Category: nature

Water as an entity

On By Anita SatyajitIn Conservation, Environment, Musings, nature, spirituality1 Comment

A few days ago, a river in New Zealand was granted the status of a person. Soon, Ganga and Yamuna were granted the status of people. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/ganges-and-yamuna-rivers-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-beings

While it remains to be seen what this decision will mean in terms of protecting the rivers, it feels like a step in the right direction. But what I am going to say here, is completely against so called social thought.

A few days ago, while I was washing dishes and felt guilty about the running tap, I felt the water ask me what I was guilty about. What it told me was not what I was ready to hear. Since forever the relationship between water and human beings has been an existential one. Human beings simply cannot survive without water. But we have evolved in a way that rather than treating water , air and everything that we need for our survival , as a sacred and precious resource, we use everything as though it has been created just for us.

While there are fabulous people, conscious of how indebted we are to nature, working to save, protect it from destruction, there is something we have all overlooked. As I washed the dishes that day, I felt the water ask me why it was dammed. Why was it wrong for it to flow to the ocean? That it was as necessary for the birds and animals in the oceans and earth to have this fresh influx of water every year and that water belong to all and not just humans. I felt the water ask me to speak about this and write about this. I didn’t. Not till now, a year later.

I was disturbed by what I heard. For much part of my life, I have been saving water, protecting water, conserving water, talking to family and others about using less water. Use buckets, don’t shower, don’t waste water, soon we won’t have water. Everything that was used in popular environmental discourse was part of my vocabulary. Till I realized that there were things I didn’t understand. When I looked it was all scientific and confusing. But from the little I understood, it is as intricate as the connection between life and water. Increasing salinity in ocean water, global warming and meting icecaps which reduce salinity in some parts of the ocean, climate change, temperature, … there are so many facets to this. What really happens when there is an increase or decrease of fresh water into the oceans? Have you thought about that?

Humans need water to survive. But rivers and rain don’t exist solely for mankind. The creation of large dams is not just about displacing humans, it is about believing that water is just a resource for humans, and not meant for earth and all its inhabitants. We can drink water and store it but we can’t damm water, one way or the other. The issue of conserve water because we humans need it is not the right mindset.

Before someone gets this wrong, this is not about leaving taps open and letting water run. This is about looking at water pollution, this is about looking at water conservation in a way that begins to understand that every river is an entity, with her right to go where she wants and help whom she wants, without us dumping our crap on her, without us damming her. And, we shouldn’t have had to wait for courts to tell us that.

 …..
For those interested in deepening their connection to water, a simple thing would be to say the H’o’ ponopono . You simply say, ” I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. I thank you. ” Do this before you drink water. Before you bathe. While you do dishes. When you water plants.

For work on how water affects our internal energies look up Masaru Emoto’s work.

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An insight

On By Anita SatyajitIn learning, Life, nature, Personal, spirituality2 Comments

To move beyond what I think as me, I need to move a little deeper inside.  Contradictory isn’t it . But it is true because only when I know what holds me back, what strangulates me or what suffocates my soul, can I work to be liberated from it. For the spirit to fly all it takes a little step away from the comfort zone we bury ourselves in.

To lose your mind, find your heart.

capturing sunsets

On By Anita SatyajitIn nature1 Comment


I love sunsets. They fascinate me tremendously. It is nice to see something so bursting and blinding white, suddenly get all fiery red and then mellow down to a feisty orange and later a lovely golden yellow. Sometimes the sunsets are brooding against the grey of the clouds, but when the purples, pinks come they are joyous; such a variety.

My balcony overlooks a concrete jungle. But its only saving grace is the sunsets it allows me. Somehow if I am home I never can resist capturing them on camera. Strangely though, the best sunsets I have seen till date are when there have been no cameras around.

