Following the Roots to Reach the Source of Love

 

Happiness is not a hailstorm bombarding your head with screeching fury. It’s a soothing shower of tiny droplets kissing the dry dust. If little, little things cannot make you happy, and consequently loving, forget about the dreams of huge mountains of things, objects and relationships turning the scale in your favor. You must have experienced it already. So let’s try to delve into smaller things for larger swigs of solace!

You have to recall the roots of your individual self dissolved around in multiplicity of things and phenomena. It helps you in finding yourself. These are the little anchor support of individual destinies. Just like a tree has roots in earth, a human being’s roots lie dissolved in each and everything around us. Individually we are just part of the grand totality around.

This tree that absorbs the carbon dioxide exhaled by you, allowing you to inhale oxygen let out by it, in fact functions like half of your lungs. The water in your body is just an ounce from the reservoir of water on earth. The few kilograms of metals constituting your bones, muscles, fat and blood are just a speck of matter from the minerals available in earth.

So the most important thing is to know and realize your roots. That will melt the painful tumor of ego. These roots pull the strings to shape your unique identity, allowing you to perform your duty, enjoy your privileges on the great stage that creation is. The best thing is to realize and remember as a habit that you are just a tiny leaf clinging to the bough like so many others on the tree of creation. Your destiny is in totality. The individuality lies in knowing only this much.

I on my part try to remember it as a habit. It becomes natural later on with practice. The more you realize your dependence on the grand totality, the more you feel gratitude for the benefits and boons showering upon you. I keep my eyes open for the unconditional love bestowed by the small trees in my yard. I try to reciprocate the smile of flowers. By opening the eyes of awareness, you see the reality as it stands instead of the way you want it to be. It defines your reality out of the churning machine creation is.

I try to soak in weather’s offerings. It’s free and belongs to all and nobody at the same time. For example, October has its early winter charm. There is night blooming jasmine in my yard. The nights are cool and mornings dewy. The tree gets fully decorated at night with beauty and fragrance. In the mornings, a fresh day welcomes me with the day-time vestiges of the night’s smile. The tree smiles through the dewy night, the night blooming jasmine, Har Singar as we call it in local parlance.

As the day opens its eyes, I find the remnants of a perfumed night scattered under the tree. The first thing I do on such dewy, dreamy days is to collect the tree's offerings and keep it as a scented trophy on my desk. It makes my day, keeps it smiling and aromatic. Thanks brother tree! I just put some water around you, and here you are with a shower of unconditional love, life, beauty and fragrance. The weather has turned amazing and your gift makes every day better than the previous one.

I can recall this moment in all vivacity even though weather has changed almost to be the opposite. One more lesson: witness the change around as much as you look for the changes in your life. This observation saves a lot of pain because we get less prone to identify with things and phenomena going in a flux on the inevitable path of change and transformation.

Coming to such delicious, dewy moments, their surreal charms in memory define eternity. If you learn to soak all that a single moment has to offer, believe me, time follows you. You tame eternity.

Another moment etches its story on time’s endless fabric! Quite enigmatically, a smile's life is on cobwebbed lease. Sometimes existential support, as slim as an almost invisible single strand of spider-web, sees you smiling well beyond your expected time. It is 4:30 PM in the afternoon. A pair of night blooming jasmine flowers, a souvenir of a lovely, cool, dewy night, still hangs almost in full life. They bloom under dewy starlight at night, and tumble down happily at the dawn, pulled by Mother Nature’s call for cyclical transformation. But then some chance innings outfox the routine cast of apparent reality to carry further on and reach hitherto untouched milestone.

These two flowers saw the youthful charm of full bloom at the bygone cool October night. Thousands around them toppled down at the day's onset through a slightly misty morning and are almost recycled to dust in the ground. But mischievous destiny lets out a strand of web, and here they are swirling and swaying to the gentle breeze of a balmy early winter day. Little ounce of beauty and fragrance hanging like chandelier, signifying the imperishable aesthetics of love, peace and harmony.

To have a feel of the infinite love and beauty pervading the cosmos, we have to sharpen our aesthetic sense to capture such brief moments with our limited sense perception, which later on opens the vista for unqualified, unrestricted, sense-perception-free view of the ultimate truth in our life. But of course we cannot escape these small exercises before that happens.

