Man has been burning parts of himself to warm himself up! Of course we don’t know what we are doing. The result is most of us are mutilated. We think we can hurt anything if we can and we try to improve upon this capability. We have become destroyers. At long last, Nature now is all set to destroy us!

 We believe everything including the other man has been created for our comfort and mileage. We don’t feel we are part of a system. We don’t realize that all jeeva form a web. Imagine what happens if our left hand is afraid of the right!

 I belong to a family of farmers. I became aware of other Jeeva early in life. I love a seed sprouting, a baby lizard struggling to move, a bud hopefully blossoming, the festival of flowers, the happiness of a harvest, and how a bird calling its mate feels. I have spent time in the open field at night enjoying the orchestra of frogs,  felt my proximity making the coconut tree and the mango tree happy and squirrels talking to me. 

I have seen my grandmother keeping a small plate of boiled rice  apart in the corner of the back veranda for ants to eat. And believe me, ants did come to eat and also carry some away! I have found the trees nearest to the house happily yielding more. Why, we had a huge elephant roaming free in our village when I was a child. It was supposed to belong to a Namboodiri (Brahmin) family. No one was afraid. It never bothered anyone. It even tried to play with the children!

 Cats and dogs walked in for free lunches. Birds, squirrels and other claimants enjoyed mangoes, plantain and jackfruits before we had our  share. My Grandma often spoke to the cobra enjoying the sun in our courtyard, affectionately advising it to better go into hiding before naughty children saw it! She used to put us to sleep with stories of deers and leopards living together in peace in the Maharshi’s ashram.

 Trust me, I have ever believed that it is certainly  possible. 

C. Radhakrishnan