Day dawned doubtfully. Rain or shine, wondered the sky. With an umbrella to take care of the doubt, I headed to the park at the end of the road. After shedding a few drops of indecisive rain, the sky brightened.
Hands in the homes got busy. Suffocating smells of garlic and spices, soaps and detergents wafting in the air said so. A puddle of water looked up at me at the entrance to the park. A hop and a skip and I was inside.
The embrace of Nature there made me sigh with relief.
“ I breathe in what you breathe out and you like to inhale what I exhale. So what’s the problem? Let’s enjoy,” the plants whispered to me.
With a song on my lips I quickened my pace down the walkway only to brake at the pond and hold my breath in awe. A lone, bright pink lotus in full bloom at the center of the pond surrounded by its leaves with shimmering diamonds of dewdrops on them , looked up at the sun. My eyes closed in reverence for a moment and then opened wider than before to savor the spectacle. After moments ticked to complete a full minute, my feet moved on. But not for long.
The walkway is not altogether smoothly tiled. So, sometimes I pluck my eyes off the bunches of ixora of different reds, petunias of different blues and the herbal plants of different greens and look down at the walkway to keep myself from tripping. Now, when I looked down, once again I braked to watch a mystical shadow play. Two little shadows chased each other round and round. Overawed, I looked up. Two butterflies, one larger, black-winged with big yellow wing-eyes, the other smaller, also black-winged with small white wing-eyes.
“ Watch us,” did I hear them say? I smiled and watched. Two butterflies fluttering around in rhythmic circles in the air was a magical sight.
“ Can you say who is chasing whom?” they asked. I shook my head and laughed. The next moment, they flew right to the tip of my nose. I nodded hastily and stepped back. Did I hear them chuckle as they flew away, one upwards towards a yellow flower and the other downwards to the herbal bush.
“ Thank you, my dear ones, for the wonderful show,” I said and walked ahead, my heart jiving in joy.
Invaluable is modern technology that can bring Nature to us in the ticketed shows in comfortable air-conditioned halls. They are very popular, very realistic, I have to admit. But merging with the miracles of Mother Nature is an altogether different experience, an intimately heart-throbbing one because Nature is us and we are Her. Do we have a half-hour as day dawns, for this merger? If so, it can work wonders for the rest of the day.
In course of time, we develop the skill to be Her all through the day. We learn to live in a continuous state of joy. This is the ultimate, blissful state of being every person wishes to reach. The road is simple and straightforward. But, it seems arduous because we have distanced ourselves from Her and changed our focus. There is no stopping change. Distancing can be stopped and proximity developed, for the good of the world.