My morning walk!

Concretization of cities is not limited to physical infrastructure but tends to encroach upon human organs like heart, that were hitherto made of flesh and blood. Besides that it has many less philosophical effects also. What is difficult to find in large cities are open spaces and time. And both of these are needed for what was once called 'Morning walk'! Though the younger generation in cities may not be familiar with the term but the references can be found in older literature and heads of older people. I think older people lost it with their hair.

The other day a kid asked me 'what is nature?' I looked around in my office for something to show him, then walked out in the crowded corridor that has now been covered and then to a place in between two buildings and pointed towards the small hiatus between the tops of the two buildings. "So sky is nature!", he concluded. I thought for a while and looked around. Our hospital was built in British era as a small building that was surrounded by large open spaces. Gradually, as we 'progressed', more buildings cropped up in the open spaces. As the stressed-out poor population had no other means of, and time for entertainment, the population increased further. That lead to increasing pressure in the hospitals and more 'infrastructure' was developed. Infrastructure: structure that makes life inferior! Lately, as trees were not allowed to be cut, architects got a chance to be more creative and we see tree trunks and branches in corridors and offices. Essentially, its only the physical Xylem and Phloem that remain, as if the nature is alive on a ventilator.

I brought the kid back to my office, and chided him for not knowing the difference between 'sky' and 'nature'. I immediately asked him to sit in front of my desktop and googled "nature" and voila! There the nature was!!

 "See, there is even a Journal by that name, one of the best Journals and you should dream of getting published in that one day!", I told him. To educate him further, I showed him 'Nature' on wikipedia also.

But these days children don't read and he just looked at the pictures and said, "Wow! so waterfall and lightening are nature. But is 'Nature' found only in Australia? Can we go there to see nature!" 'Another excuse for travelling abroad', I muttered!

................................................................................

There is still an inconspicuous and neglected piece of land in our hospital campus. There are trees, not so dense but good enough to keep the area shaded. As it is an 'unmaintained' area, there are lot of fallen leaves and flowers, small dried twigs and half-eaten fruits that can be seen on the ground. The ground has grass at places and  barren clay at others. There are many small shrubs. There is a trail that goes through it as people try to find shorter routes to reach faster, but not many walk through it as one may 'contaminate' one's shoes with mud here. This trail is my morning walk, my tete-e-tete with nature!! After parking my car, I use this 'mud-path', 'pagdandi', to remain in touch with nature. As I walk through this, my pace gets slower, I forget that there are people jostling in the OPD for their turn! I hear sounds of certain birds, that I can not see. I see glimpses of certain others who would not sit on a branch steady. However, a small deep shiny blue bird keeps fluttering her wings in air as if to model for me. There are squirrels racing to find a juicy seed of a flower. There is an odd butterfly and a wasp, both oblivious of the nearby mortuary. Leaves, are the kindest, and fall as an artistic diver dives from the springboard, twisting and twirling and gliding smoothly onto the bottom. There are small palm trees sprawling their leaves. Suddenly, a fleshy Semal (Shalmali) flower falls with a 'chhap' on the parched leaves. As one looks up to see the source, one sees branches of the tree with plenty of flowers that still look barren as they have no leaves. One tree harbours a nest, high up there, while another one has a large beehive. Rays of Sun beam through the branches as wind makes them play hide and seek. For those few moments, I am soaked in nature! I come out rejuvenated with curves on my forehead descending onto my lips, a happier person.

"Why are you hiding in between the trees?", my friend asked me the other morning as he saw me coming out. I said, "No, I was just coming through them". "Arrey! There is such a broad and clean road and even a fragmented footpath alongside, why do you have to come through that 'muck'? See! even your shoes have got all muddied!" I lifted my right foot to look at my shoe, indeed it was all covered in light brown dust. "Oh! right you are!", I said smiling. 'My small daily dose of nature', I thought, still smiling!!😄😄