“Mom, why don’t we eat grass, when plenty grows there as food?” …and a concerned cub’s query gives a Mom a serious reason to brood…
“A born Tiger talking of eating grass, what a disaster!”, she mumbles. Still, in order to stay upright in his eyes she couldn’t afford to sound any rude, yet, she didn’t have to devise new ways to explain to him those ‘jungle laws’—long lying bare and nude…
She had to just collect herself to bring about an explanation as blunt as crude, saying: “This is the way we are made by mother nature, my dear so that the ‘Circle Of Life’ is properly ensued!”
“Circle Of Life?” Neither confused nor anything was misconstrued, only the newness of the concept resonated in his agitated mood…
“What does it mean mom, this ‘circle of life’ thing?”, he humbly asks. “Please explain!”, he demands.
Setting aside all that philosophy attached, she decides to go as close to the concept as possible; it’s her onus, after all, to raise the king in the making well, else for his failures in the future only she will be declared responsible.
“Well, we start at the end of something and end up becoming some another beginning’s cause; our lives, my dear, resemble a complete full circle only on account of such ‘since & because’!” She arrives candidly, assuming he will understand. But it seemed as if she had thrown a direct bouncer at her Super Cub!
“What! What is what, Mom? Can you please repeat?” He humbly asks.
She reiterates, “In other words: No matter how big or small that circle is, for everyone it starts and ends in the exact same way; to this ‘undeniable principle’ we all have to adapt, adjust and accommodate—come what may!
In the end, my dear, we ought to have made the best use of this amphitheater called life, in our own respective ways; today, you just need to understand this ‘delicate balance’, that to command one day, one must first learn to obey!”
“Balance? And why is that so delicate, Mom?” Here he comes again perplexed by the narrative so unobvious, the complexity of it may even vex the grown-up audience…
“All right.” She nods thoughtfully. “Let me explain to you in simple words, my dearly”, she recovers thence just to respond more lucidly: “Balance is attained where one thing revives by virtue of other things getting consumed; it’s the Soil, you see, that’s the ultimate ‘source’ of all and the ‘sink’ where all without exception gets subsumed.
Be it a Tiger, Antelopes, or Grass, we all are bound by our respective functions at play; we all become the part of this Soil when we die and decay… It’s an unbreachable natural order, you see!”
“OK Mom. I get it.” The Cub acknowledges, and continues, “You meant: It is what it is, we are for some reason what we are; things have fallen in line just to make sense—even though bizarre…”
She was so satisfied seeing her son grow a little wiser, at the end of this conversation she didn’t miss the last piece of advice: “And remember, it’s the onus of us ‘predators’ to be upright at setting this sonorous tone; the conduct of this jungle is ensured only when we keep on wielding our good gracious throne… Tigers are apex predators. Note it down!”
“Noted down, Mom!”
Well, my friends, neither that conversation was about just the food they eat, nor it was about sticking a carnivore to just the Grass; it was meant to be a lesson that portends about ensuring the viability of something sustainable, when the whole ‘food chain’ is endangered—en masse… Sadly, the whole ‘Food Chain’ today is endangered en masse!
~praveen katiyar
#22422 #CircleOfLIfe #SaveSoil #EarthDay2022
PC: Tauseef Ahmed