Only feelings can capture the infinite vastness of love and harmony in the cosmos. And such little keys hold the prospects of opening the treasure chest. The bigger things turn it daunting. They take you to a world of thoughts and calculation. Nothing wrong with that. After all, it sets the stage for careers and making a living. But if you want to have a glance at the eternity, you have to see through the keyhole. There is hardly any other way.

Some moments, when you surrender your ego and dissolve into the cool shades of eternity, take you to the pinnacle of realizations beyond words and languages. Language is a poor substitute to catch truth in totality. You name a word and it is just a fraction. As Lao Tzu said, words are poor carriers of truth. You name light, and dark is cut off.

Coming to the mammoth canvas of feelings, around midnight a beautiful feeling pervades me as I stand under the night blooming jasmine in full bloom. I feel an ounce of the totality.

Dewy fun under the nightly sun,

Winter night with a full moon,

Night jasmine smiles with honeyed spoon,

Swathed in the cool shades of a dewy night,
The flowers stand brave with smiles and innocent delight,
When all sleep, they hold the beacon of love and light,
The moon is their sun,
When we humans will get up in the morning,

We can't imagine how much was the nightly fun!

Lost in the poetic swathes of the dewy night gone, I walk with slow steps in the yard and see the game of death played so harmlessly without its otherwise fee-fawing avatar. A butterfly corpse I come across. The tiny shove of mortality, which freed its little consciousness from this flowery shape, still has the mercy to leave the sleeping beauty on jasmine leaves.

RIP Lime Swallowtail! It presents me with a picture perfect view. There are large number of irregular creamy yellow spots on dark wings and red tornal spot on the upper hindwing. More importantly, the sleeping beauty has a hearse of jasmine leaves and sadabahar flowers. She still looks full of flying life, as if ready to take off any moment. She had her colorful days, flowers, nectar, airy swirls and rainbow darts. Quietly she landed then on the tarmac of mortality; and her little ounce of spirit flies and takes off to the highest station to be one with the primordial spirit. From limited to the unlimited. From here to everywhere. From these few colors to all the colors of paradise. From now to forever. From this beautiful pattern and design on her wings to the primal self-evolving pattern of nature.

I have a sad smile on my lips, a deep sense of acceptance and detachment fills my being. But then there is an excited flutter nearby. This game of creation is ever so busy. I look up with a smile and see the bulb of life on an electric bulb holder. Well, this bulb holder was lying idle for too long, till it gets the attention of natural intelligence. I see a mud fort in the making. Hope it will cherish the bulbous fluid in eggs that will sprout the light of life.

A wire-tailed swallow pair is busy making their mud nest. The muddy ark is being drawn upwards from the central holder. They pick up mud from rain puddles and deposit it layer by layer, slowly mixing their saliva and droppings in the mixture. During the breeding season, their glands have extra salivation equipping them with a suitable adhesive. This is what I call environment friendly birdie cement.

My mother has a problem though. She finds it disturbing because at this stage it appears a mud sling on the painted wall. I have to convince her that it will be a very nice, decorative wall hanging once it's completed. Best of luck beautiful birds. They have very bright colors of metallic blue and white. They just love their job. Tirelessly they go on making a new house, raise kids and then fly away without clinging to the earthy possession. Godly detachment, by the way. I definitely take inspiration from these few grams of wonders.

To someone feeling lonely, with not much happening around in the sense we relate to happenings, free moments easily become agents of depression. But not to someone basking in solitude because so much is happening around all the time with silent majesty. So the day moves on and I keep on taking larger and larger sips of solitude. I feel like it’s solidifying my soul in an almost mystical way. One more thing, it’s impossible to slow down one’s time to the extent of feeling the nature’s spontaneity and be angry and hateful at the same time. Only a spread self doused in love and compassion slows down time like this. So here we come across another nice exercise to build up the muscles of our loving self.  

Thus the day seems full of countless prospects and I keep my eyes open to the marvelous plays unfolding around. Here comes a surprise: awakening the dead. It was a dry, dead branch at the top of an acacia. But that was before the monsoon touched with watery pout, to kiss and infuse greenery even in an otherwise prickly, irritatingly imposing silhouette of the acacia. Overblown life from the surroundings is creeping into the dead wood. The creeper with big green leaves is handing over its extra greenery by climbing over dead pricks and crown the treetop with a symbol of life. The canopy is getting its leafy top. Wonderful greenish encroachment. Leafy donation. The birds though may not be happy because this dead branch at the tree top is their favorite sentry point to look around. So they have almost lost their bare watchtower. It helps me in retaining my sense of wonder. I find it really essential for my humane self.

