as per our calculations. Nature has counter points, otherwise the game of creation will fall off its track.

Oriental white eye is just 10 cm long, square-tailed, greenish bird with a significant white ring around the eyes. The nest has been firmly glued like a tiny hammock cup, joining three broad leaves, making a cozy home of fibers. The lady is seen sitting most of the time. Its white ringed eye visible under the leaf canopy. All seems well. It appears too small a world to be noticed by predators. With their slender pointed bills, they flit across the branches to enjoy flower nectar, guavas and tiny ants. In league with the song of life, they make feeble jingling notes to add to the ultimate melody.

Then arrives the counter point, Greater Coucal, the clumsy, black bird with chestnut wings. I hear its deeply resonant coop coop coop coop in the morning. It is loitering around in the cluster of trees where our Bulbuls have their little one to be trained for bigger flights. I don't think it is catchable anymore.

Coucal steals eggs and feeds on lizards and tiny mice. It is very clumsily sticky on the ground. I chase it away. It flows away very unwillingly. God knows how it has spotted the tiny cup of the white eye. So there it is again in the afternoon. I hear the flapping of feathers and see it sneaking out like an expert thief. The tiny parents just give very feeble, jingling notes that hardly escape out of the shrub. I check the tiny cup nest. It is empty and feel very sad for the little creatures.

Greed is bad. After a couple of hours, I hear the panicked noted of the little birds and go out to see the greedy thief stuck to the leaves poking into the cup for more. It is so engrossed that it doesn’t mind me approaching at all. Well it's truly lousy. A thief has to be watchful. The height is just at a suitable range with my raised hand. Well, I have all the chance to kill it in one big swipe. But then you can not engage with a bird at your own human level. That isn't fair, even if it has committed a crime. To Mother Nature it's no crime. And I don’t want to be a murderer. So I use only that much force that would make it really painful for a bird of that size, without permanent disability. So here I go. It falls down, and takes to airs with a seriously painful shriek.

Well, the only take away of my strike can be that it may not dare to come again to poke into the nest of spotted munia just above on the tree. I hope so. I expect him to learn a lesson or two. I know I shouldn't interfere in the scheme of nature. But then these birds are my friends on the grounds that my courtyard has the trees that they own on account of their nests, so I use my rights to interfere.

All in all, it sets a small stage where I can engage in a harmless way. Given our over-greedy, predatory approach to life, there is hardly anything in our endeavors that doesn’t border on excesses against nature. So I really cherish such mild engagements. It defangs me of my villainy as a modern human being. Definitely it feels good.

Our hearts need nourishment. We have all been pumping iron in the mind. But then our sensitivities get starved. We miss being humane. Seriously we do. So guys play your part in such tiny plays of nature. Beyond betrayals, hate and jealousies, it will bring a smile on your lips. And long before you realize, you become a considerate and kind human being. A great reward in its own way, I tell you. 

Have your Plate Full from Nature’s Buffet

 

This sun shines as much for you as it does for a little bird, say for a mother spotted munia. Heighten your sensitivities. It will turn you more humane and considerate. It serves as almost milk and almonds for your loving self I tell you. There are certain love-drenched moments in Mother Nature when beauty and love is showering. Be there to get a cooling, healing shower.

These spectacles are so overpowering that even after a period of months they stand out with their lovely milestone. Such memories are a bulwark against negative emotions. They shift them off the floor and take firm roots. You simply smile in return, like I do over a lilting memory. And believe me there is a smile on my face as I again dip into those moments and tell the tiny memoir. I feel so alive.

It’s a perfectly rain-lashed day. With excess of rains the day appears even gloomy dark. But then the skies relent for some time in early afternoon. The lady takes a break from providing warmth to give shape to the formless liquid in her eggs. The evening is laden with drizzling moments. After the day-long watery bonanza, the sun casts a momentary glance to find out how much more water may be needed. A pale yellow streak spreads under the black curtain of clouds.

The spotted munia comes out and sits pensively by her hut. It’s a smart, suave chocolate brown bird of the size of common house sparrow. It carries its white and black speckled underparts with a good fashion statement. She utters feeble chirrups. The nest is a disorderly globular structure, possibly to confuse predators, with a semi-closed entrance hole. There are eggs under incubation. Probably she has come out to enjoy the rain-soaked evening with a silver lining.

There are hatchlings! I can hear some distinctive frail notes. The nest is a masterwork in deception. The outer rag-tag globular structure, having the main entry hole, gives the look of an abandoned nest. The real seat of residence lies in a safer cocoon inside. I remember a curious squirrel enquiringly snoozing by the hole. It sneaked in and came out on the other side of the loose top ends. The little ones didn't so much as even come out of their sleep. Or they prefer to remain mum in Mom's absence. Hail cosmic intelligence. The flawless fabric!

