Thoughts on Friday

Like most kids of my time, I loved listening to stories, especially when my neighbour Mrs. Vasudevan, my grandparents or parents narrated it. This is one of the many stories I remember from my childhood. I heard this from my grandparents. I do think this is a folk tale. Please do bear with things that don't make sense in the story for I am recollecting from memory.

There was a huge forest of many Old and Strong trees. The trees were the keepers of the history. They knew what happened with the earth because they were connected to her. They also knew what was happening in the surrounding kingdoms, from the conversations that the men and women who came to pick their old dry branches, had. The trees knew their place well; they knew that their health directly reflected the health of the People in that part of the world. They knew that as long as the forest were teeming with trees, shrubs, flowering plants, ferns, animals and birds, all was well with the earth and within the kingdoms too. They imparted this knowledge through their gentle breeze filling life into everything around them, the dreams that people had while sleeping in their glorious shade, the tastes that their fruits had and their dead branches which were picked by the humans to keep warmth and cook their food.

One day, the older trees from the east side of the forest sent word to those in the west side asking them to prepare themeselves to die. The trees on the west side asked why? The east side trees said that the people in the kingdom on their edge have become very advanced but in the process have lost the capacity to listen to the trees. They don't pick the dead branches for their today; they have invented an axe to cut down the trees for their tomorrow. The old trees were to die first for they gave the biggest logs, the best wood for building homes and ships that will navigate the seas to other distant lands. The east side trees wonder why the west side trees, some of who were so much older and stronger than the east side ones are so fearful of an axe. Cant they stand strong they wonder. The west side trees answer- "If it was just an axe we could stand strong and win, but you see, one of our younger trees has joined the axe... being part of our family, it knows the weakest point on our trunks."

This story, at that time was meant to teach concepts of family loyalty, about not betraying trust, making sacrifices and choices where ALL win, while telling us to look after the earth and her trees- the keepers of history. It made sense to me when I was young, coming from a hierarchical, almost homogenous society where the concepts of ethics and morals were almost the same with the people who lived around me and with me. There was also a basic order when it came to honesty, obedience, use of power/authority with benevolence. But now I wonder how to apply these concepts when the base has crumbled. We are diverse society now with such a wide variety of concepts that make up the ethics and morals, most of which conflict with individuals of the same family. What can we be loyal to when most of the things that happen around us has an underlying dishonesty to it, where tolerance appears only on the extremes, discretion and common sense are becoming rare, virtues such as- patience, delaying gratification for a long term goal, doing our duty rarely figures into our thoughts, keeping our word and using our words in kindness, the balance in grayness, doesn't make a cut. I sometimes wonder, if I am too old fashioned to even think about Virtue. Not that I mind being Old-fashioned, after all even that is Fashion. Off to Ponder-land.

Peace Always

Mithuna.