Some of us are morning people. We spring out of bed with a smile on our lips and a song in our hearts, unlike some others who snuggle deeper under the covers when the alarm goes off and pray devoutly that it is still Friday.
The lazy ones need a good waker-upper. To you, I say that playing the Bach Brandenburg concerto on your alarm clock will galvanize you into total alertness in two seconds, whereas Mehdi Hassan will lull you into a second delicious slumber. And if you play Rabindra Sangeet, the beauty of the music will make you want to forget getting up entirely and give yourself up instead to the inspiring and uplifting notes of his devotional songs.
This morning I needed a jumpstart with my tea, so I chose Richard Strauss’ composition “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” People who saw the film 2001: A Space Odyssey will remember the uplifting effect of this music.
Music, while being a good start to the day, is just one of the many pleasures in which humans luxuriate. Art, architecture, literature, poetry, and even science are all miraculous creations of the ever-expanding human mind.
We are all so busy and pre-occupied that we escape our daily stress by attending concerts, watching films, and reading books -- all with great appreciation, even expertise -- but we never pause long enough to ponder the divine spirit that has gifted these great artists with their talents. Still less do we appreciate the beauty of nature, unless it is connected with mountain climbing, hiking, camping, skiing, jogging, and other outdoor activities.
And yet, nature and the universe are at the core of everything we love and experience in our lives.
Over these last decades, those of us who have reached our golden gilded years are taken more with the spirit of nature and the magnificence of creation; not in the scientific sense, but with a sense of sheer wonder and awe at the splendour that surrounds us.
For example, where I am now, the sky is great and open to the farthest horizon, the peonies in the garden below my balcony are blooming in shades of magenta, pale pink, and ivory white, each petal is in itself a piece of art. Here and there the grass is dotted with buttercups and tiny daffodils, little flashes of yellow and creamy white in a wide expanse of green, while the rose shrubs are a mass of pink blooms. The trees are clotted with creamy blossoms or drooped over in great arcs of the deepest green.
The soul expands with simple joy at the sight and I am enchanted with the scent of flowers and the varied aromas of the leaves and grass. I am reminded of excerpts from Renascence, a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay who loved nature passionately:
“I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see,--
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.”
As for the sky we take so much for granted, the convicted criminal Jack Abbott (who wrote a series of letters to Norman Mailer describing the brutality and dehumanizing life in a maximum security prison where he was often placed in solitary confinement) said in his book In the Belly of the Beast the thing he craved most was the sight of the open sky.
Just as one thought leads to another, and one summer reminds me of other seasons spent elsewhere, my heart turns to thoughts of my home in Dhaka.
Now, more than ever, in these warm days of May, I miss the fragrance of our mangoes and lychees, the sight of jackfruit hanging rich and luscious from the trees, the gentle swaying of palm leaves in the breeze, and a myriad other things which are special to me. I want to wake soon to the sound of our Dhaka birds, Dhaka rain pelting my window, and the warm blue light of Dhaka mornings.
Home lies where the heart is, and my heart lies in my motherland.
Nasrin Sobhan is a freelance writer.