What We Fail to See

Today I went to coffee shop nearby my office, with a friend. We sat next to the glass window of the shop with ‘hot n strong’ cappuccinos in our hands. Pretty soon we got into busy conversation on movies, TV shows and the like. While all this was going on, I could feel that something else was happening very close to me that I needed to pay attention to. I had been staring at it for quite some time too, but failed to register the beauty of it. It was then that my friend unexpectedly asked me where all the leaves were falling from, outside our glass window, onto the railings. Suddenly I realized what the beautiful sight was that I had been missing.

The coffee shop that we were in, is located inside a petrol station, where there are no trees nearby the windows. So the leaves falling should not be a natural occurrence there. So where did the leaves come from? I knew the answer too – the leaves were being brought by a pair of sparrows, one by one, and dropped near the window so that they could build a nest between some gap in between the window and the parapet. The leaves were carefully plucked fresh out of ornamental palm plants that were grown near a distant wall of the petrol station.

We, human beings, are very busy people doing nothing great but stressing out. We have time for only us and just us. We preach about living in unison with nature, but we fail to understand what nature is made of. At that moment, I realized that nature is made of much more efficient beings like the sparrows that I failed to notice or the ants and bees that provide for most of the activities on earth. They are not as blessed beings as us, human beings, who have the gift of intelligence and the ability to think. We make use of our intelligence make the world a better place to live for our species, and we hardly bother about what the rest of the nature needs. And most of the time, we fail to realize that by ignoring the need of the nature; we are ignoring the danger of getting our planet destroyed.

I recently read a post by someone on a social networking site which goes something like this “Man destroys nature and deprive other beings of food and shelter to build his empire(s), and call it development. But when a natural calamity brings down his empire, he calls it devastation”. That is the paradox in our very existence. We develop but ultimately end up destroying. A recent survey says that the population of honey bees has come down by 33% or so in recent times; the major cause for which is reasoned to be the exponentially increasing number of mobile network towers being installed, the  signals from which resulting in wide miscommunication among the worker bees of a hive. This has brought about shorter lifespan for the bee community due to inadequate nourishment (Please read this article).

Honey bees contribute significantly to pollination for flowers and hence vegetation. I hope you see the depth of the issue here. It is ultimately affecting the whole food chain that includes the human race too unfortunately, in an alarming way. Sadly it seems to be too late to prevent this, as we know that going back to the age of no mobile phone usage is more than impossible for our generation. Technology is cool and greatly appealing, but ultimately we are being made slaves of the same.

I know this might not be an ideal read for many of us, and I am not pointing out a solution to anything here too. I happen to have these thoughts and hence felt like putting them down somewhere.