On nature's creative mood

Now-a-days we are mostly occupied by the destructive aspect of nature with devastating storms, flood, droughts, tsunami, forest fire, unpredictable snowfalls, and avalanches crashing on us one after another without giving enough time to recover from the last blow. We are now rather scared of our nature not being able to predict what more fretful thing it has in store for us. We have caused a lot of damages to our nature since we began building our civilizations bit by bit. Now it is nature’s most obvious turn to pay us back and probably we have no escape.

But an entity can never engage itself with only one kind of act in its whole life. Nature is too no exception, I think. While it destroys, it creates as well. As it hurts, it cures and soothes too. If we someday be able to stop harming our environment and find time to admire it as the ultimate creator, every one of us would forget our fear and love to experience nature at its creative mood.

These photographs were shot on a 12 km trek to Mainam Peak, 10700 ft from sea level, situated at South Sikkim.The trail begins from Ravangla, a small town 2000 ft below the peak. Walking through the hilly jungle of Mainam Wildlife Sanctuary, I found the nature with its creative mood making awesome motifs with trees, leaves, skies and lights.

During the rainy days, nature allowed weeds to grow on the branches of trees, and then thicken to give the woody branches a soft fluffy look. After rain, it impelled the leaves to dry up to catch that bright brown colour and stand out in the dark green background. Then, conspiring with the leaves on top of the taller trees, it created hindrance for sunrays to fall deep. Thus darkness took cover of several corners of the jungle, while sunlight enlightening the others, making an idyllic environment which promises to excite the keen eyes.

Nature paints, weaves, even makes arrangements for us to photograph, but only a few of its handicrafts have been revealed till date. Probably this is the quest for which we feel sheer attraction towards those hills, jungles and seas even being very much a part of our mechanical civilization.

Visited in October 2010