There are further birdie colors behind grey dark skies and tiny wire-tailed swallows flanked by their parents arrive on the scene. A wire-tailed swallow couple arrives with their little ones. The babies are out to be handsome men and women. They fly swiftly but are yet to get the wires in their tales like their parents. Ma and Pa are swiftly darting in the overcast skies to catch midges and flies to feed the little ones. Parental duties going on swiftly, as usual, just like in every nook corner of earth.

The birds are so colorful: glossy steel blue above, chestnut patch on head and glistening white underparts. Well, it's always a better world with more and more birds around. A shikra, crow-sized hawk, is seen around. The parents dart around and send warning whistles. Within a minute, dozens of swallows arrive on the scene and rush about in their majestically free ways to confuse the transgressor. They are always there for each other, without fail, despite fight, quarrels and brawls for midges. They never betray their instincts of love and care for each other. The stately Papa (like typical males, he is braggish with a longer wire tail) gives a picture of poise and confidence. The mother (as they are always, busy) hovering above. The happy family!

Now to take it a bit closer to the crawly human world, sad pink-bum, the big intimidating monkey, is also around. I politely refuse him guava from my small tree because last time he nearly dislodged it. This chap is too hefty, as broad-backed as a man. So he smirks from the neem tree and doesn't give a good pause to click him. It sadly looks at the raw guavas. Last time he picked them raw and then threw these like grenades. The way he is looking at them, I'm sure he will return. In mild irritation, it takes a swipe at a crow that comes to perch too near for its dignity. By the way his bum is super-pink! This color is the pick of the day.

Well, don’t you think such memories suffuse your heart with a mystical happiness? It’s a sweet disinfectant to chase away the bugs of nagging memories that fuel regrets, anger and jealousies. So have your plate full from the delicacies ever ready in nature around you. They exist forever, just that we need to have eyes to define them for suitable meanings about life and living.

Accept Change and Impermanence and Turn Sweeter

 

One of the biggest factors of bitterness in life, and hence an anti-dote to a sweet and loving self, is our inability to come to terms with the changes in our life. Positive changes we ignore and negatives are picked up by our haunted mind to get us dispirited and depressed. There is nothing permanent except the change. Let us come to terms with the shifting stage of life.

Randy Pausch: “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the game.”

As you realize that change as such cannot be avoided, we can at least learn to refit our sails to pursue our journey. Acceptance of change makes adjustments and alteration in attitude easier.

As you accept and adjust to the changes in your life, you can go a bit softer on your expectations from your own self. Don’t worry, it’s not going to turn you lazier. You will just become more realistic.

Your best isn't same under different circumstances. Your best in old age isn't the same as in youth. Best is simply best. Bitterness arises where you compare your best in old age to your best in youth. Understanding impermanence in real sense will help you in managing the agents of bitterness that breed regrets and self-criticism. As your situational boat gets tossed by changing circumstances, you can be your best help by avoiding negative self-judgment.

Keen insights into the law of impermanence provide a sweet wisdom about life. You simply cut on your suffering by avoiding guilt and heart-burn, as you have a more realistic assessment of your placement in life. You cut down on the feeling of loss as you realize that the so called losses were just meant to be simple effects of the unavoidable changes of life.

Nature is abounding with the proofs of the rule of impermanence. At each step you find tell tale signs of change. I use a very simple technique drawn from nature to strike home the point.

 To nail home the biggest truth about life—change and impermanence—I gather freest flowers of night blooming jasmine on a dewy winter morning. They are full of life and fragrance. I keep them on my desk from 7 AM in morning to 7 AM the next day. Twenty-four hours of change strike home the ultimate truth. Things exist just as interludes in the cycle of transformation: from armful to fistful...from coquettish smile to crumbling grimace...from the skies to the ground...from running to rest. It’s a very simple Zen technique to stamp home the biggest truth that we tend to forget while we boast, fret, fume and stomp on the stage of life.

As the grains of time's sand slip through your fist, be happy, enjoy, smile, love and care for those around, so that when you look back from your mound of dust you find it meaningful.

The Wicked Googly by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

 Amazon.com link for The Wicked Googly by Sandeep Dahiya

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This is the journey of a common man during one of the most difficult phases in the modern history. Corona stole many a smile from us. There were individual pains swaddled in collective miseries. But then we have to walk through the fog to reach the sunny slopes. And we did. Many of us fell on the way. It's in remembrance of those who co...

The Shadows of Love by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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...and finally the sun has to smile to drive away the particles of darkness clinging to the twilight mist, for life, for love, for happiness... These are the stories of hope, resilience, courage and conviction.

