A mirror to timelessness
India, Aug. 10 -- So polluted and murky have we made our waters that a Narcissus would be hard put to find a pool of pure water in our times. One so clear that he could gaze upon his reflection in the depths and fall in love with himself! Well, if one retreats from the madding crowds and voyages afar from road-heads into the foothills, there are jungle pools created in monsoon's wake that would indulge a Narcissus with a crystal-clear mirror held to his beautiful face.
A five-km trek into the ravines and along the rivulet feeding Siswan dam brought me to a transparent pool corralled by boulders. It was a piece of the blue planet in its purest manifestation. There were Paradise flycatchers in rufous morph sallying forth to hawk insects and plunging in for baths.
On the edges were Rock honeybees nibbling at moist earth, along with butterflies and esoteric insects. Tadpoles darted towards subaqueous cliffs of pebbles gleaming in rain lustre. Flowers were tiny, lean and adaptive, lacking in the ampleness of the buxom beauties of our manicured, soulless, sprayed gardens.
I did not know the names of all these insects/ wild flowers. Neither did a quest arise in me to know the nomenclatures that imprisoned their infinity. And, by the way, would the flora and fauna ever know the names allotted to them in some gloomy lab?
Neighbouring the pool was a cave-like hollow in the hillock wall. Hollows form when turbulence of rivulet flow drives into the sides. These provide shelter in the searing pre-monsoon. I had observed a Barking deer, peacock and Red junglefowl share limited space in one such hollow along a dry rivulet. The unlikely trio had amicably sought shade from June's white heat.
The pool held a mirror to timelessness. There were no ecological distortions here in the guise of sand-mining, flora hacking or smoking of beehives. The unpretentious scene was a blessed isle of planetary life as humans rarely ventured into this supposedly "godforsaken spot". As I gazed, time stood still. Nature swept me in a time machine on a voyage anti-clockwise. The inner cosmic spirit released a shooting star of a thought: much hasn't changed by the pool though countless moons have, since, sailed into the dawn....
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