The Little-little Remains of a Day

 

Maybe after flying for many a fruitless mile, the honey buzzer has spotted the little honeycomb in our garden. In a world of vanishing flowers and rapidly decreasing honeycombs, it has a right to take a little bite of the thing that gives it a name. The attempt turns out to be very clumsy. The majestic honey-loving hawk is too big for the delicate branches of the small curry-leaf tree. The hunter has to grab its morsel while almost in flight. A bigger piece falls on the ground than what it takes away. But they don’t get sullen over such drops and misses. They are happy to take whatever falls in their kitty. The notion of getting more or something going waste doesn’t turn their head heavy. The honeybees struggle over the fallen piece. Instead of complaining over the loss, they use their energy to retrieve the grounded granules of honey. After a labor of one hour, they settle for almost the same shape as before. It’s so easy to move on with life if one doesn’t carry the extra load of grudges, guilt and anger.

The purple cone of banana flower hangs with silent, pinpointing precision. It’s heavy enough to tilt the stem and hangs down like a mason’s iron-cone used to check the vertical component of the wall under construction. It’s ideally, from our economical point of view, supposed to be taken off once the gap between the last row of the banana fingers and the flower cone is 15 cm because it sucks a lot of nutrition from the tree. But I keep it to enjoy the sheer joy of a dewdrop hanging from its tip in the mornings. Moreover, I have no business to temper with it when even the monkeys have spared it so far. They just pluck away the unripe little banana fingers unfolding on the upper part.

The purple pendulum of the banana blossom looks a nutritious heart-shaped tree chandelier. Dew drips down during the misty nights. The green little fingers above get into a sturdy claw. Many varieties of sucklers have a nice party during the day including mosquitoes, fruit flies, stinging wasps and the purple sunbird couple that is almost a full-term resident of the little garden. At dusks, a flying fox comes toed by smaller bats at night.

The night falls across a smoggy dusk. The evening twilight and a half moon doing justice to both the night and the day. It seems there is blood on the moon’s pale face, a kind of portrait of the bleeding nature. The reddish moon casts glum shadows across the smog. The smog is a regular affair now even in the villages during early winters.

But the worlds, big and small, have to lumber on. A caterpillar has lost its grater, the last bulbous part. It goes like a funny little tractor whose backside mudguards have been taken off. It walks pretty briskly, just that it topples over repeatedly after losing its anatomical symmetry. Accidents abound at this level of existence. But I think it’s better than getting crushed altogether. It has had a long day on the floor, doing all these antics, toppling over, lying calmly like a corpse for some time, an ant or two coming to check about the chance of a meal, and there it hops up again to keep claiming its right to life.  

A butterfly going for the last sips of nectar before calling for the day. A slumberous darkling beetle and an agile ant bump into each other. The day going for rest and the night getting up for its shadowy tasks. And above all the fears and insecurities, mother nature still trying to assuage the restless, aggrieved child:

‘Let me provide warmth for your frozen hands. Let me smile to soak your tears. Let me hold a flower for you to smell and smile. Let me hold light for your eyes even in the dark.’