Tag: #nature

Anything natural is generally good…

IMG_0131I have always been an admirer of nature. I have admired nature in all its forms. I love the hills, mountains, rivers, deserts and the sea. I love trees, forests, animals and birds. Of course, I like human beings and love to observe how they behave with all forms of nature. I have wondered as to how we have progressively tried to destroy nature in the name of growth and development.

I am a diabetic and had switched over to sunflower oil and other so called healthy diet based on what I read and believed from people around me. I then met a leading diabatologist in Mumbai. He advised me to go back to my roots. He simply stated that I should follow the diet patterns my family has been following over centuries. For eg. He advised me to switch back to TIL oil from sunflower oil. He said nature has a way of adapting the body to suit the health of human beings. If you belong to a particular region, you should follow the food habits of that region.

This was a revelation for me. I started believing that “Anything natural is good”. It is not only true but experience of mine substantiates this belief. While technology and science has helped us develop wonderful things, I still realize that there is no substitute for similar things found in nature. It is like no perfume on earth can invigorate me more than fresh jasmine flowers in my garden.

I am yet to see a painting more beautiful than the skyline every evening during sunset. There is no building in the world which is more intricate than a bee hive or an ant hill if you dig deep into how they are constructed. Similarly I am yet to experience the joy of being in the midst of a dense forest , in the city centre of the best cities of the world. I do not know why but nature engulfs you. It embraces you and makes you feel special.

As human beings instead of learning from nature, we have tried our best to destroy it. A simple example is the use of plastic. While plastic is a great discovery and it has benefited us in multiple ways, it is unnatural and hence harmful in many ways too. It has choked drains, killed kids, and has been the root cause of many catostrophies because of human misuse.

If we look at the contra of my hypothesis, I believe everything unnatural is harmful to human beings. While artificial sweeteners and flavours can quench our taste buds they are ultimately harmful to human consumption. It may be more beneficial to have juices from fresh fruits rather than carbonated drinks. The marketeers of these carbonated drinks may have made us believe how prestigious it is to consume them.

It could be neem leaves or its extract to brush your teeth and compare it to the multiple chemicals used in our toothpastes every day. It could a cup of fresh milk in the morning as compared to diet drink today, which has no nutrients. We were eating fresh fruits as part of our breakfast. Today we take artificially flavoured cereals, which may lose their original nutrient value because of the unnatural ingredients.

Jack fruit as in the photo above is considered the king of all fruits and has multiple benefits. Almost every part of the fruit and tree is useful to human beings.

It is time to wake up. It is time to bounce back. We need to get back to nature. We need to protect our trees and animals. We need to protect the earth and may be other planets from all the pollution and waste we are dumping on them. We need to realize that nature gives us everything we want for a sustainable living and further keeps us happy. Instead of giving back in equal measure, we have ended up destroying nature.

Time to wake up and get natural.

S Ramesh Shankar

The Indescribale…


There are many things in life, which can never be described.  How do we describe the beauty of nature ?  How do we explain the colours of the sky during a sunset ?  What shades of green can be explained in an ever green forest ?  There are such and similiar situations, where words cannot explain a scene.  I would call them the indescribable moments of life.

I have experienced many moments in life, which are indescribable.  The first and foremost in my mind is the spectacle of nature from morning to night.  Every day when I get up and look at the sunrise and the cloud formation, it is a new picture and changes every second.  There have been days when my wife or me have seen a beautiful skyline at dawn and called upon our partner to have a look and it has disappeared or changed within seconds. 

Life is no different.  We go through ups and downs in life and every moment is precious.  There are moments of joy, when words cannot express our feelings.  We may not be able to share our joy with others or express it ourselves.  It may be an inner feeling of happiness and contentment, which is to be experienced to be believed.  It happens to me in moments of solitude.  It could be a lonely temple or a monastery in a forest.  There is no human being or animal around you but you feel one with nature and this moment can never be described or shared with anyone at that moment.