More wonders waiting! Lo there is a birdie coup in the shrub. Olive-backed sunbird hatchling I see out of a sudden. Freshly minted birdie wonder. Well these tiny flirtatious birds have done a coup in the jasmine cluster right under my nose, right under my gate-crashing presence. And I haven't the littlest clue. I am busy watching the progress on the bulbul front in the slightly bigger world on the Harsingar tree above. Lo! Here is the swift hatchling! Straight from its tiniest of grassy hideout in the jasmine shrub. Not only it escaped my eyes, it also beat the cat in master camouflage. The way this one and its brother or sister already dart among the branches, I am fully sure of their survival and taking the world on their own. Best of luck sons or daughters! Fly safe for the next week and always obey your parents. Then you guys can scale the world on your own.

Our survival basically depends on the things that we have taken for granted by default in life. The irony is, the things that we tend to take as the survival tools are merely conveniences, mere comforts, like house, car, jobs, gadgets, etc. I try to take a stock of the millions of roots holding the tiny iota of my existence. These flowers, birds, insects, reptiles, all these and more are nothing but the building blocks of the platform I stand on to enjoy life.

So guys keep your eyes open for the little wonders of nature around. In any case, they are supporting our existence, just that mere recalling of this fact gets us grounded, making us gentler, humbler, and these definitely make life more positive and more enjoyable. And loving, without an iota of doubt!   

Catch a Big Fish of Love with the Tiny Bait of a Small Generous Deed

 

Next time you have some doubt about the value of a small coin, a single tear of empathy in the eyes and a feeble smile at a stranger who may need it, you better revaluate the potency of these tiny chisels in shaping a whole mountain of love.

Forget whether your small coin will change the life of that person or not. All you need is a big heart and genuine sympathy. A coin given with respect to a fellow human being is far-far more valuable than a hundred rupee bill given with some traces of scorn on the face. The lesser fortunate will feel the humanism behind your gesture and reciprocate in equal measure.

Many times the dilemma arises. Is it possible to do a good deed in part? Or goodness requires the completion of a cause? Just because most of us are incapable to see through our act of beneficence to its destination, is it justified not to take that littlest of step that may keep the chances still alive for someone in need?

Your mere stopping by somebody, who has fallen on his/her path, may fuel a determination to get up again; your comforting hand on some sulking shoulder may strengthen the muscles to take up the challenge again; your soft word of comfort may reignite the fire in someone’s vocal chords to vent out fiery battle song again; your tear may absorb someone’s gloomy sea of sorrow allowing a faint smile of life to surface again; your little step may lay the foundation stone for someone’s long march to success. Think over it.

So crux of the matter is: just be there with your minimum offer of help for a cause larger than yourself. We are not here to become the Gods of charity; we are here to be just normal human beings. And having a heart a bit bigger than what we have at present is what greatness is all about. So everybody can have a shot at greatness. Free for all game! Isn’t it?

I can remember a scene. In the smoky, suffocating traffic chaos, a small natural phenomenon was crying for attention. It was Delhi at it busiest peak. A congested, well trampled road with vehicles after vehicles hurtling with noise and exhaust fumes. Horns angrily baulked. A 2 ft road divider separated the mad rush in opposite directions. And there she was with her bundle of plight. A female dog with her tummy full of just-to-be delivered puppies.

She was desperately digging a hole to lie down for the moment of creation. Metropolitan claws hardly leave space for the so called lesser species of nature. However, these can catch any of us in any possible testing situation by the way. So kindly don’t feel too secure and confident on account of your homo-sapiens status.

The unconcerned world was just speeding away. We miss so many misdeeds born of our mindless development. Guys at least watch, if you cannot get out of your car. Feel sorry for our collective sins and apathy. Take a sip of guilt for our mindless pursuits on the path of so called development. And try to feel the plight of these lesser species on earth who hardly stand any chance to survive in the imbalanced man-manipulated scheme of things.

