To do.
I am not into plantae. My wife is. A planter’s daughter, continuing her father’s legacy. We bought a plot of land on the outskirts of the city before it began to burst at its seams.
The land was stripped by the developer of every living organism, including a sapling that muscled its way out of the soil. The earthmovers mauled it to its roots. The idea was to achieve line of sight to map out the plots. An interesting expression, ‘line of sight’, which originally meant a straight line from the muzzle of an artillery piece to a target. In this case, the boundary stones.
On this bare land, we built our home. The frontier spirit of my wife’s ancestors was alive in my wife. I, a city dweller, baulked at the thought. Escalating rents in the city and a growing family of five children made me leap with my wife into this deserted land to own and behold.
My wife’s ancestors, including my wife’s grandfather, a District Medical Officer, at Madras (now Chennai), bought thousands of acres of land in an uninhabited place in Kerala, so far away that boundaries did not matter. The horizon or a stream or a natural earth formation was the fenceless boundary. No neighbours to speak of who would file objections for encroachment.
When the West opened up for settlers who landed on the Eastern shore of the United States, the idea of land ownership was: whoever plants his stake on a piece of land first gets to own and develop it. Then there were cattle ranchers only. There was no industry.
Having chosen to build our house in the tree-less wilderness, which would take at least 18 months, my wife decided to deploy her green thumb. She planted by line of sight in every direction around the house.
After 22 years, there is once again no spot for a sapling to grow outside our home and garden, in a manner of speaking, with buildings having mushroomed in every itty-bitty place around our house. Ours, however, is an oasis, amongst concrete, where camels can rest under the shade of flowering and fruit-bearing trees.
Into this Eden of my wife’s making, I woke this morning to see our driveway festooned by ‘akasha malika’ stalks and petals shed by the preening, aromatic tree, after a night of quiet but incessant rains.
I remarked to my wife that I think our unmarried daughter was going to get a proposal today, for the driveway is in a celebratory mood. My daughter is yet to wake up. She would be shaken out of reverie at the very thought. She dreads losing her charmed sleepy existence to a rise-and-shine type of hubby, which she morphs into when she is awake. But not a second earlier. For that, someone will have to pay dearly.
A farmer was blessed with a heavenly crop of wholesome and singularly high-grade variety corn year after year. His neighbours asked the farmer if he would share the seed with them. He willingly consented. The farmer’s friends, hearing of his generosity with one-of-a-kind seeds, cautioned him about losing his competitive advantage.
The farmer explained, quoting John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” The farmer was a man of the Spirit. He knew the Word of God.
He said the wind carries the pollen from the budding corn to wherever it wishes. When high-grade variety corn has been sown by the neighbours too, and the wind blows his way, I inherit their largesse. If they only have access to low-grade variety, then the wind will carry the pollen of that variety into my farm, ruining my crop. From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be expected. (Lk 12:48)
When you live surrounded by trees on all sides- our garden, the neighbour’s garden, and the trees planted by the wife on the road surrounding the house- and there’s a bird bath on the premises, there is a flock of winged creatures who descend for a morning dip.
The ones competing for the bird bath are bulbuls, hummingbirds, and the like. They don’t fly; they flit, wings flapping at the speed of a jet’s propeller fans. With pauses being rare. Fearful of deadweight bringing them crashing down. Their life is about darting from one mischief to another; with din and racket they announce their existence. They keep low between a cluster of trees, ducking into its foliage, to scuttle attacks. For them is not the philosopher’s life of deep thought or long-term planning. They are skittish; their thought is only of the moment.
Then you have the light crane, which feeds on the fish and weeds in the backwaters. While able to fly continents, when it comes to rest, it stays put. Meditating on one foot. From a fish’s line of sight, the foot would be a piece of wood. Its beak is a snaring arm to snap the wayward fish. It chooses not to be busy. In fact, unbusy at its extreme. It flies not too high, flaps its wings languidly, gliding with the current, and occasionally flapping to adjust altitude. And, back to playing one-legged stool, striking when the fish is nigh. The art of non-doing to do.
And then you have the eagle, who flies high, scans the hunting ground, mostly glides, a paragon of eternal quietude, exerts effort only when the target is in position (line-of-sight), swoops for the kill with its formidable talons and beak primed to finish the job. A parable in ‘non-doing’. Do the least and gain the most.
The bulbuls do the most when their need is the least, with tiny stomachs to fill. The light crane is the happy middle of non-doing to do. The eagle is the exemplar of ‘non-doing’ to do the most. Choosing to live in the suburbs helps with the ‘non-doing’ by replacing busyness with a quieter routine. To think and to do.
- Mathew Anthony
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