The situation is similar when we are sad.  It could be a day when you are remembering your parents, who left you on earth decades back.  You recall life’s greatest lesson taught by them and feel their vacuum in your life.  This feeling of inertness cannot be expressed to anyone in words or emotions.  You cry to yourself and sometimes even without shedding a tear from your eyes.  No force on earth can console you during these moments and your tears appear to dry up even before they roll down your eyes.

At work too you have moments, which are not describable to any one.  You feel you are competent to deal with a situation and take on a project based on your likes.  But as you go through the project there are days of despair when you feel helpless and lonely.  You do not feel like sharing this feeling or emotion with anyone around you lest you are misunderstood by anyone.

Even within your family and home, there are moments when you do not want to share your emotions with anyone lest you hurt them.  You may have had a bad day at work but you believe your family members should not bear the burden of your work pressures and hence you hide your feelings.  These moments are equally difficult to describe for anyone who is going through them in reality.

So life has moments of joy and sorrow.  We find it easy to describe some of these moments.  However, there are other moments when words cannot express what we go through.  We neither can share through words nor through emotions what we actually go through.  It is these moments we need to learn to deal with ourselves so that we spring back to balance life our own way.

How can we describe the formation of the clouds and the colour of the skyline during a beautiful sunset on any day as in the photo above ?

Let us learn to live with life the way it is rather than the way we want it to be always.

S Ramesh Shankar

Spectacle of our eyes


I have always wondered as to how God created our eyes as the best camera in the world.  No technology in the world has been able to beat our eyes to capture pictures around us.  The best of cameras I have tried in my life so far have not come even near the beautiful capture of our eyes.  It captures in three dimension or may be four.  As apart from the three dimensional picture, it also conveys an emotion to our brain to appreciate the beauty.

Let us start with nature.  We can neither capture sunrise nor sunset with a camera as well as our eyes displays it to us.  The clouds in the sky, the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the valleys and et all are picturized by our eyes like no camera ever can.  The birds, the animals, the insects or even the landscape around us is best visualised by our eyes.  I sometimes wonder as how to express my gratitude to God to bestow me with such a beautiful pair of eyes.

In my view the beauty of a human being is best seen through their eyes.  As they say, the eyes speak more than a thousand words.  We can feel the emotions of a person through their eyes.  When in joy, our eyes sparkle.  When in sorrow, our eyes are moist and give away our sadness.  A mother’s eyes expresses care without a word uttered to her child.  Similarly a father’s stern eyes may deter a child from doing a wrong.

At the workplace, we also speak through our eyes.  Many a times we need not utter a word to say we agree or disagree on any issue as our eyes will convey it to the other person even before we utter a word on the subject. Eyes symbolise words through expressions.  If you look at pieces of art – a painting or a sculpture, the artist conveys her or his emotions through the eyes of the art.  Just by changing the design of the eyes the meaning of an art piece can be changed.

The communication between a small kid and her parents are primarily through the eyes especially when the kid is yet to utter her first word in life.  Children can express all forms of emotions through their eyes easily.  They laugh, cry, get angry or express sorrow by the wink of their eyes.  Eyes express more than words.   Words do not carry emotions with them but eyes do.

Most of us have experienced or seen lovers communicating through their eyes. It may be classmates in college or colleagues at the workplace.  They may not even talk to each other in the presence of others.  But the communication through their eyes signifies the intensity of their love for each other.  This has been picturized very well in movies and plays and described eloquently in songs and poetry around the world.

As in the photo above, the eyes speak for themselves.

While all senses of the human body – sight, touch, sound, taste and smell are equally significant , sight through our eyes is the most beautiful.   Let us be blessed to admire nature and beauty in life through our eyes forever.  Let our eyes inspire us to look at the world through the beauty of other human beings, animals and things.  Let us learn to love other humans, animals and plants through the positive expression of our eyes.

Let our eyes give us sight and insight.

S Ramesh Shankar