Only this much of sentiment will provide a slim lease of life to the human soul in you. And if you manage a bit of moisture, it will absolve you of many a sin. Who knows even this much of selfless feeling for a creature in plight may douse the tinderbox in your life ticking to explode. Who knows the matchstick ready to strike the petrol of frustration inside, setting your life ablaze, may get doused under the teary moisture of this emotion.

Long before your good emotions and intentions affect someone else, they start doing the good work for your own self. So guys, don’t just avoid your eyes from the scene of plight, face your guilt, allow your sadness to strike at your conscience, look at it eye to eye. It’s a sacred start.

Washington Irving: “There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

Draw you moral from the quote.  

It makes you a better human being, believe me. And how will you proceed to get into the world of action, unless and until you observe and feel, unless you become aware. Having your eyes and heart open to the miseries out there is not a waste of time. It’s as good as digging a foundation in your conscience on which you will take concrete steps to erect the structure of your remedial action, your selfless contribution, in future.

So all the good folks out there, keep your eyes open as you plod in the arena of life and living. Most of the time, we just overlook simply to avoid the pinprick from the conscience that we looked and felt helpless not to do anything. No dear brothers and sisters, this is not the solution. Apathy is a cloak we wear to hide our own shame from our real judgmental self that sternly watches us long before it does others.

So practice to be aware of the problems and bundles of miseries lying around. All things have an incubation period. And awareness is the incubation period of goodness. You become aware by observation, not avoiding eyes. Just by being aware of the plight of people, animals and trees around, you groom your loving self. So will you start now?

Love, Life and Living Coded in the Trees

 

Lord Byron: “There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.”

The tree in your yard is as alive as your friends, family and more. There are more prominent complexities in nature than the man-made systems. Read the seminal work of self-explaining nature and you will scientifically understand why a tree is as alive as human beings.

It's not some esoteric, mystical talk. You will learn how life is as good, valued and important at all levels in nature. It will bust your misconceptions that creation is human centric. Read the open pages of nature to know your real place in the scheme of natural things. Come on, brace up yourself and your next visit to the forest will give you unimaginable perspectives. You will feel more of a human being. Well, it's strictly for your benefit only.

Warren Buffett: “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Well, if you plant a tree, with the concomitant resolution to help it grow and become a big tree, before starting on a journey into the forest, it will be an icing on the cake. A very nice inauguration I tell you, a pious deed like breaking a coconut to start your prayer and rituals.

We are safe in our civilization because nature decided to have trees before we arrived on the scene. We are simply a little drama under the nature’s shade. Accept it. Feel the gratitude. And go plant a tree. You owe it to Mother Nature. We have our own carbon quota that we let out with every breath exhaled and the pollutants born of household utilities, cars, refrigerators and air-conditioning. Now set up your plant of oxygen. Plant a tree. It avoids us from being utterly shameless.  

Martin Luther: “For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”

To make it more logical for you, I recommend 'The Hidden Life of Trees' by Peter Wohlleben. The eminent forester delineates his profound love of forests and woods. On the basis of his personal experiences in pristine forests, he throws light on the remarkable processes of life, death and regeneration among trees and their communities. Astounding scientific mechanisms go with intellectual precision behind many wonders that we simply take for granted as almost unintelligible, unconscious random occurrences.

The book is full of groundbreaking observations. Can you imagine that almost similar to human families, the parental trees stay around their children? The moments are full of communication among themselves. The older trees support the young saplings as they grow. The bigger trees share nutrients with the weaker and younger trees in the community. There is a natural push for creating an ecosystem to lessen the force of weather extremes like temperature and precipitation. Because of these channels of cooperation, the trees in a community support each other to beat the challenges against their survival. On the other hand, lonely trees, just like orphans, find it very difficult in the game of survival. Could you read the undercurrents of love, affection and care in all this?

Researchers have found Mycelium (Mycorrhizae), an underground network of symbiotic fungi attached to plant roots. These fungal threads are the means of nutrient exchange. It helps the young saplings as well as very old stumps that won’t survive without this community support. This fungal web of mutual care, share and support has been termed as Wood Wide Web. Still need more proof of the essentiality of love and sharing as the basis of existence?

