In the lap of nature

William Cowper, in his famous poem The Task, appropriately contrasted the scenic beauties of nature in rural life with the artificial urban life in his famous line, ‘God made the country and man made the town.’

I didn’t perceive the line practically until I visited my father’s ancestral home in a small hamlet in West Bengal last December.

I spent a couple of days in the picturesque village to meet my nonagenarian grandma. The blurred memories of the village, in which I was setting foot after 20 long years, drew a hazy landscape on my mind’s canvas. However, my car skimmed, and I reached the village in the evening.

I decided to spend a day in the lap of nature. The next morning, I hiked through the village path and the narrow dividers between the paddy fields. As it was the harvest time of the aman crop in Bengal, the fields were covered with paddy stalks with their heads bending in weight. The ripe paddy stalks, doubly shining with golden colour in the sunlit morning, were swinging in the gentle breeze. I feasted my eyes with the sight of the blue firmament dotted with fleecy white clouds. The marvellous sight transported me to my childhood days when our drawing teacher taught us how to colour a village landscape.

I discovered myself as a little girl. I ran over a pasture of green carpet where herds of cows were grazing meditatively. The cowherd was playing a sad tune in his bamboo flute on a grassy mound. I ran after the colourful butterflies. I tried to find a bird tracking its sweet note inside a green bush in vain. Fatigued, I sank into some pleasant lair of wavy grass and relished a few sweet guavas and chikus that I had plucked from an orchard near the paddy fields. I reread O Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, reclining under the cool shade of a mango tree.

I did not realise how soon the day had glided by; I noticed the red ball sinking behind the lush green of the distant forest, and the chirping notes of birds returning to their nests filled the air. Captivated by the heavenly sight, I stopped there for a moment and thanked God. Then I set out for my grandma’s house that stood near a stream.

Unwittingly, I had hiked a long distance, and it took about an hour to reach my destination. The moon was then peeping out of the frills of the sailing clouds. The moonlit evening gave the village a silvery look. The ripples on the stream seemed like a million stars had descended to adorn the village with colourful pearls. My heart mourned, reciting the lines from Keats’ sonnet: ‘…the day so soon has glided by: E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear / That falls through the clear ether silently.’