Enjoy what is still left there

 

We have to deal with mother nature’s slingshots. Just a week back it was extremely cold, and through the gloomy, cold, wet last week of January one could all but pray for the savior sun. Now in the first week of February, the sky is bright and clean and the sun so hot that you feel its heat too much to sit under it even in the morning. So I would say that we have the spring already. But it would be better to call it the spring of the nights, mornings and evenings when there is cool breeze, dew and light mist. The days have all that that makes them entitled for early summer. Beyond all these travails, the beauty would have its moments of sojourns.

As I walk on the thin ribbon of wilderness between the canals cutting across the well-manicured agricultural fields of wheat and mustard, the bright red disk of the sun hovers over the silvery sea of the mist over the horizon. It’s assuring that we still have beautiful moments of sundown. Also, even the crazily intensified farmsteads are better than bladeless concrete jungles. These scatterings of the trees over the channel bunds, embankments and dust paths are better than complete deserts. These sparse clumps of grasses and bushes are still better than lifeless, floored and tiled boulevards.

As the little groups of birds return to their host trees, it again strikes me that we ought to feel gratitude for what is still there. As the sun is downing, the moon is already visible high on the horizon—an almost perfect moon, just a day short of fullness, having a little blur at its lower rim. The two celestial beauties ogle at each other.

A dog barks and I recall three little puppies that have grown very possessive about the tiny village square. It’s their territory and they mean to defend it. I have seen big outsider dogs walking off the scene under their shrill assault.

It was a sad balloon seller who came with a few balloons on his rickety cycle. He walked dejectedly and the canine lads howled to give a suitable gloomy music. The bigger ones howled too. Then a young one almost hitched a ride on their mother. But it had to retreat under their shrill protest. ‘Don’t do it dog! We aren’t yet ready to share our milk with new puppies!’ they seemed to say, bark rather.