The wilderness

The visit to the Jim Corbett national park marked one year of togetherness. The serene jungle added to the romance of the situation, with its non intrusive presence. The quietness of the environment was a welcome break from the humdrum of daily life, besotted with calls, messages, pings and knocks. The cool weather gave all the more reason to hang around snugly, appreciating the beauty of the nature. And living a city life - especially, in a metro - makes you appreciate the freshness even better. Let it be the air, the sky or the surrounding flora. Everything is so fresh, so clean, so appealing, one feels ashamed of calling the city life developed. 

The trees actually house nests of plethora of birds, while the branches serve as perch for them to survey the area for food. Innumerable shrubs can be spotted everywhere, laden with variety of flowers. The subtle colours of those flowers pleases the eyes and soothes the mind. Going closer, one can notice a fascinating diversity of tiny winged creatures. The bees, the flies, the butterflies, the beetles and so on, living their lives silently and diligently - hopping from flower to flower, sucking the nectar, cross pollinating - from dawn to dusk. Talking of dawn, the picturesque sun rise between the ridges of hills always calls for respects from the cameras. Some unfathomable power making the fingers itch to click that shot. After years, I saw the dew shining on the grass. Last time, it was on a field en-route Mathura.

Our mind has somehow got conditioned to see objects of euclidean geometric shapes, the irregular, yet proportionate structures of nature, offer a welcome change. And then there are those intricate patterns in there, if you care to notice, in the petals of flowers, the wings of insects & birds and even the pebbles meandering river. It's the best place to appreciate these fractals, the patterns discovered by Dr. Benoit Mandelbrot (explained in simple terms here). Mathematics aside, the sheer perfection of design in each creation bewilders the mind. Let it be the colour scheme or the shape of the body, the finesse is just wonderful. And the best part is it is done with such frugality. No flora or fauna has anything unnecessary on it. Whatever it has, it has for for necessity (of survival) and beautifully so. Once we appreciate this, it feels pitiful to witness the man made things that surround us so pervasively. Bloated, unattractive, crass artefacts, particularly the vehicles we build, are aeons behind what the nature has achieved.

Such trips give a sense of relief juxtaposed with a sense of dejectedness. Relief from the torturous routine and dejectedness from the fact that we miss such beauty by our own choice. Though luckily, the charm of wilderness is far more overpowering for such pessimism to bother. May sense prevail in the mankind and we preserve this wonderful world of ours, for us and for the future.