Vision of Life; by Sanjay: Log House, Nature & Humans!

“Man is the cruellest animal.”... Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was a German philosopher, essayist, and cultural critic. His writings on truth, morality, language, aesthetics, cultural theory, history, nihilism, power, consciousness, and the meaning of existence have exerted an enormous influence on Western philosophy and intellectual history. Well, I know Nietzsche’s name through his various writings but many of us sure doesn’t know this name much & its personalities like Nietzsche the western world especially Europe is so rich in culture & heritage. I am sure many will frown on my statement about west & many will get angry that with a country which has heritage, culture & philosophy for thousands of years, how can still praise westerner like Nietzsche over our great names! And I won’t argue & counter reply to such all faces as indeed we are culturally rich country with wise men which has tried to share or teach us philosophy of life but! It’s this but is the reason which I ended up to praise Europe & its culture as with all so called wise men & their teachings, look where have we landed ourselves today i.e. in 2020!

Well, again frustration but not for lockdown this time as now the lockdown is in existence only for the govt & in the minds of people & many unfortunate businesses like hotels, tourism, malls & cinema halls & yes schools too all of these are hoping (or say praying) that someday lockdown will end & life will be back on the track for them, all the best guys, I too pray to that super power for the same! Ok, Nietzsche again & his words about the Man , well it’s not human, do mind, it’s just man he was referring too & again many won’t agree with him as the word humanity has got man in it, so how can be the man is cruellest thing in the world! Rather these pandemic times have shown many colours of kindness by the men, isn’t it? True & again I am not counter arguing as these has been instances of the profit making & taking disadvantage of the situation of helpless & needy people also but that’s the way world goes on. If you are wondering, what’s this is about & where is nature in all these things which is part of heading of the sharing, yes in all these negative things happening around if at all some solace is there then it is in the form of the nature only & most will agree with me this time! It’s now more than six months for all of us have been tied with our homes; work places & yes that’s needed too i.e. to avoid unnecessary gathering & creating crowd. But man (read as human) is a social animal & just like oxygen & water for the body we need meeting people, moving around for our mind is a fact! And in such getaway we the foresters, group of friends visiting forests together planned to visit farm house of one of our member as some change & getting in nature.

Well, I am not much fond of farm -houses or week-end homes & things like that rather feel it’s for those who have lots of time at hand & yes money too. And then when you build or buy some place of this sort then you only have to keep it visiting to make use of it! Another aspect is distance of such week end home from your regular home, if it’s more than one hour then it’s really troublesome to make out time to go & stay, periodically! But not always we are right however we may think we know all that type stuff & so I was about week-end homes, when I visited my friend’s one such which she fondly calls as Log-House. She (read as her husband & herself) has made it in total wooden planks & needless to say they are both USA returned & it’s wonderful place & I took back my all the words about (read as against) week-end home or farm house after reaching there. Reasons are three; it was hardly some fifty minutes drive from city (Pune), it’s well maintained & third is the surrounding nature it offers! Its the last aspect which is main object of this sharing, as we drove past Sus, a western suburb of Pune & round Hinjawadi, the IT hub, suddenly the terrain changed & hills were full green with loads of vegetation & air was cool, Indrayani river's water was clean & flowing & I could hear lots of the birds. In fact at one tree I saw hundreds of nests in making by Baya Weaver bird & got some wonderful snaps of home making by one of the best architect & engineer bird. Interestingly in Baya weaver, the male makes all labour & building while the female just supervises the work of nest making, a thing worth adopting by humans!

It’s so soothing that just thirty minutes drive from the city centre & how you leave behind not just the urban life but everything from air to traffic to landscape to people along with the chaos they jointly create & makes our life miserable, of which we also are contributor actually! I have never been in this part of outskirts of Pune which is periphery wise in mid way of Paud road i.e. Muslhi & Mumbai Expressway, its part of Western Ghats is what I presume but I was surprised (zapped) by the richness of biodiversity which has been survived here, till now! The farm house of my fined was nested in these hills & thankfully the developer has maintained most of the green cover except clearing some for making roads in the lay out. Though the farm owners also have contributed with their plantation is a heartening thing. While we reached to the farm house the sun was already settling down & it was cloudy & I started walking on road uphill with a torch in my hand & it was scary to walk though I knew there are no big predators by any chance in these habitats yet darkness does things to you especially when you are not in your habitat i.e. concrete jungle! In nature when its cloudy the night darkness is pitch black as there is no glow from thousands of artificial light glare of which our eye sights are not used too & the sounds from various insects & birds makes it like 4 D effect of horror movie! But as I am used to walk in forests I walked in those dark hill roads happily & fearing, a rare experience I can have in city life! And then early morning our friend took us to the table top of the land & trust me it was more wonderful than any Hill Station or even European country side as there were wild flowers of every shade from purple to yellow & many birds, including Jungle Fowl to Malabar Crested Lark & many such which you don’t get to see ever in the city & the air was as clean as you can get & for a moment I forgot everything about Smart City & my work, well that’s what you call it as a break , isn’t it!

