From booming, buzzing colonies to sad, solitary couples

It is a cool late August morning and a lot many hominids are having hasty breakfasts before catching onto the bandwagon of survival through the day. This little Indian yellow wasp, unfortunately maligned with a pinching adjective ‘stinging’, is not breakfasting on the dry bark of this dead Marwa plant.  With the unhurried ease of an artist, it’s scratching away little bark crumbs to use these in making its paper carton galleries to lay eggs and start the process of life from its end. In the slow-paced, unhurried smaller world, they use pollen crumbs and dead bark pieces to build their umbrella-shaped nesting hives, the little galleries to shelter eggs.
Well, it’s a sad tale from colonies to couple. Earlier, during the times when they stood a chance to stand, or when humankind wasn’t too imposing, they thrived in colonies and valiantly defended their citadels. The days are gone. Humankind’s heart has shrunk and his pest control arm has expanded well beyond his home and hearth. It now covers every nook corner of earth. So the colonies are out of question these days. All you have is just a wasp couple—he/she seen in the video and the partner taken flight to lay the foundation somewhere—sneaking like thieves and set up a little nest in some inaccessible part somewhere around overhangs, porches, eaves, attic corner, barn, porch shed, some abandoned ceiling, railings or door-frames. More than the artistry, it is about theft of temporarily stealing a little space somewhere. Just a tiny bulb of nest and a few eggs. All that is left of the maligned stinging nest. A little unbecoming projection at the risk of swatted out by the gentlest touch of a cobweb cleaner.
There will be many who feel like rapping my knuckles for speaking for the stinging wasps. Well, do they sting for pleasure? Let somebody come barging uninvited into your bedroom and then watch your own sting. Just because you hold man-made pares of the property doesn’t justify your sting, just like it doesn’t biggest wars for space and resources over earth.
Nature has a place for them. They pollinate flowers and control many insect species. Now don’t look at the insect species controlled by the wasps as the primary villains. They in turn must be controlling something else. In the two-way scheme of things, every species receives something in lieu of what it gives back. We have but turned the tables. We have re-calibrated the natural instinct to give back also. It’s a mad rush to take as much as possible, without willingness to give back anything. No wonder, we have raped mother earth. With newer and newer techniques to plunder resources, we are giving back long, long tragic tales of ecological degradation, extinction of species, wars, diseases, strife and unrest. Well, the list of our give-aways is endless on the negative side.

The Real 'Wrong'

Well, most of us commit our wrongs with a sense of duty, a sort of commitment, in a kind of frenzied sense of occupation. If not for this, so many of us will not be found ready, almost instinctively, to go the wrong way rather than volunteering to do something good. So, the ‘wrong’ seems to have its justification born of those perceived duties by the doer.

A hierarchy of sieving then decides not so common from the common-most crop. At the first level of filtration, the finest wire-mesh allows majority of the mob of wrongdoers trickle down into the dustbin of petty wrongs on the smallest stage closest to earth in crowded slums, stinking nullahs, mucking markets and laboring beehives, where the fight for survival saps most of the energy, leaving very little escapades of and on in frustrated minds. The bigger, fat, rascally particles stay above on the screened, perforated platform and engage in bigger wrongs on a more substantive platform.

Now, the second level of sieving takes place among the thicker rascal-heads, the bigger baddies, or the plumpier daddies of the trade. The holes in the wire-mesh are bigger than the previous one. A lot many foolish gallants topple down, so many die, get beaten, imprisoned and clobbered down to survive at the second tier of wrongdoing. They slide down the screening holes at the second tier and settle for bigger wrongs than the lowest mass. As expected, the still thicker ones get a chance to play the wrongdoing game at the next level. Here, the stakes are higher. The risks involved are bloody, but so are the returns, which hit the proportions of jackpots.

To qualify to stay above the screening mesh at the third level, the thickheaded pebbles, veritable stones, quibble, use brain as well as brawn, and mostly utilize the muscle of the toppled down smaller particles at the level immediately below, and the ignorance of the ant-swarms at the bottom.

In this final sieving, the biggest mafias, cartels and powerful politicians stay afloat to rule at the apex. Now they decide what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. All other versions of right and wrong at the lower rungs lose their meaning. There, at the lower orders, murders, rapes, felonies and thefts come to be mere stats in the law and order book. These are mere social problems and hardly matter as long as these don’t shake the foundations of the state, i.e., interests of the ones qualifying to be filtered at the highest sieve.

One can commit a murder on the lower rungs and still be considered a foolish nonmalignant element. However, if a sound brain, even in the frailest and most non-violent of a body, raises a verbal assault against the wrongdoers at the apex, he then becomes the most lethal anti-state, malignant criminal. The state is basically not bothered about the marketplace cacophony of petty criminalities like someone cutting somebody’s throat, or someone raping, plundering, beating or shouting abuses. These are local-police station worthy petty, minor pardonable wrongdoings. These in fact are the cause of creating the bread and butter for a whole damn law-keeping department. The real ‘wrong’ is the ‘wrong’ that shakes the confidence, or throws light, or exposes, the machinations and stratagems of the biggest rascals at the top. 

Dove in Love

Dove in love.
Impatient he.
Teasing she.
Airy swirls.
Hugging frills.
Breeze free.
Passionate spree.
Almost a fight.
Soul's delight.
Love.
Dove.
Love.

A sombre dusk and a dandy lad/lass

A dawn of faded blue, grey, dark, pale orange and rusted silver. Nature holds the ultimate copyright on colours, shapes and phenomenon...

Lanky lad/lass--Parijat
Well, with painful pruning, which hurt my conscience and his/her body as my pruner did its job, my friend will at least won't blame me too much after looking at himself/herself. A fantastic tree model he/she appears. A gorgeous adolescent! Nutrition of monsoon season and my jimming instructions have put it on the path of developing a well chiselled tree body. He/she appears like a tautly proud and confident NCC cadet. All the best! Grow to be a firm soldier against pollution and ecological degradation!

The story of love between a thorn and a rose

Monsoon wedding. The husband, a prickly, stern, hardwooded acacia; the wife, a mellowy, soft, delicate, juicy, heaet-shaped leaves attired embracer Giloy (Tinospora Cordifolia). She covers her beau's hardy ruggedness. He spreads his hardy self for her soft, supine creepy lovenotes to climb high and kiss airy swirls of the monsoon season. All of us are just parts of a larger beauty, mere contributors to a bigger picture. No life stands in isolation. All are contributing characters on the largest canvas where Colors, shapes, panorama keep moving in a circulatory fluidity, giving rise to stories, anecdotes and episodes. Feel the mammoth river of Life flowing around your apparently distinct self. Spread your wings. Enlarge your vision. Broaden your heart. Embrace more of life and living. It gets you freedom from the chained self imprisoned in narrow confines of illusions, ignorance and a block in the smooth flow. Claim your liberty!