This Guest Post comes from a very special person. Dr. Hema Raghavan, Doyen among Educationists and a Visionary
to her colleagues, has an eye popping resume packed with superlative achievements.
Currently associated with UGC as Chairperson of Committee for Colleges in the
South Western region of India,
Dr. Raghavan has been a Consultant to IGNOU among a host of other prestigious
Universities. She was Dean, Students Welfare, Delhi
University after being Principal and
Professor of English, Gargi
College. During her
stewardship, Gargi college received the prestigious UGC Award of being a ‘College
With Potential for Excellence’, the first college of Delhi
University to be so recognized.
Her list of Awards
and Honours is daunting too: Recipient of British Council Scholarship award, British
Council Visitorship Award, Ministry of Education Fellowship for Post-Doctoral
Study in UK, Carnegie-Mellon Award for Leadership, Visiting Professor to Univ.
of Malaga and Granada (Spain), Indira Priyadarshini Award, International
Education for Environment and World Peace Award, The Best Citizen of India Award
by the International Publishing House, Rashtriya Gaurav Award by the International friendship Society, Higher
Education and Development (head) Award by International association of
Educators for World Peace, International Lifetime Achievement Award by the
International Congress for Women, in collaboration with United Nations Information Centre. Dr.
Raghavan has also published two books.
Today, this eminent
teacher takes a walk in a park and discovers that there is so much that nature
teaches us every day……
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The
Wisdom of the Trees
 |
| Dr. Hema V. Raghavan |
A casual morning stroll opened my eyes to an unresolved
existential issue about the meaning of life and death. For more than four
decades, I had taught Absurd Drama to undergraduate students of literature that
deals with the absurdity or irrationality of existence. It had been an arduous
task to discuss questions relating to birth, life and death which cannot be
causatively explained with human logic and reason. I could offer no conclusive answers to the
young learner’s questions as to why we enjoy no autonomy regarding our entry
into and exit from the world and how we can elicit the meaning of life that
connects the two interstices between birth and death.
But the small park close to our modest flat in South Delhi gave me the answer that I had been searching
for so many decades. It is a rectangular park, shaded with trees that border
the cemented paths circumscribing it. Delhi
in the midst of its short spring spell is riotously colourful with blossoming
flowers and tender green shoots on trees that include stems,
flower buds
and leaves. Delhi’s
trees have so much life in them when one notices how the heavier and older
leaves have fallen but instantly are replaced by the new leaves sprouting.
During
my daily walk through the park, I noticed that the side paths that made the
borders were strewn with brownish leaves fallen from the trees. The leaves
varied in size depending on the parent tree, but even in their fallen state
they looked as broad as their genetic code would permit them. Barring a few
that looked withered, a large number of leaves were seen to be in perfect shape and size though
they had been wrenched out of their cosy comfort of resting on the branches and lay in heaps down below. The
brown leaves scattered in multitudes seemed as though they were enjoying a well
deserved rest after their long toil on the branches to let out carbon-di-oxide
and to produce chlorophyl vital for photosynthesis. On looking up, I was
astonished to see the trees already in leaf. New leaves had sprouted covering
the naked branches with a light leafy green coating.
I marvelled at Nature’s
phenomenon of restoring vitality and freshness even before the last leaf had dropped.
The trees that continue to stand tall and erect do not ever mourn the loss of
leaves, wisely accepting decay as a natural occurrence and celebrating the
revival as a natural process of change. The trees do not despair as they seem
to know that spring will fill their barren branches with living hues of rich
colours of leaves, flowers and fruits. They have a greater understanding of
Shelley’s lines “If winter comes can spring be far behind?” Even if a few young shoots fall, it is not a
concern for the trees for as long as the tree lives, leaves will spring forth. The
wisdom of the trees in their perennial majesticity is given by The Ecclesiastes
that says : To everything there is a season, and a
time to every purpose under the heaven / A time to be born, and a time to die /
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. This is what is said in Taittriya Upanishad:
“Food (the essential of life) is Brahma; from food all the creatures are born
and by food they live and after having departed, into food they again enter.”
There
is no need to seek answers about life and death as long as we know that the two
follow each other in time. So long as we live, let us cultivate the wisdom of
the trees and celebrate life- the link between birth
and death – that seeks not to mourn nor despair but to hope and take comfort that
without death, there can be no birth.
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