�She is shy; reserves her best for when no one�s clicking.
For the moments when you truly marvel at her splendour
And savour her flavours in the sky
Are those captured with the camera within;
when you gaze awestruck at her beauty captivated
capturing her, only with the blink of your eyes.�

Monsoon is

On By Anita SatyajitIn Musings, nature, Writing1 Comment

When my heart goes bonkers, when it refuses to get bound by walls or any physical confines. Can I run around arms outstretched feeling each drop drench not only my body but every emotion, wipe clean the slate of life and mind? Crisp and cold, pleasing and teasing, making me lose myself, and disappear in these looming clouds. They don�t daunt me (at least not till lighting goes bonkers and starts her feverish jiggle) and now I want to just get up and go, where I don�t know.

My mind though inside this room, this office, is busy flying far. Seated here I cannot see but can sense the trees outside, the sluggish birds struggling to hop onto the next branch, the grass which is sucking the moisture off the earth�s breast and who playfully waves an arm to call the clouds. The campus is empty but is so alive. I miss those Western Ghats where I discovered my fetish for green. Nature�s best colour, the colour of life. The cheeky blue tries to make her appearance only the puffy clouds pushed by impish winds are faster and dodge her around, smothering her in grey. Matheran, Lohgad, Tikona, Nane Ghat, Rajgad, all come rushing into my brains. Those treks, I relive them each second. Those cute little streams, your music courses in my blood. Monsoon is those mountains, where I find peace, joy, tranquillity.

Monsoon is Bombay, with her crowded streets and the view from my balcony. People huddling below the shop shutters, waving their colourful umbrellas to get the water drops off, drenching themselves and their neighbours more in the process. Monsoon is those children that hop on all puddles on the way back from school and wait by the road corners to let passing vehicles splash water on them. Monsoon is that beggar on the pavement seated on the cement ledge bordering a tree, wearing clothes of plastic bags to keep himself dry. Monsoon is that fluttering black plastic sheet, spread by the painter of signs atop his rack-shop, to keep his name boards dry. Monsoon is the smell of hot pakodas wafting from neighbours kitchen into my nose. Monsoon is those trees outside my window which shed their dusty skins of grey and don on luscious green natural makeup. Monsoon to me is an excuse to eat ice-creams and catch the drops with my tongue before the rain melts them and carries the drops to the ground.

Please tell me reasons why I should stay in this room.

A tiny hill station in the western ghats

On By Anita SatyajitIn nature, Writing1 Comment

I�m reminded of those red hills that represented freedom; that let me run to them whenever I was assuaged by any emotion that I did not want to deal with or which overwhelmed me. I did not want anything holding me in captivity and so I chose to run whenever I could to those hills with its trees and leaves which often playfully stopped the sky from reaching me. Its fragrant earth is the most emotional smell I have ever inhaled because it holds the power to make me yearn and make me go weak in my knees. The green of the trees was the shawl I wrapped joyously around my carefree heart and the red of the mud, the unsullied passion that makes my being sing and my eyes want to dream.

Matheran is a physical place I visited often, but truly it�s a place which I feel connected to beyond this body of mine. What is it about its hills, peaks, valleys, mist and brown paths that lure me to it, I do not know. In truth, I don�t want to know, I�d rather it be a mystery which mesmerises my soul. So many memories are associated with it, of family and friends. But to me it will always be the place I goto and feel connected, to earth, to myself, to my thoughts, to my calling, to life and all that it holds for me. Musings abound, retrospections go on, mostly a feeling of gratitude and a feeling of joy prevail.

Hope hall: the old British hunting lodge and now a nice hotel; the stall at the main bazaar where you can nibble on hot jalebis and sip tea at 7 in the morning; the garden by the stall where we stayed up all night; the small stream which runs into Charlotte lake; the small trail that goes from the lake to that scenic spot we always went to; Alexander point and how I and Mittz had the whole spot to ourselves as though only we existed on that mountain; how the mist hugged me with joy whenever I went there; Shiva temple which I somehow know I have visited before and no, I don�t mean in this lifetime.

To go to you is my pilgrimage, it is a journey to where I belong. Its time. Three years and half years away is a long time. I have to go again. Soon, very soon.