There are tiny miracles unfolding in nature around. Take for example African Acacia. When an animal starts nibbling at its leaves, the tree lets out a chemical. Its scent travels through the air to reach the neighboring trees. It triggers a short-lived toxin in them as a response. So when the animal reaches this tree, it finds it uninteresting to eat when it sniffs at its leaves. And then the things become normal after some time. No grudges, no animosity, no personal agenda. Things simply are.

In certain trees, under attack by the leaf-eating insects, the leaves after tasting the predator’s saliva produce a chemical. It catches the attention of bigger predators that swoop down and attack the leaf-eaters. There is no malice, no excess of endeavors, just a balanced, all-inclusive game without any egoistic exclusivity.

It’s not a mute world over there. Electrical impulses travel across leaves and roots at a speed of 1/3 inch per second. This is the rate of communication in nature. Slow in comparison to our rampaging speed though, but sustainable as per the laws of love, care, harmony and peace.

Isn’t it a wonderful system out there with its basic constituents of love, care and share? The latter are the fundamentals on which the mundane game of survival takes place.  

The Love Code of Existential Intelligence

 

Go into the lap of nature and seek at the most mundane of places away from the disillusioning hoot and holler. I feel the deep pools of universal compassion as the major constituent of the cosmic energy transforming around us. Come, give me company while I tell a small tale of love and parental care. It’s primarily about unconditional love without which the shapeless fluid in tiny eggs won’t change into thriving, vibrant, hopping winged life. There is an existential intelligence of love containing the secret of creation. It sustains this amazing burst of life around us.

I see a tireless woman who is camera shy. During the breaks it takes rest on the wire and there I go to take a picture. But it is really shy and doesn’t allow me to click her with a close-up smile, forcing me to take a look at some sister model of hers from the internet to know more about her species. Unmindful of my curiosity-driven poking in her affairs, she is busy all day in knitting a little cup of love on the branch of our Parijat (night flowering Jasmine) for the new lives inside her. Well, best of luck soon to be mom, little red vented bulbul!

Taking inspiration from her hard work, I too decide to contribute to the cause and keep a watch on the neighborhood goon, the big rascally cat, as big as a leopard cat in the wild. I think my stick also needs to be in the scene somewhere.

No need to mention that her husband is a loafer and does less work, fools around more. Possibly in the guise of warning tweets, it flirts with the lady birds around. Well, not that scandalous because all men are like that. He is just true to his salt. So forgetting about him, we can talk a bit about red vented bulbul in general.

They are tentative smoke brown birds, double the size of common sparrow and have partially crested black head that gives them a semi-hawk, stern look. There is a very attractive crimson patch below the root tail. Their white rump is very prominent in flight. They can be very angry for their size. I am wondering about the shape and location of the nest. It doesn't look too safe. It is simply a cup of rootlets. But then possibly they are confident of defending the citadel.  

All is well so far with the usual struggle. The net is set up followed by laying eggs. I have chased away the cat many times. It has stopped visiting. Ironically there are always counterpoints in nature. Once you have the eggs, you see Shikra, a small hawk bird of the region. At noontime I hear the parent couple's panicked notes and tweets followed by ruffling of wings in the branches. I just run out exactly at the moment the hungry hawk is trying to perch on the delicate branches for a belated egg breakfast. It flows away and watches from a nearby tree. I loiter around to increase the morale of the defending force. It makes an attempt again and due to my being still ready for the job it has to fly away. I see it again the next day and become painfully sure of its success. Then I just pray that its hunger be quenched somewhere else, on a dead animal preferably. Thankfully I haven't seen it since then. Possibly existential intelligence carries out our selfless plans in its mysterious ways.

The nest is very small and looks a weak fort. Little do I realize the couple's pugnacity in defending even a weak fort. In any case this is what that keeps them busy, this ever-on game of survival between life and death. They don’t have to build space rockets. They are here to simply survive and survival needs almost 24×7 surveillance and awareness. Contrary to our belief, it’s the other spices that live in total awareness. Slightest lapse and you are gone. Since we humans have more time, we can afford to lie idle in unawareness and get into huge follies.

With my typical human-centric make-believe sense of awareness, again I poke my nose into their affair and wrap a piece of cloth around the nest, leaving a hole for the birds to sneak in, making it a better house. In any case, Mother Nature can do without my discretion. But then I have to take some credit. The same old human malady, you know. So I presume that possibly the hawk gets duped in taking it as some human design to capture it.