(Sufi) Sandeep Dahiya is the author of about a dozen books. His works carry murmurs of gentility and tender aroma of small things in life. He is charming, poetic and generous in his views about life and living. Sandeep elegantly portrays little things that have a big role in making our lives joyful. His writings are an eclectic blend of witty charm, experienced softness and scented receptivity. Not to forget that he writes with intelligence and insight. His characters are wry, insightful, whimsical, lively as well as funny.

Ice Cubes on Desert Sands by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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There is no separate story. Stories weave into each other like a well-spun fabric. Stories are like rivers, ever flowing, existing yet not existing, shifting still static, different and similar at the same time. The pieces. The patchwork. Stories within The Story. Yours and mine. Be the princess of your story. The seed in you carries the potential to be the tallest, luxuriant-most tree. The powerful force of creation propels the potential for maximization. Nature doesn’t want it to be a world of half-smiles, half-growths, half-blossoms and half-potential. There is a tendency for fullness. It pulls the process of evolution for the maximum, for completion, for what we call greatness. O my mind, my seat of potentiality, take my journey further. Be the seat of my strength, not weakness, Be the seat of kindness, not cruelty, Be the source of light, not darkness. You, me and all of us are born for the stories of greatness. Let’s share our stories to see through the journey. Please give me company while I tell a few stories!

Lovebites by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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Without the seed of poetry there won't be any prose. Just like without the tiny seed there won't be a tree. The canopy, the full foliage of the tree, is just an extension of the dream lying with its realistic potential inside the small seed. The elaborate network of trunks, branches, twigs, flowers, fruits and leaves is nothing but a commentary on the small poetic seed. So all ye wannabe writers of a good life story, nurture the poet in you, who understands the value of pause in life, who moves slowly to watch everything, sight and smell everything. Whose senses are open to the inclusive interplay of wonderful harmonies of the supreme song, the universe, the one song.

The Spiked Coffin by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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Millennium after millennium we have fought against real animals in the forests and later against our imagined enemies larger than any animal on earth to make bigger and bigger weapons, wasting our precious resources in its wake. The chink in the armor is glaring now: Our unpreparedness to fight against the 'small'. Corona teaches us a bitter lesson.

Is there any solution? Of course there is: Instead of pushing the stage of creation into a corner, from where it decides to launch a fusillade through nano-arrows, learn to balance things in all walks of life. Don't push nature too far into a corner. It always has the option to hit back. It may not be able to hit tangibly in the form of a dinosaur, it can but surely do the same through invisible Corona and many more.

There is a reason why we have pushed mother earth too far into the corner. It's our intra-Homo sapiens rivalry. Earlier we fought as the weak Homo sapiens who had to band together against physically far superior species. Now those threats are gone. So drop your weapons my dear ever-scared jungle man. We are almost biologically molded to keep fighting now after millions of years of fear and insecurity. Saving other remaining species from extinction is important, but far more important is to stop the virtual fear driven animosity among nations build upon false assumptions of ideologies, faiths and beliefs.

The Lust of Life by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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Plato: "Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."

And as love caresses you, you are supposed to turn a poet. And your life a poem. A life lived poetically nourishes your soul. The prose approach to life is simply to earn the conveniences to support you materially.

The brushstrokes of poetry softly touch the soul without disrupting its restful muse and bring out the nuggets of love, compassion, harmony and peace. If you are poetic in nature, you have the potential to be anything because all these elaborate extensions of your life, your dreams, your professional and personal goals, your milestones, the world around you, all these and more are nothing but a reflection of that poetic pure seed.

Mists on the Moon by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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Charles Dickens says the trifles make the sum of life. So don't be too serious about anything in life.

These are little tales of humour and humanity. Elegant, tender and meandering through common occurrences in the life of ordinary people, these tales convey the timeless principles of humanity. The stories carry delicately poignant messages. The characters possess winning humour and show the colours of friendship, love, affection and care. There are lessons on practical philosophy also. All in all, the work is meant to give the readers a pleasant escape from the harder side of life.

The Bread of Stones by Sandeep Dahiya available at Amazon.com

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The Bread of Stones tries to convey the message that ordinary beings possess extraordinary potential to win against odds, to jump over hurdles, to smile over tears, and, most importantly, to be happy when there aren't enough reasons to be. They are the faceless constituents of a massive commonality. They are surrounded by a swiping generality. They are coloured in the monochromes of mundane reality. Still they are special. We have to acknowledge and celebrate the extraordinary in the ordinary people. I see heroes and heroines in my simple characters. They fight, and oftentimes fail, but write a little passage in the infinite book of life: an ordinary life that was lived substantially. On the small stage of life, they live very intensely. Somehow, the world would not be the world that is still beautiful without their contribution. They heave humanity onwards in its march to some better destination.