Vision of Life; by Sanjay: No Lock-Down for the Nature!

“Nature is far big, far bigger than even our greed & it outlives everyone who tries to end it”...

Well, by now you must have guessed it lockdown philosophy again & yes it is as while walking around my building as exercises only option I heard at least five species of birds chirping from tress around! I paused, a rarest thing for me to do at walk but then this chirping itself was rare than my rarest! Since last when I heard birds chirping including magpie robin, koyal, bulbul, gray tit & maina (there may be few more also) at a time in this Smart City, I asked myself! And then it’s not just above birds, sparrows were dancing around & parakeets flocks too, with loudest of screeching sounds. For a while I forgot I am in heart of city like Pune & not in some forest trail o kanha or tadoba!

And then on today morning while walking around my building I noticed tamarind (English chinch or wilayati chinch we call it in vidarbha) lying down on the walk way & I remember my younger days in school where we used to crave to collect these beans in summers. And now summer, winter as well the rains comes & goes by & we hardly ever notice the change every season brings around us; all we think is, worry if there are heavy rains & worry if there are no rains too! The summer crawls in & we think about air coolers in our homes & its servicing but we forget to take notice about golden yellow flowers blossoming on the amlatash trees or ripe tamarinds spread right on our pathway around our homes! Winters makes us purchase our winter wares of latest fashon but we hardly notice the changed color of leaves of the trees! the winter gets along!

Well, we me ignore nature but nature itself never fails to admire or appreciate itself & proof I experienced as I saw a pair of brahmni Mainas landing right on walk way (which actually is a drive way) around the building & started feasting on the tamarind beans unruffled by my presence. Indeed mainas are fearless aggressive birds but I realized they actually knew that no vehicles will be disturbing their feast or else I have never seen mainas or any birds moving so comfortably around the building even at odd hours of noon when there is least movement of vehicles or humans!

Then at one such lockdown evening I was standing in my study room terrace which overlooks the road down aligned with many trees, I can see numbers of bats flying around. A bat is never been a good omen by our Hindu mythology but then no night creature is a good omen by us as we are always afraid of the darkness! But presence of the bats flaying freely at early evening hours is indeed a good sign by nature from biodiversity aspect. I knew that many bats reside on these trees along the road but their usual movement time I have seen in past is past late evenings when human interference gets reduced & more than that the noise & light pollution we create (thanks to number of Marriage Lawn on other side of the road) has always made life miserable for the bats restricting their hunt time (read as feeding) time to just few hours past mid night! And now with the lockdown even the evenings & nights have become much liveable for creatures like bats & many others who are desperately trying to survive within, we the humans!

I wondered to myself why it’s on other times I ever noticed this wonderful sights as agreed these birds sure has not come around & started singing just overnight as fortunately I live in a part of city where there is lots of greenery including large trees still exists along with concrete buildings. It’s just that one, I never get time (well its self declared thing actually) to see around & look at such sights & second is, in the sounds of every other object i.e. vehicle engines, horns, mobile phone calls & always filled up mind, when in city our senses has become dead to the nature & that’s why I couldn’t realize these birds existence around me & couldn’t hear their music earlier! And now with every human being (most of them) locked down in their homes & their birds i.e. vehicles parked in parking lots, these real birds can make you know they also are your neighbours & their demands are very less & yes your lockdown is their freedom actually! Strange when most of the builders proudly advertise about "waking up with chirping music of the birds", I wonder whom we are cheating to; ourselves or our clients or to the poor birds as most of the birds doesn’t have proper place to make their homes now in this city & those which has accommodated themselves among concrete jungle & still dare to chirp & offer their music to us but problem is, how many of us has time to listen to that music or let’s say how many of us cares for their music! I may sound harsh but that’s what reality is, we cut the trees within our building's premise for our car's parking, we cut large branches of trees for the tree makes lots of garbage (sorry tree but that’s what human thinks about it) by its fallen leaves & branches, the tree is a obstacle in light & ventilation in our so called homes so we cut it down to just stem, making it die eventually! In all this process we are eventually throwing the birds out of our life & we forget that we have booked flat reading some advertise, "wake up with birds chirping music”, pathetic lot we are!

And now suddenly with this outbreak of some virus when nature itself has made our life standstill we started realizing about the existence of nature around us & the importance of the same. As usual with so many posts (read as forwards) on whatsap I came across some with suggestion like, “don’t miss it” or “its beautiful” & they were poems or sharing of some Chinese or Italian personalities telling the world how suddenly they have found the world around at peace & how birds are again singing & flowers blooming & grass dancing on the breeze etc etc & our countrymen sharing such posts with wow & aww & superb types comments! Keeping full respect about emotions of all such personalities & those also who are forwarding them with great comments, nature was, is & will be around us as we haven’t yet understood the power of nature! It has outlived every specie, just because it is every specie in a way & we the humans are just one small link of entire life cycle

Fact is out of all the species which nature only has created we the humans only has achieved the crown of “Fool No. 1”, as we think we have got the responsibility of saving the nature! Lol humans, this lock down is just a chance given to all those concrete jungle residents to understand that the road of saving the nature goes through saving our own self, even if this much lesson we have learnt, I think purpose of the lockdown has achieved in much more way than it’s been ordered for; I did, do you?

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at U-Tube link below..

https://youtu.be/al0NZ-7Zhq0

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2019/11/infrastructure-development-real-estate.html