The hawk is not to be seen around anymore, by the way. Possibly it has done as little as shift his awareness to some other nest somewhere else. It comes very easily to them because they don’t have any ego problem.

I have to take back my words hitting at the father's laziness. He has earned my respect in many regards. While the mother is in the creative process of managing the nest, the Dad has been keeping a stern sentry watch from the vantage points in all this heat. I often see him perched on the top end of a rusted out-of-use TV antenna pole. Even with hawk birds, few-times bigger in size, he gives all that a father can. He fluffs his feathers to look larger and makes cantankerous noise to distract the predator. He keeps on going very close to the enemy and tow it away with the bait of a larger meal. What won't parents do for their children! And still we fail to spot love as the basic ingredient of the cosmic show running around us!

He is freer with crows that are also far bigger in size but less lethal as a predator, lazier as they are. He just doesn't allow them to sit anywhere on the surrounding trees, lest they spot his family. The more I look at it, the more I am sure of the divine intelligence ingrained everywhere. Whenever he is having a row with a crow, tweeting vivacious abuses at a furious pace, the group of house sparrows, warblers and sunbirds add to the chorus, forcing the larger bird to leave the scene in indignation and irritation. And they don’t even need the certificate of friendship to play their part in the show of friendliness.

Elsewhere, the collared dove looks silently with her mummed-up stillness and majesty. The cantankerous babblers just babble in a group possibly chasing a cat or even some little snake. Sternly professional mynah goes with an air of well-meant business. Peacocks, exiled by pesticides in the fields, sing mourning songs in the village. But who cares about the multi-colored wonder of nature.

Monsoon has been normal, so everything is richly green. Butterflies go with honeyed business among the bougainvillea flowers that bloom to wildish proportions. And most importantly, I see the parents ferrying insects, grass seeds and worms into the nest. Possibly hatchlings are there, one step further.

Creation takes another tiny step towards fulfillment of the divine goal. I hear very faint chirping. Yea, new life! A new beginning in the stream of existence that links all of us. Life is just one common force driven by cosmic intelligence and it blooms in endless forms and avatars. Another drop of existence manifesting in the sea of supreme existence. Well, best of luck bulbuls! Let's hope all goes well.

They must have gone a bit far this day. I hardly expect such casual attitude from them but grab the chance to have a look into the nest. Aha, life from close quarters, so open, transparent, innocent, vulnerable and optimistic at the same time. Shaped out of the fluid. Soft, almost transparent maroon-red balls. Their beaks are always open. The parents are busy throughout the day, still it falls short. They have to eat relentlessly, grow as fast as possible and beat the moment that may undo it all. 

A squirrel lets loose a chit-chatty chorus. A group of parrots passes with a fruitful shriek. A tatihiri (lapwing) goes on a trumpeting hoot, possibly happy for its correct monsoon forecast. A butterfly darts from bougainvillea to motia to mogra to rajnigandha to sunhair. The butterflies appear like the flowers’ extended self dissolved in airy flirts. There are more birds than a decade back and it gives some hope that Mother Nature isn't totally angry on us.

Now it turns out to be a roller coaster week involving lots of noise. Well, the hatchlings have jumped out of the nest. I marvel at the change from a soft tiny ball of meat to a handsome toddler. All that incessant feeding bears fruits a bit quickly from human standards. There is no pause at this level in nature. One miss, and you are gone.

I see one of them in the shrub below the nest. The parents never fall short of nibbling at crows’ feathers whenever they happen to be in the near vicinity. The father especially doesn't allow any bigger bird to perch on any nearby vantage point that may expose the tiny hatchling.

They are all day putting out different sounds to communicate in a mysterious way. The language of survival with its syllables of love. Presently they spiritedly object whenever I am nearby. I respect their ownership of the tree. In the scheme of things, they own it before me. I don't know about the other hatchling, maybe it's there also in the shrubs, may be it hasn't survived. Well, I am not looking for it either, because whenever I do they abuse vivaciously and I feel like an intruder in the scheme of nature. Let's hope this hatchling takes its first flight in the next couple of days. All the best little one/ones!

