A decade back, when we came to Ulhas, on a Hemonto afternoon, Anonyo told me that nature all around felt plaintive as we ambled about on the roof. The barren corn field in front and the soft sun might be an immediate provocation why my friend said so. We fell silent for a while.
Yesterday afternoon I spent some time in the same roof. Two banyan trees, just the day before, were uprooted by those who were busy in widening the highway. Those trees were on the right side of the entry gate of our avenue. Elderly people are saying that those trees are more than hundred years old. It was not an easy job for the people engaged in tree-felling act. A sturdy crane and two earth-shaking machines could not move an inch the robust trunks of those trees after their branches were lopped off by sharpened blades of machines. Then earth was dug out around their bases for the crane to get to the moist roots to upturn them. As I happened to scooter past the area much later, I found a machine was levelling at a rattling pace the earth that was strewn with bits and pieces of nests. This morning I saw the usual visits of sparrows on the cornices were missing. As I looked southwards, I found the leafy horizon was replaced by a sky-scrapper. It (the sky-scrapper) is actually a nursing home that was built recently. The building gets prominence at the expense of dual trees. The unwilling banyans were sacrificed at the altar of road expansion for smoother and quicker transport. Nature, naturally, holds on to a nursing home.
Konika Bannerjee is singing “Ami keboli swapono korechhi bapono batase…” on radio as I write my weekly column. The immaculate note-making is very arresting. So are the words. We sow the seeds of dream only to know that they are never meant to translate to reality. Still we keep on dreaming. Ultimately the dream vanishes and the reality that we build on the dream crashes. “Din sheshe dekhi chhai holo sab hutashe…”
A yellow butterfly is fluttering from one flower to another before me. It looks very happy with its association with wild flowers. Thankfully it needs no nursing home for its wellbeing. It resorts to flowers; wildly.