New Leaves
Everything here on our planet undergoes perpetual change. Some changes are periodic in nature. For example, the seasons. If one wants to see the variety of seasons, then India is the place where one can experience so many seasons.
From biting cold to burning hot, from spring season to autumn and of course the torrid rains. Not only the periodic change of seasons, even in one country at a given point of time, one can experience different weathers.
These days, the winter have given way to autumn here in Bombay. Different flora are experiencing different changes. A few days ago, the Peepal tree was copiously shedding its leaves. The wind helped it to do away with the older brittle opaque leaves. It was as if the clothes of a person have become very old and he is shedding those to wear the new ones.
After a fortnight, the tree became almost naked. Its branches were looking as if some person has become very gaunt due to a long illness.
But, the new leaves were just hiding to burst open. Very beautiful reddish color translucent leaves have sprouted. Their spear like shapes are opening up and birds have begun to chirp again in its boughs.
Within a few days, it will be covered with thick copper color foliage. The leaves shine when they rustle in the gusts of the wind. The sad falling of the leaves, about which the saint Kabir had said that they will now be blown away by the air, far away from their parent, never to meet it again.
They were manufactured by the tree from nutrients it sucked from the earth, mixed with air, and they will go back to the earth. As is said in the bible, Genesis 3:19, “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.”
So condemned our father Adam and mother Eve were banished to the Eden and punished into doing hard work to earn their bread, to endure pain and then die and become the very dust from which we are made.
In Hindu scriptures also, the God is likened to a pot maker who turns his wheel and molds the wet clay into the human figures. Then He breathes life into them by giving them a piece of His own life.
This is the story of eternal cycle going about on the earth.
