Of proximity and pain

Life is so precious that no amount of money can buy it nor can it pay for the loss of it. There is no compensation for it, no replacement either. But no individual can live for eternity. Each one of us will have to face the ultimate fate, death. This inevitable fact of our life is know to us for millions of years and yet we feel a pain when a life is lost, weather its of a close one or a stranger, an animal or a plant. The loss leaves an impact on the individuals around. This impact depends on various factors(or i believed so). the foremost being the closeness of the individual to the life lost. the further one goes the less the impact is. I am one of those who dont believe in tagging names to relations and hence the closeness i m talking here about is not restrected to friends and relatives only but it also encompasses the individuals around the world that i feel connected to. This can be seen in case of celebrities. Fans feel the pain of losing their beloved star. To some they are friends they would never meet in lifeime while to others they are at par with god whom they even worship. Loss of such a life has a wider and stronger impact. whereas the death of a stranger do stir the inside of me, but I can cope with it in a relatively shorter time.

I used to believe that size, or better said the species, of the individual also determines impact. My beliefe was that human beings are most affected with the loss of another human life and that this impact is lesser in case of the lost life being from another species. The smaller the individual the lesser the pain of losing it. I have never seen anyone crying over a dead ant, honeybee or snail. But this was changed completely when I had the first pet of my life. lt was last year when a special friend of my gifted me with 2 fishes(red-cap orandas) for my b'day. They were more special because they came from a special friend. I had them for hardly a month before one of them died. When I came to know that it wasn't acting normal I rushed home early from my office hoping it will make it through and wont die only to find it dead at the base of the fishbowl. Losing it felt like losing a family member. I couldn't have my dinner that night. I stopped talking to anyone and for over a week I kept to myself. During this time I lost the other fish too.I was glad for the other. It was so painful to see it lonely in that bowl. But I also noticed tht my family members seemed to come over it in much less time. Their routine was untouched. They watched the regular tv programs and enjoyed it equally on the dau the fish died. Was it so insignifiacnt for them? no, they too would talk to them, enjoy feeding them, appreciate their funny performances. Then how come i was so deeply affected while the other werent? or atleast they seems not to be effected? to this i realised tht it all depends on only one factor as to wot place the life hold in one's heart. The closer the one is, the more the pain, no matter what species or size the individual is of.

Human beings are blessed with emotions and ways to express them. Its this emotion that makes the impact more deeper. And so, no matter how much I convince myself tht death is inevitable it still leaves an impact on me ....... and every impact make me think over the value of each individual I have in my life.

Chirp chirp come Again!

"Once upon a time....", this would be the usual starting of a fairy tale in the early days. However, this is also the only phrase that comes to my mind now a days when I think of sparrows. Gauraiyya or Chidiya as they are called in our national language have become less visible these days. All of us have adored this sweet little bird through school poems. Harivanshrai Bachchan in his poetry "Neev Ka Nirman" has portrayed the sparrow as a courageous soul irrespective of how small she is. But today when I want to show a sparrow to my little nephew, all I could see is the ever increasing crows and pigeons. That’s when the phrase pops in my mind:

Once upon a time.....we would see the sparrows every now and then.

Once upon a time.....trees were laden with her chirps at dawn and dusk.

Once upon a time.....we had sparrows building nests in our house.

Today the evenings are either quiet or noisy with the honking horns and the grumbling machineries around. I wonder why there has been such a drastic change in the number of sparrows! Lack of habitat, some might say, but sparrows have long back adapted to the human construction and made it their home equally. Today how many people have a sparrow building nest in their attic, bathroom/toilet, above the windows? Hardly any!

One of the reasons is the, much talked about, pollution. Some scientists also believe that the sparrow get effected due to the wireless transmission zones like the mobile networks that are growing in the metros. Others can include the increasing number of bigger species like crows especially because they also tend to be the predator for the young ones of sparrow. The increase in the population of crows has been related to growing garbage dumping that facilitates easy access to food for the scavengers. This in turn has been affecting the balance in the species. Amidst all, the importance of this issue in the declining number of the sparrows cannot be overlooked.

Definitely, some steps are being taken for the conservation of sparrows. I have recently heard of a small organisation that helps you to attract sparrows to make her nest in your house. I was really impressed by such kind of initiative, but it has to be a widespread effort to actually make any difference. Since sparrow is such a common bird and too small too we can easily misbelieve that we lack in observing or are not noticing them and that they cannot get extinct.

With a large number of species becoming extinct in a comparatively shorter span of time, I really hope the sparrow’s existence will not be restricted just to the pages of books.