A memorable journey

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A metalled road passes through a sleepy neighbourhood within Nagarjun municipality.

Is it a lifeline that brings modernity to our lives or kills our organicity? Is it an invention that brings hearts closer or drives us further and further apart, from our traditional ways of life steeped in nature?

Why do we need these roads and a myriad other modern infrastructure that stands quite fragile on the lap of Mother Nature, whereas all other beings on the blue planet can do without them? Is the road to modernity a one-way road? Is the return to nature virtually impossible for humanity? If yes, is the extinction of humanity inevitably unavoidable?    

Questions like these have become more relevant than ever before because the year 2023 is going to be the hottest year in 125,000 years. We don't know how many animal and plant species the Earth will lose. 

Once in a while, yours truly wanders around the wending road to shake off sleep, early in the morning.

On either side of the road stand a couple of traditional houses next to an advancing concrete jungle, posing a threat to the lush green woods. On the lower flank, the woods are almost all gone and their peers on the upper flank seem to look upon the extermination of their cousins with a sense of horror.

At a distance, Swayambhunath is deep in meditation. Good for the god in mad times like these, isn’t it?    

The maize fields around the thatched houses are a riot of colours—the blazing gold of the marigolds, the blue of the Makhmali ((Gomphrena globosa) and several other hues and shades. Such is their magic that they can even inject colours into colour-blindness, it seems.  

The kitchen gardens of those thatched houses sports fruits like oranges and oversized Bhogatey.  


Like the journey of life that passes through a cycle of birth, death and rebirth, I will return again to complete this piece. 


- Devendra Gautam


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