Winters changing to summers

 

It’s February 21 and the maximum temperature already 31 degrees. In a decade or so the winters will turn spring and a few more decades down the line it will be an all summer affair. Well that’s change. And it lies there in the future. As of now there are still wild flowers along the little solitary path. This is more important than what is not available or what we will be missing in the future.

The spring is stalled and there is a beacon of summer or rather beacons of summer—numbering three. Three black stray dogs are coming at a trot and their red flashy tongues are hanging out, saliva shakings to the tunes of rapidly approaching summer. I have taught one of them a nice lesson. As I stroll around the countryside, dozens of stray dogs would bark at my intrusion. Then due to many reasons, such as getting used to my presence, amply aided by my soft cuddling words, they learnt to ignore me. All of them except one. This guy kept hollering at me daily without any provocation, despite the softest of my words. It made me feel like a thief in the broad daylight. It would be particularly aggressive, almost on the verge of biting me, whenever the farm owner, around whose fields it had marked its territory, would be present. It wanted to show its loyalty. Having exhausted all the means of bringing peace between us, I resorted to the last avenue. It required only this much. I had to change my lazy stroll to a blizzard of dash like an Olympics sprinter. This I did to good effect with a stick in my hand, raising a big hullaballoo along the way. Out of wits, the dog went rocketing over the planted wheat. I gave the chase to the capacity of my legs and lungs. I collapsed on the ground to recover my breath but luckily the animosity in the dog had also collapsed. After that it started respecting me. It would give me way and moved to the side as I approached. I think in handling incorrigible chaps a reasonable use of force is needed. Too much of generosity and elegance in behavior is taken for granted, is interpreted as weakness, and then even stray dogs won’t take you seriously.

There was this little piece of land covered with eucalypts trees, the ground covered with shrubbery and bushes giving a dense second canopy. It looked a little dot of refuge for wilderness among the well-manicured, tamed farm lands around. A little wild hovel for cats, rats, jackals, reptiles and birds. The farmer has sold it. It’s a clear skyline now. There is sadness in the air. But we cannot blame the farmer. He must have had his own reasons to cut it. But at least for a decade and half his trees gave oxygen to us and some wild space for the species that are losing their rights on mother earth.

I palpably miss the presence of those threes in the countryside. It feels like one more step towards swathes and swathes of treeless avenues where mechanized human systems would forge a new civilization completely unrelated to the raw forces of nature. A new species altogether. But isn’t that change? Didn’t dinosaurs become extinct? So, does it matter too much if we also become extinct some day and are replaced by a half-mechanized, artificially nurtured new super-species that will have the poor few—who will remain the same old homo sapiens due to their poverty and limited circumstances—homo sapiens of old blood, bones and capacities, either as zoo specimen or at the most as poor household servants. Change is the ultimate master.