WAS sitting in my garden this morning, when I was struck by the sheer beauty all around, the joy the different shades of green gave out, and looking more closely realized how the leaves of the different plants were shaped so elegantly different!
Yes, elegantly, because, it was as if they had been crafted by a master gardener, and as I thought along these lines it struck me, that, indeed, they had been thus crafted. They had been designed by a creator, for whom every shade, colour, and turn of a branch mattered to create beauty in the eyes of the beholder!
And the lucky beholder is we who inhabit this wonderful earth, but who spend most of our time trying to destroy the very plants, trees and flowers that give us this magnificent sense of peace! We destroy the very ingredients that give us joy to create sparks of excitement!
“Cut down the trees!” roar politicians or other small leaders and create metro sheds, parking spaces or giant malls. We wander through the same malls, searching for that elusive joy, which we feel we can get from various, beckoning, seductive stalls, be it, through furniture or shoes or apparel, but come out empty, because that very joy we search for disappeared when we cut down the very trees and greenery to create this mauled monstrosity!
The Gardener created all that was required to give us joy, but with our man made, ‘tower of babel’ minds we think we can attain more with our own brains. We can’t! I hear cries in Goa, such a beautiful state, as citizens cry out against the large-scale massacre of a natural beauty which they had in their environment, of rivers, streams and green all around.
Today, under the very misused name, ‘progress’ that same green state is being turned into a dreaded, dismay of devious destruction! As I look up at my garden, the magnificent peepul tree that protectively overshadows the garden, and the other leaves and flowers that smile innocently back at me, I am reminded of a line from the 23rd Psalm, ‘He makes me to lie down in green pastures!’
“Yes,” I say, smiling back at the trees and plants in my garden, “The Divine Gardener created you all to give rest to our weary selves!”
Which means that we when we hack trees and destroy His creation unnecessarily, are proving to be just like stupid builders of the tower of Babel, who instead of concentrating and enjoying what they already had, decided to excavate the very earth, to build and reach what was outside their grasp, and in the end found their hopes shattered. Let us instead, enjoy the Garden, the great Gardener has laid out for us..!
