Morning Musings In Twin Times of Amphan and Corona

Inundated with the many wishes of welfare received from my friends and the anticipation of an impending calamity about to befall, I took to measured steps of somnolent awakening that kept me engaged the whole night, full of prognostic feelings of past regrets and future fears.

As the cold winds and the finger-tapping rains gathered momentum, in the fashion of a classical raga: to begin with, to the anticipatory crescendo of the taans; I began to vision in my mind the juxtaposition of the  ‘Dance of Nature’ outside…to the divine ‘Dance of Nataraja’. That is when I stumbled upon the word ‘Nature’ and its many dimensions.

As images appeared, took shape, vanished and reappeared in the construct like apparitions of the Shakespearean characters, questions formed on the emerging clash between Man and Nature. Since time immemorial there did exist a constant dialogue between the two: a share of mutual wants and symbiotic balances. Cut short to today’s times: with the advent of science, we cannot deny the increasing gap between the two, while the reasons are all well-known. Sometimes I have been confronted with open-ended questions like: “Is science a boon or a bane” to “is science a part of life or life is a part of science”! Someone has said, “About Nature ask Nature itself.”

By this time it was early morning and the linear growth of the din outside my window had completed its alaap phase and had entered to its linear phase of the complexities of taan, with its ornamentative gamaks accompanied with taals of a different beat. The early light of a hidden sun barely made anything discernible, while the auditory nerves were fed with the multiplicity of a waxing and waning of an orchestra in full accompaniment to the sonoric notes of a raga of a different kind, which only Nature knows.

I was drawn to a new reality and before my somnolent vision awakened to the daily and dreary, I wrote out my reply to my friends as under:

“Dear Brothers,

As I thank you for all your good wishes, your prayers for us has indeed providentially changed the course of the super cyclone Amphan. We are spared the repeat ordeal of last year.

Great experience though: sitting up throughout the night in darkness with a howling wind and a sharp rain keeping us at bay; as if to mock and tease us mortals about our frailties and vainglory! In my mind I stretched the corollary with corona to wonder which could be a stronger message of Nature: the sharp sting of super cyclone Amphan or the slow drawl of  coronavirus: both devastating in their sound and fury, in the construct of Mother Nature’s scheme of things.

Could it also be true that Nature’s best thought creation as yet, Human Beings, who, inspite of the strides of society, civilisation and modernity; having evolved as mankind, have in their stride developed also the higher tool and means of prayer, gratitude and surrender, to tame and coax Mother Nature to remind her of her duty towards her creations!

Perhaps that is the only succour and recourse left with us humans; after all that we have unleashed to go beyond the laws of Nature.

Looking beyond the immediate, the thought that comes to my mind is that while maya pulls us abound, “The world is an illusion, truth alone triumphs: satyameva jayate.”

That could be the only way to laugh it off, I presumed; as I recalled the previous evening’s words of my microbiologist son, who after returning from his COVID-19 laboratory of RMRC (ICMR) said, “So many samples sitting disciplined on the table in sullen silence but menacing in their intentions that scares me to pray and bow to them first before I touch them.”

A new act of the eternal drama is unfolding before our eyes and our generation is ‘fortunate’ to witness it.

“Are we?”

Thank you all again, with some food for thought on an otherwise thought-provoking morning in the twin times of corona and the super cyclone.

Much love,

Debi