Now, the point is we have thousands of kilometres of such habitats around our Pune city & I am sure same must be the case with many other cities, so what are we doing it for their conservation! Fortunately this farm land farm land developer guy has showed some sanity & the landscape along with habitat is well protected but it may not be the case all around with the fast growing urbanization. And sad part (keeping full respect for the forest department’s poor infra) was nowhere around or on way, I saw any govt agency’s conservation or protection efforts for this biodiversity heaven! At the same time nobody is trying to en-cash this wealth of nature except making the land under plotting & boards of “Have Your Home In Nature” on it & no control on such developments as one day there will be Home but no Nature to look at is the fact! I really wonder what kind of society or govt (read as people) we are as on one side we shout about protecting nature & on other side we turn a blind eye on the nature where it’s surviving healthily, weird we are really! As we can’t protect the nature right under our nose, in the city (see Paravati Hills or Katraj Hills or Paud road Hills) & we just don’t care about whatever biodiversity we have surrounding our city & we claim ourselves as a developed & intelligent specie i.e. Humans! Every day we cut some trees, we pollute some water source, we make one specie go instinct i.e. gone forever from this earth & then we try to protect what’s gone! But then no wonder in a country which celebrates people’s birthdays or felicitates or honours personalities after they have gone & not giving them any respect when they were very much alive, what else can be expected! High time we should make policies which will ensure survival if not revival of the biodiversity around & for that we need to give more power as well infrastructure to departments like Forest as well Environment instead considering them as side or sub standard departments! At the same time think of privatization of forests or biodiversity rich lands keeping the forest part intact to the people like Tata or Wipro who do business with morals & ethics. Or even think of making forest lands adopted by big multinationals which cares for nature as well NGO’s as we have huge spread of forest still around & some govt dept won’t be ever able to take care of it is a fact!

By the way, recently there was one more rape & brutal assault on a woman & as usual media was abuzz & on that background I started to write my nature assault sharing, this is what I wrote about that assault as it has reference to my sharing eventually...

One more Assault!

Well well.. every time a woman gets raped & brutally assaulted by some thugs, candles got burn, marches made, celebrities post their anguish on insta with hired words, news media write venom & that’s all.. in a country where most population is Gazani ( short memory loss) deserves this only!!

And do u think the group of men who does such acts dares to do such thing just in the feat of impulse or by seeing any woman just by chance?? No Sir, then u are a fool, as such men dares to rape & assault a woman because every day they see around not just some woman but most women & men ( common, of course) getting raped & assaulted by the system we call government or society & getting away without a scratch! May it be paying a faulty electricity bill or change of name of property card or paying tax returns on line or even just expecting proper water supply (& i am not expecting affordable homes or education or medical help), everywhere d common man & women gets raped & assaulted every hour of the day all along the year; its just that this rape is financial & mental & we think its unseen but suffering is there & nobody utters a word about it & yet d scars tells the story of d rape on ur face everyday & u think nobody knows about it!!

And this is what makes some men dare to rape a woman & beat her, this is what makes few men get drunk & vandalize vehicles on road just to declare themselves some bhai, this is what gives confidence to some men that with a gun & knife they can rule d society by fear & threaten anybody!!

Actually a criminal gets courage only because millions of so called non criminals are cowards when its giving back to d injustice & that makes all of us criminals & party to the every rape happening around us!!

Wake up guys, at least show some courage till u are alive physically, it may help saving one woman or even a man from getting raped or assaulted which may be from what u call ur family, unless its too late ... i try to do every day in my way...

Well, we are killing the nature if not directly but by ignoring it, is a fact & it’s an assault on the nature but then a society where we don’t spare our fellow humans (read as women), how can we expect that we will spare the nature from our assault (I was going to write Rape instead of assault but restricted myself from using that term). But do mind, nature is not some helpless, weak woman (actually women too are not) with whom you can do whatever you want & throw her for dying in pain & get away by buying the system! Nature don’t forgets & forgive assaults we the humans make on it; rather nature has its own ways to take revenge on us & when it does then none of our intelligence or weapons or money can protect us, mind it Humans!