Into The Wild

I always wondered why connecting with nature was sometimes so easy yet the bond so strong.

My weekend took me to a place which virtually is nestled amidst rivers and their creeks. Across the miles are dense mangrove forests where I could almost hear the rustle of every leaf, chirping of every bird and even my heart beating away silently.

And in the swirling waters of the rivers and in those mudflats were a few hundred salt water crocodiles. A thousand five hundred and seventy two was what the latest census said. Some of these reptiles weigh over 1,000 kgs each, measuring more than 20 ft in length. The GuinnessBook of Records says it's where world's largest croc lives. At times you could forget that these are nature's most menacing animals and can kill a man with just one swing of their tails. They have, in the past. But that's beside the point because men have killed more; more of their own tribe and that of others too. Basking in the sun, the crocodiles were so much at peace with themselves and with nature.

Such was the tranquility that I did not seem to realise where I stayed did not even have electricity supply. The night was never more dark and the sky, never so much star-studded. I did not want to come back.

Someone had so famously said: You are wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from the joy of human relationships. God's place is all around us, it is in everything and in anything we can experience.

And about connecting with nature, I guess, we all belong to it and will go back to it someday. It, therefore, is so easy to connect to and the reason the bond is so strong.

(Image: Shamim Qureshy)