It’s a pleasant morning today, very pleasant I would say, because still at around 10, the hot sun is sleeping somewhere and cool breeze is blowing. The sound of trees’ leaves and branches moving with the wind produce an enchanting sound, which not only soothes the ears but also gives pleasure to the mind. One feels to go outside and face the wind and its power, not only because it gives a lot of relief from the stuffed environment of one’s room but because it’s music says something, something very special and something very dear to our ears.
Relief from the scorching heat is not the only reason which elates our minds in such weather. There is lot more attached to it. Had the relief from the burning heat been the only reason for the fragrance of this beautiful weather, we would have felt the same in an air-conditioned room with a lot of room freshener sprayed inside. But such an AC room never invigorates our senses. The best of electronic instruments are unable to produce the music which the sound of wind outside my room produces. Why does it happen? Why do all the scientific inventions fail before the small miracles of nature?
For me, this pleasant weather reminds me of my childhood days when, in the months of April and May, I used to go to the school through the pavement surrounded mustard fields on one side and mango and litchi trees on the other. We had the morning classes in the months of April and May and during these months, the fruits on the mango and litchi trees used to be half ripe. And as every impatient child, I too was impatient to taste the half ripe fruits. That sour mango or litchi looked like the sweetest of all the fruits I used to eat during the whole season. I along with my friends used stones to hit at the fruits so that they could fall from the trees. And every falling fruit gave us the sense of victory comparable to none in the world. And no scientific invention is strong enough to invoke such a pleasurable memory from my store.
Robert Lynd in his essay entitled ‘The Hum of Insects’ sites our connection with some universal music when we listen to the music of wind outside. This universal music keeps us going and makes us feel alive.
“These three noises (the noise of insects, the noise of birds or the noise of the sea) appear to have an infinite capacity for giving us pleasure--a capacity, probably, beyond that of any music of instruments. It may be that on hearing them we become a part of some universal music, and that the rhythm of wave, bird and insect echoes in some way the rhythm of our own breath and blood.”
And for the greatness of the music of nature over that of electronic instruments, the essayist says:
“Insect after insect dances through the air, each dying away like a note of music, and we see again the border of pinks and the strawberries, and the garden paths edged with box, and the old dilapidated wooden seat under the tree, and an apple-tree in the long grass, and a stream beyond the apple-tree, and all those things that made us infinitely happy as children when we were in the country--happier than we were ever made by toys, for we do not remember any toys so intensely as we remember the garden and the farm.”
Doesn’t it say something about our very nature? We are a part of the human race and hence linked to the Mother Nature more than anything else. A child can be distracted and can be kept occupied for some time if she is away from her mother and after some time, the child needs her mother. Similarly, we get the biggest comforts and pleasures of life in the proximity with our roots, in accepting the fact that we are a part of this universe and we require the small wonders and miracles which our generous Mother Nature bestows upon us from time to time, for She like our biological mother understands all our needs and cares for us more than we can think!!
