Nature – the Spurned Gift

While traveling in an eastern nation some years ago, I marveled at how even something as insignificant as a business card, was received with both hands and a bow, with respect and gratitude, quite in contrast to the cursory manner in which business cards are usually slipped into pockets, or worse, impolitely flicked on to the table.

The Covid-19 lockdown of the past few weeks has, week over week, drawn me closer to nature, or, more correctly, whatever is there of it in the border garden along the edges of the small courtyard of the cottage where I am ensconced in this congenial, mile-high town of Shillong (in the Khasi Hills of North-East India), which place was once the hill station retreat of the British, who dubbed it the ‘Scotland of the East.’

Confined as I am, on government orders, as everyone else, within the boundary walls, what were mere dashes of color before – red, yellow, blue, purple, white, etc. – soon acquired names and identities, astounding me by their variety and individuality. The limited fauna in the garden (bees, bumblebees, hoverflies, stick insects, butterflies, and even a feral cat and kittens), as also the birds which seem to abound during this enforced hiatus during man’s inexorable march towards ‘progress’, in reality, destruction of nature, also fascinated me. Almost every day, I have been able to post a single photograph, no more, on social media of something that moved me that day. Friends have wondered how I am able to keep up with a daily post. The answer is simple. It is there. It has always been there. It was I, in the hurly-burly of life, who did not have the time to, literally, stop and smell the roses.

Yesterday, on World Environment Day, I was convicted by the realization, for the first time in my life, that Nature was in fact, an immense gift from God, the Creator. The most valuable of all gifts – to be cherished and revered, and to be grateful for, far, far more than any material human gift.

But, instead, with what disdain and arrogance do we treat this, the most precious of all, gifts!

From the glimpses I saw of Nature’s perfect balance – each pollinator has its own favorite flower, the hoverfly keeps the aphids at bay, the cats keep the rodent population in check, etc. etc. – I realized that man is only another piece of this gigantic puzzle, that Nature is. We are not the owners with the right to make major structural changes and, in the process, upset the delicate balance. Not even renters – we are mere transitory serfs.  

How I wish we would:

• Condemn the exploitation of Nature with the same passion as we condemn the exploitation of fellow human beings.
• Be sensitive enough to be as politically correct with Nature as we are with humans.
• Extend the ‘Do No Harm’ policy that we carry to other cultures to Nature as well.

It is my undeserved good fortune to have been stranded here in the amiable Khasi Hills during this difficult and historic time. The Khasis, irrespective of their faith, have an innately harmonious relationship with Nature, a deep gratitude to the Creator for everything that Nature offers them, and mutual respect and regard for each other.

Like Hugh Conway, who carried pleasant memories from Shangri-La in The Lost Horizon, I shall carry back these enduring values with me when this lockdown winds down to normalcy.