Well, it turns out to be a happy ending. The little one stays on the tree, after coming out of the nest, for couple of days. Remains completely subdued, glued to a branch for two days while the parents ferry food. On the second day it drizzles almost throughout the day. It stays like a cute little ball under a cluster of leaves. It even jerks its feathering and coat to shake off water. Well, then possibly it gets bored. It’s too difficult for somebody to sit like that in childhood. After all, it’s pure, happy energy unburdened of life’s thousand and one concerns.

In the evening it stops drizzling and away it goes on its first sortie under a heavy shadow of clouds. Due to the monsoons everything has almost double foliage. It helps him. I can see the parents loitering around on a cluster of keekars nearby. More than the little one, I am sure of the parents' ability to defend it. So I don't see any big hassles.

They are no longer bothered about the tree and the nest that they defended so stoutly for a month. They possess a thing in totality unlike we humans who do it in fragments, which unfortunately makes us run forever. Now they possess that cluster of lush green keekars. I can see the father perched on that dead keekar tree at his sentry point. Well, the world is better with at least one, and hopefully two, bulbuls. Well done both you husband and wife!

Even a prickly keekar appears so luxurious in the monsoon season. The little one must be in the cluster of trees, a larger world, learning the tricks of the trade. I can see the parents loitering around very cautiously for the next two weeks. They have a stern look and stout defenders of their rights for their size. Just watching them busy, I can surmise that they still have the little one somewhere in the branches to get them fulfilling the parental duties. But now they look more relaxed, a clear signal that the young bird is growing well.

After exactly two weeks of its first flight to a bigger cluster of trees, this breezy morning, I see the fruits of their struggle. It is growing. Boy or girl, I don’t know. In any case, they don't bother about such gender issues. Their duty is full, not fragmented. It has a slight plumage and a slender crown on its black head. It is sitting on a high branch. And parents tweet from a distance. There it goes with a free swirl followed by the proud Ma and Pa. They aren't concerned about the nest. They own everything and nothing at the same time.

Well the tree has new tenants, a pair of spotted munia. The already existing bulbul nest is still cozy but they don't care about anything that doesn’t belong to them. They have made a new globular grassy citadel still higher on the tree. All bird species have their own types of standard, customized nests. They don’t have memory chambers to retain all that information. In any case, memories are created basically with learnt knowledge. Without trying to learn anything, they simply do it when it needs to be done. Well, do we need more proofs of existential intelligence?

Coming to spotted munia, these are smaller birds, the size of house sparrows. To ensure better probability for their nestlings to survive, they need a better accommodation. A bit down the new nest is another world, a tiny hammock cup nest of an oriental white eye. Little worlds within a small world in a cluster of small tress.

The oriental white eye sits sternly with its white band around the eyes. The more I see, the more I realize the design of existential intelligence. These birds weigh a few grams and look at their feats. The codes of existential intelligence are very smartly written. All this won’t be possible if love doesn’t define the lives of each and everything in setting up the course where they love their offsprings more than their own lives. This love is the fuel of creation. Salutes to the supreme power!

There is no individually separate life. It is just an ever-evolving, transforming process. All apparent forms are merely part and parcel of the ever-expanding stream of energy. Individuality is simply apparent on the surface because of the certain frequencies behind the shapes on which creation is moving ahead in a particular sequence. But you still feel elated when you see a milestone reached in the process. And here is the family: Ma, Pa and the young bulbul. I see the happy family on a dry crowning branch against blue skies overlaid with domes of floating white monsoon clouds. The moment stands at the cusp of a small milestone on the countless highways of creation.

They have built up the bridge to the continuation of ‘life and living’ from their tiny point in the infinite scheme through their selfless work of the last few weeks. The father, as they are, is aloof, to the left. Ever pampering mother, like they are everywhere, is nearby to the right. And in the middle is the prince/princess, the fruitful outcome of love.

The little one is almost the size of its mother. I can recognize it only because it still has the childish manner of opening its beak and shakes its wings expecting to be fed an insect. It is gradually opening to free flights in an open world. It darts quite sharply, a bit erratically though, and is seen out of the cluster of trees where it has been hiding for the last two weeks.

They are still concerned about their little one. And they will continue dutiful to their task till the day when it will take to the skies of its own. The father takes liberties to be off the scene these days, and must be definitely flirting somewhere. The mother, on the other hand, is just busy with single point focus. I cannot see any other priority for her right now. She makes sounds particular to their species and type. The little one is being trained in different tones of sounds, for alerts, for socializing, for love and who knows what other coquettes of the birdie world. I even hear it imitating and responding to her.

