The Dawn: The Light 'n Sound Show of Nature

-

      This is a show to which your entry passes have already been issued in unknown but specific numbers, whether you believe in predestination or not. You have no choice but to enter. However, you are free to use an eye mask or a pair of earplugs. It is totally up to you. Some do use them, consciously or otherwise.
      Ever since I grew old enough to wonder about the phenomenon of dawn and dusk, it has set my imagination on fire. In winter, mostly on Sunday mornings, I would prefer to stay in bed: warm, huddled up, wrapped in blankets, wide awake. I was all ears - though we can’t move our ear pinnae – attentive to the crowing of roosters in the chicken coop, the cawing of crows flying by, other birds’ chirping, the mooing of the cow in the shed with its calf tethered, the bicycle bells of the newspaper boy, the stirrings of my younger siblings, and my mom’s never-ending quarrel with damp firewood reluctant to ignite – to mention but a few. The new day had dawned like a grand symphony performed by a host of musicians.     Like a bottom-feeding fish surfacing to take a gulp of air, I would emerge from bed, not sure If I could call a wooden coat with a mat made of screw pine fonts (Pandanus fascicularis) on top, a bed. Rubbing my eyes and taking time to accustom them to the sun’s rays, my eyes would feast on a vast swath of land lying bathed in the sun. The timing of the sun’s rising and setting varies from day to day. Though the rituals remain the same, they are ever new.
     I am reminded of the quiet folding and unfolding of giant umbrellas designed by Swiss-based Liebherr on the piazza of theProphet’s mosque in Madina, the illuminated city: 25 square miles of umbrellas symbolizing leaf surfaces opening their trillions of stomata to receive their share of the sun cooking food to feed the whole planet. If you are doubtful of my eloquence, here is the quote fromThe Secret Life of Plants by Peter  Tompkins and Christopher Bird: “Altogether, 25 million square miles of leaf surface are daily engaged in this miracle of photosynthesis, producing oxygen and food for man and beast” (p. viii).
     Let us suppose we have a pair of microscopic eyes with 360-
degree vision, and a pair of ultrasonic eardrums. How thrilling it would be to marvel at the transition of day to night, and night to day - day in, day out; year in, year out. It would teach us what all the published works, and the yet-to-be-published ones, could never hope to. Stay tuned to the rhythm of nature, though there is no-one to acknowledge your doing so, or to thank you.
     The fresh morning breeze awakens our sleeping soul, and enlivens it to teem with fresh ideas. Let it caress the hair strewn all over your largest sensory organ in the geography of your physique, and pass through all your pores. I think souls are pollinated by the wind. Winds of change, and a whole day to, as Mic McGroarty put it, “Take care and, by all means, stay inspired”.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Earth in Her Hands

-
Image
  The Earth in Her Hands is a book by Jennifer Jewell that covers 75 extraordinary women in the world of plants . It tells us stories of womenfolk who put their life into plants, or the plants chose them to live their life with. Like most exciting things happening in my life, I stumbled upon this title recently while researching a related project online. It was love at first sight, and I got addicted to it while listening to the book on Audible, waiting outside our university dental clinic for my wife to have an appointment. Thanks, Dr. Abdul Qadar, for a three-hour long session on an emergency basis before he leaves for his home for the annual vacation. Each woman has a unique plant journey to relate to, which will take us for a ride through the ever-exciting botanical world. They are cherry-picked from various fields like botany, garden nursery, floral design, garden, photography landscape architecture, farming, seed banks, herbalism, and food justice. The common thread all these
Read more

A Breakfast with Elements at the Heights of Habla

-
Image
        There was a time when I lived in a sleepy, cold town all alone, having the luxury of a lovely friend, a small car, and a camera. We roamed around the places, exploring things no mortals we knew ever dared to. Once, he came up with a plan to watch the sunrise and had breakfast sitting on the top of a huge boulder, crowning the edge of a mountainous height and cutting steep slope that people feared to peep down. The mountain peak known as Habla is one of the peaks on the Aseer Mountain range, which is part of the Sarawat Mountains, running parallel to the Red Sea’s eastern coastline, extending the Hijaz Mountain range to the Southern borders of Saudi Arabia.                                               Part of the plan was to start way earlier so that we could watch the sunrise, and December was never kind to the people of this part of the world. Being so precarious and knowing much more about what was happening around me, I said no without sounding blunt. Still, I had to follow
Read more

Mandi: From Pen to Plate in 11 Frames

-
Image
Mandi (مندي) is a special steak and rice dish, a staple at special occasions such as Eid, parties, and wedding feasts among Arabs. Originating in Hadhramouth, Yemen, it soon made inroads into the entire Arabian peninsula, Sub-Saharan Africa, and recently the Southeast Asian countries too, mostly on account of its oil-free and exotic style of cooking. In short, the fat from suspended meat drips onto the rice being cooked underneath. The meat gets exquisitely tender, which is probably why the name "mandi" (from nada ندى meaning 'dew' or 'snowflakes') was chosen. Mutton (preferably lamb), chicken, and camel are the usual meats prepared this way.  Let us start with a three-month-old lamb raised nibbling on tender blades of subtropical desert grass and shrubs, often roaming free on vast stretches of the mountainous landscape. At the peak of summer, these lambs even dig up the land and eat the roots of plants underneath. A pit is dug about four feet d
Read more