പ്രകൃതിയുടെ പാഠങ്ങൾ: അതിജീവനത്തിന്റെയും സ്ഥിരതയുടെയും അത്ഭുതകരമായ കാഴ്ചകൾ തേടി ഒരു യാത്ര

Summary

Spiders, butterflies, wildflowers and migratory birds offer a compelling reminder of how nature adapts to change, survives uncertainty and sustains life

Nature provides a template for endurance

Near my study table, a spider spun her web. It was a perfect shape, the kind we imagined the world wide web to be when we first got the internet -- shaped like a wheel, kinetic and mind-bending, with spokes and parallel lines and an insatiable mind quivering at the centre. Each day the web disappeared and then appeared again, like a connection looking to establish itself. My spider was an orb-weaver, and I thought she was female. As I headed out for travel and long days when coming home meant a cooling darkness, I briefly forgot about her.

In Corbett tiger reserve, the air was even cooler than Delhi. The trees touched the sky. A Pied hornbill yodelled from a banyan, and smaller warblers whirred near her. A Plum-headed parakeet couple ate ripe figs with great focus. A vine with red flowers separated all the birds, and they looked at each other briefly. For a second there was a spider's web connecting them all, the strands delicate but sure. Far below them, a Gray bushchat jumped around, part of the same web.

Some of the trees had finished flowering, and the forest seemed to sense this change, sliding into autumn, gently heralding winter. Soon, birds from colder places would descend to the warmer ones, and everything would be in relative terms -- what feels cold for us is temperate for birds born in places with ice.

NATURE'S CONNECTIONS

For a brief period of time, Corbett becomes the precursor to cities like Delhi: Himalayan birds would move southwards, living their life on the wing and the trust of finding a rest spot.

Back in Delhi, I organised a walk for readers of my book, Wild Capital. All places have nature, but I strongly feel cities need nature the most -- in between jungles of buildings and bristling thorns of cars, a woodland, a wetland or a park is transportive. A single natural feature can change the lives of many. But exploring nature in cities is harder than it looks. The city seems designed to crush hopes and any aimless wandering. The question of dodging traffic becomes secondary to that of avoiding assault; in many ways, stepping out is an exercise on unpredictability, especially for women. But walking in the wilderness -- with some modicum of safety -- is also a way of re-tuning the body, and holding the capacity to change.

Just as the weather turned autumnal, 20 women headed out to a fractal part of the ancient Aravalli Ridge forest. We had waited a while so everyone could gather safely. Still, the morning cold lingered, fog smudging spaces under the trees. Down the path, seemingly embraced by tall bushes, a mongoose family gambolled, fearless and curious. There was an abandon in the whipping of their long, plume-like tails that I think we envied. Butterflies darted through the undergrowth, seeming to follow the mongoose -- Yellow orange-tip and Plain tiger butterflies.

If November and December are the times to really see migratory birds, September and October -- following the saturation of the monsoon -- are the time for the butterflies. And butterflies are in their element in the wild. They will hang off trees and grasses at night in periods of deep rest, like delicate glass baubles waiting to light up as they absorb enough warmth in the morning.

When they become active, they zoom around in paths of their choice, their flight dipping and curving and dashing. Their short lives are a testament to living fully. They seem to know the cold is coming and life must be lived here and now.

Amongst the Aravalli rocks, plants spouted in trickles. A huge Papdi tree, which bears pods in summer, had roots exposed through the rocks in Peacock hills, draping down sinuously, thick as a wrist. Small wildflowers, watered by no one, also grew prostrate through the rocks, their roots thickly knotted with fine rock-dust. There were yellow gokhrus and pale-pink Blepharis.

Commelinas, cobalt-blue dusted with gold-yellow stamens, smiled at the sun. The Commelina is even shorter-lived than the butterfly: each flower lasts a day (and so their other name: the dayflower). This was a veritable bouquet of wildflowers, mostly witnessed only by the creatures of the forest as walkers missed their tiny sizes.

LESSONS IN RESILIENCE

But as we know, tiny is mighty. Amidst the flowers was a touch of childhood: the red-and-black blister beetle. This beetle will leave blisters on your skin if you bother it. When it flies, it lifts itself up horizontally like a hovercraft, its wings a blur and their sound a mechanised buzz. But as the tiger was once described as a gentleman, so is the blister beetle. I have spent many autumnal hours with this creature in the garden of my childhood, and never once have we disturbed each other. Scientists think bright red-and-black colours signify an advertisement of toxicity. Yet at that moment we felt not fear, but a sort of tenuous kinship, a spider-silk tug towards a creature that has always ever minded its own business.

Near some dirty water, Black-winged stilts waded elegantly, their long legs submerged. Jungle babblers squabbled and rioted in the branches above, a peacock called. Possibly, jackals watched us. But there were no people there and we felt safe.

At the edge of the water, the mud seemed to take a shape. A brown-green body, a long capable bill, a snowy belly. It was the season's first migratory bird, a Green sandpiper. Here from the Palearctic, having made a long flight to come here. There were more migratory birds too from Central Asia and the Himalayas which we could hear if not see: the Hume's warbler and the Greenish warbler. The spider-silk tug intensified: seeming to draw Central Asia, cold migratory bird places, Corbett and Delhi into one close swoop.

The promise of winter is the promise our animal neighbours keep: they will get through cold times, they will survive long journeys. As we struggle with change -- with new political ideas, with the upheavals of all that we know, and personal struggles -- nature provides a template for endurance.

Back home, I noticed the spider had moved. She had crossed the room, and had now spun herself a magnificent new web, nearly the length of the wall.

Insects are so often equated with vermin. They are looked at something that requires extermination, as lesser-beings. Yet, the orb-weaver had spun a metaphysical basis for understanding the connections between us, stringing places and ideas together. And on the physical plane, she had constructed and deconstructed her web-network, much larger than before. As we struggled with our lives, in her own way, she had changed the world.

Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild Capital: Discovering Nature in Delhi.