On this despondent day, she nibbles at a guava on the courtyard wall and the young one looks keenly. It also imitates its mother and takes beakfuls of guava. It must have really liked it because it continues greedily till a flock of sparrows lands and teases it by pecking at its tail. It then flows away with visible irritation.

Now they take even bigger sorties in the open chunk of free skies. But off and on, I see the mother and kid, and sometimes the father also, on the dry branches of the dead keekar tree from where the father scouted the skies for predators during the nesting phase. Well, it has been a happy story. Well done bulbul pair. And best of luck little one!

Don’t you see love in fluid motion across the stream of this story? Try reading it again if you missed it. The secret of love lies in such pleasing anecdotes perpetually unfolding in the lap of Mother Nature.

Treating the Diseased Roots of the Tree of Love

 

So many times we commit the folly of treating the symptoms instead of the disease’s roots. Suppose there is a tree in poor health. Its leaves dispirited pale and not fresh green. Its canopy hardly able to put shadow on the ground. It just waits for some storm to claim a natural calamity. Then you see somebody nurturing its leaves, pouring water and manure on them and dreamily look forward to greenish luxuriance. Of course it’s a folly. The problem lies in roots, not on the leaves.

That’s how it’s with human lives. We look for solutions on the surface, at the levels where the problems manifest themselves. Little do we realize that the root cause of such problems lies somewhere else. Those who get lynched by the diseased emotions of jealousy, hate, anger, frustration, insecurity and animosity have a problem deep within the self. These negative emotions are just like surface wavelets, mere symptoms of a restless self within. So stop bothering about the effects. Take care of the turbulence inside and these simply vanish. They lose their meaning and become redundant because you no longer entertain the factors that triggered them.

It’s not that the point of serenity doesn’t lie in all of us. It does. Invariably. In fact that is the biggest commonality among homo-sapiens. The only problem is that we tend to forget it and identify ourselves with shallow, shaking waters on or just below the surface. The only effort required is to be aware of this deep, unmoved tranquility inside and accept it as the seat of the real self. Instantly life acquires a new meaning. You can even witness the upheavals, which tortured you earlier like they were you only, as a neutral observer. You look through the mist. You start seeing things as they are instead of what you want them to be.

If the interior is rooted in calmness, poise and control—the elemental tools of love—such diseased leaves won’t sprout on the surface to take a toll on the physio-psychological health. In the depths of the sea, there is a calm world basking in the glory of bluish darkness that stays unmoved. On the surface there are storms and upheavals. The surface tosses and turns as if struck by some mad force. Disturbance is destined to die. But before it dies, it takes casualties like a pyre burns on firewood. Only peace and calmness can be permanent. And surprisingly calmness does not draw on any fuel to sustain its eternity. It’s self sustaining. There are no collateral damages. So isn’t it prudent to dive deep into the womb of serenity to be reborn as a calm child who is in control of his destiny?

Submerge into the cool depths of your real, inner self. Explore your undisturbed waters, your loving nature, your essential self: compassion. In its bluish darkness, you will see a lamp of self-realization. You will clearly see the funny part of surface storms and even laugh at yourself for having been so crazy in the shallow, muddied waters. Don’t waste this precious life in the muddied storms. The pearls of your destiny lie at depths. So brothers and sisters, raise your head above the stormy waters, take in a big breath, dive deep and shake hands with unruffled waters where your real self awaits with the answers to all the root causes of the problems on the surface.

There is a little exercise manual as you decide to dive deep. Practice forgiveness. It’s the most effective potion for healing the self. Since you are an inseparable part of this world, you contribute to heal the world also as you conserve vital energy that otherwise was to be burnt in brooding over hurts and pains.

Once you see through the prism of forgiveness, you will find nature ingrained with the principle of forgetting and forgiveness. If not for them, things will simply burn themselves out after a trigger. Forgiveness has healing properties beyond words. Just imagine even a blade of grass won’t re-grow if the grass isn’t able to forget and forgive after the turf has been trampled. Forgiveness is thus the potent pill of self transformation. It dusts off the negatives you have gathered around your true, loving self.