A Trip to Heart of India

Welcome to our series of travel blog “A Trip to Heart of India”. In previous part I have discussed about how nature welcome me on my arrival at “Madhya Pradesh”. As I mentioned earlier that how rain welcomes me and my friends , how a full rainbow shows heaven on earth , how a train journey teaches me a life lesson .Today in this article I want to say something about our nature , I have some photographs which you will rarely see in metro cities or it is right to say that you will never see that kind of nature around you in metro cities . 

Started with a famous quote:

Believe one who knows: you will find something greater in woods than in books.  Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.  

A beautiful village (MP, INDIA)

Nature and Us

Have you ever been awed by the beauty of a mountain or ocean? Have you ever been excited to see a wild animal in its natural habitat? Have you ever stopped to admire a lovely flower or tree? If so, you will understand how nature can impact our well being.

By nature, we mean the natural world and the nested ecosystems within it. This is the “non-built” world of water, air, earth, vegetation, and animals. Humans are part of nature and interact constantly with it in many ways—on the molecular and the larger systems level.

This interaction is deeply beneficial to humans, especially with the growing prevalence of depression caused by “nature deprivation,” which is largely due to increasing time spent in front of televisions and computers. Apart from meeting some of our most basic needs, nature relaxes and refreshes us.

If you hurt nature, you are hurting yourself

 

What is nature? There is a great deal of talk and endeavour to protect nature, the animals, the birds, the whales and dolphins, to clean the polluted rivers, lakes, fields and so on. Nature is not put together by thought, as religion and belief are. Nature is the tiger, that extraordinary animal with its energy, its great sense of power. Nature is the solitary tree in the field, the meadows and the grove; it is that squirrel shyly hiding behind a bough. Nature is the ant, the bee and all the living things of the earth. Nature is the river, not a particular river, whether the Ganga, the Thames or the Mississippi. Nature is those mountains, snow-clad, with dark blue valleys and range of hills meeting the sea. The universe is part of nature. One must have a feeling for all this, not destroy it, not kill for one’s pleasure or one’s table. We do kill cabbages, the vegetables we eat, but one must draw the line somewhere. If you do not eat vegetables, how will you live? So one must intelligently discern.

Nature and Us

Nature is part of our life. We grew out of the seed, the earth, and we are part of all that, but we are rapidly losing the sense that we are animals like the others. Can you have a feeling for a tree, look at it, see the beauty of it, listen to the sound it makes? Can you be sensitive to the little plant, a little weed, to that creeper growing up the wall, to the light on the leaves and the many shadows? One must be aware of all this and have that sense of communion with nature around you. You may live in a town, but you do have trees here and there. A flower in the next garden may be ill-kept, crowded with weeds, but look at it, feel that you are part of all that, part of all living things. If you hurt nature, you are hurting yourself.

One knows all this has been said before in different ways, but we don’t seem to pay much attention. Is it that we are so caught up in our own network of problems, our desires, our urges of pleasure and pain that we never look around, never watch the moon? Watch it. Watch with all your eyes and ears, your sense of smell. Watch. Look as though you are looking for the first time. If you can do that, you see for the first time that tree, bush or blade of grass. Then you can see your teacher, your mother or father, your brother or sister, for the first time. There is an extraordinary feeling about that: the wonder, the strangeness, the miracle of a fresh morning that has never been before and never will be.

Be in communion with nature, not verbally caught in the description of it, but be a part of it, be aware, feel that you belong to all that, be able to have love for all that, to admire a deer, the lizard on the wall, that broken branch lying on the ground. Look at the evening star or the new moon without the word, without merely saying how beautiful it is and turning your back on it, attracted by something else, but watch that single star and new delicate moon as though for the first time. If there is such communion between you and nature, you can commune with man, with the boy sitting next to you, with your educator or with your parents. We have lost all sense of relationship in which there is not only a verbal statement of affection and concern but also this sense of communion, which is not verbal. It is a sense that we are all together, that we are all human beings, not divided, not broken up, not belonging to any group or race or some idealistic concepts, but that we are all human beings, living on this extraordinary, beautiful earth.

Nature and Us

 

Have you ever woken up in the morning and looked out of the window, or gone out on the terrace and looked at the trees and the spring dawn? Live with it. Listen to all the sounds, to the whisper, the slight breeze among the leaves. See the light on that leaf and watch the sun coming over the hill, over the meadow. And the dry river, or that animal grazing and those sheep across the hill, watch them. Look at them with a sense of affection and care, that you do not want to hurt a thing. When you have such communion with nature, your relationship with another becomes simple, clear, without conflict.

 

Thank you,

Lucifer,
Part -4,
A Trip to Heart of India.