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.