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Harmony and Harm in the Natural World
BY IFTEKHAR SAYEED
04.12.2007 | ENVIRONMENT
It was March; the month of March has always been fraught with magic for
me. How is it that these last few months the cold earth had sustained
warm life? And where had they been -- these living creatures that dote
on the sun? For come the enchanted month, they perform their bacchic
dance of joy.
The mated birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brier,
And the green lizard and the golden snake
Like unimprisoned flames out of their trance awake.
Iranians celebrate the vernal equinox as the Eid-e-Nawrooz; on
March 21. They mimic the creatures out of doors, ecstatic at winter's
end and a new beginning. Perhaps only an ancient civilisation can
celebrate spring with such mathematical precision, wherein the intellect
and the heart are one. The impulse from the earth had an additional
message this March for me: a pair of golden-backed woodpeckers.
The red-crested golden-backed woodpecker must be one of nature's
recherche specimens. It contributes as much to the eyes' delight as to
the ears'. How much more precious the gold on its plumage than King
Hiero's crown (or any crown, for that matter)!
How much more spontaneous and mellifluous its strident drawn-out cry
than any human exclamation, instrumental or voiced! And no hand could
have devised that complementary red crest. Human fashions last as the
seasons do; unfashionable nature alters with the aeons, endowing mortal
seasons with permanence.
In a sense we 'owned' the woodpeckers, my wife and I; for they had
selected as their home a hollow in the dead trunk of a coconut palm that
just reached our bedroom window on the third floor. Whenever we looked
down, one of the pair would look up, askance! A too-rapid movement would
frighten it and prompt its flight to the nearest coconut tree, where it
would cling to the bark and look frantically around. We learned,
however, to be more dexterous in our observations. We grew sensitive to
the fact that we were looking from our bedroom into theirs.
Then came the myna birds. The party of four was perched on the branches
of a tall palm tree that reached us. Occasionally, the fronds would get
into our window and would have to be pushed out. Noticing me, the
nearest two flew off and settled on another palm a few feet away.
Our neighbourhood is well endowed with trees, which makes a natural home
for the birds. The remaining two were on the alert, ready to take off.
I parted the curtain ever so carefully; I stood as riveted to the spot
as the palm that supported the spectacle. I couldn't take my eyes off
these brown birds with yellow bills and legs. Whenever one of them would
fly, the white of the wings would be plainly visible. Sitting, the
white is only a speck.
It rained a little, and the birds got soaked. The rain stopped as soon
as it had begun. I was already very happy when the wind lifted, and it
put me into a more carefree mood. It was a storm. It came with a
mission: to cleanse, to cool, to renew. It was the first storm and the
first rainfall of the year.
Before embarking on its mission, however, it announced itself in a most
unsavoury manner: by kicking up a fuss of dust. When it ended, I
lingered at the western window. The sun could only be guessed by the
fracture of light that filtered through gray clouds and a faint smudge
of gold in the horizon. Another rent towards the south-west revealed a
faint blue. The southern sky was dark and full of rain. It was like a
poet's inspiration that had yet to find outlet in poetry.
And then it came, the downpour. The odour of the earth rose towards the
sky. The palm fronds danced like frenzied women in saris. The taller
trees swayed with a little more dignity. The rain fell in oblique lines,
and as they hit the concrete, gusts of wind shimmied them away and
needle-like points disappeared in patches momentarily. In the north,
above the open field, the rain fell in an oblique angle, and the wind
interrupted its descent like a muslin curtain fluttering in the breeze.
We had trepidation regarding the woodpeckers. Our anxiety was allayed,
however, by the announcement of safety that proceeded the next morning
from outside our window! It stormed, it rained, it blew. . . yet the
pair remained constant to their home and to each other. And when a third
head peered out one morning, the situation became a metaphor for the
vicissitudes that love and life must and can endure.
One morning, however, I encountered quite a different aspect of nature,
one that I will probably never forget. A pair of magpies were being
pursued by a pair of crows -- and one of the larger birds captured one
of the smaller. The other magpie dived in menacing arcs over the aerial
thugs, of which one stood sentinel to frighten the widow or widower
away. The crows flew off with their prey, and probably devoured it for
breakfast!
I was sobered into an appreciation of the difference between
civilisation and nature. Nature has its order, a harmony that appears to
be without government. And this very lack of authority seems
magnificent until we realise that nature is order without conscience. It
is man's prerogative to achieve conscience though order, and rise above
nature.
And it was then that the ongoing hartals* appeared more repugnant
than at any time in my life. Several rickshaw-pullers were burnt to
death -- a sixteen-year-old boy struggled for his life for eleven days!
To what level of bestiality had we descended in the name of freedom! The
freedom that is our proud boast is the freedom of the jungle. In my
admiration for the denizens of the forest, I have never felt the desire
to cease to be the citizen of a state. Yet I find myself living in a
jungle.
* hartal general strike
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| Iftekhar Sayeed, who lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is a freelance journalist and teaches English and economics. Visit him at www.iftekharsayeed.weebly.com.
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