HEAVEN AT OUR DOORSTEP

Beautiful things and happenings are always at our doorstep or perhaps a little away. All we have to do is to see them with our eyes, chew on them with our minds and digest them with our spirit. To recover our ownership of this planet, we have no option but to go back to loving it.

Even a scientist like Albert Einstein understood the benefits of being in the lap of nature when he said, ‘Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better.’

Nature is in fact the most invisible potent force of the almighty creator of all things. It is this strength in it, that lures us all to walk near shrubs, under the shade of trees, besides rives, at the shores and to climb mountains.

Once we have got hooked onto this infinite natural show, we will never be satisfied with sitting in closed boxes to view tales of human trifles.

In ‘The Chariot Pageant’- a very short story by Rabindranath Tagore, this great master of creativity shows us how indeed very short a journey it can be, to perceive what has always been in front of our eyes and yet not see it in the ignorance of long distance hopes of emotional prosperity. In all the simplicity of his writing, he brings an awe inspiring beauty of a world free of technology, a virgin world of beautiful natural designs where all space is lit up with the light of the stars. And all of this is brought to us through the character of a simple man whose job is to pick up loose broom straws off the palace grounds. When the whole kingdom, with all its high and mighty position holders, rushes to see the chariot parade, this simpleton feels too lowly to race alongside the influential and the strong. However, this set back approach of his is not due to any inferiority complex. It is his humbleness in all its innocence that points sharply to the neglected lifestyle of a modern man who is all the time seen rushing to parades in the world of mankind. But the uncomplicated self has no need to hasten to any parade at all because, ‘God comes to my doorstep in the very same chariots’. What an optimistic approach for humankind to take indeed! An approach that gives a surety of tasting the authority of the creator by simply respecting his creation.

But for the majority of doubting Thomas' of the world, if the chariot were to come at the doorstep, then it would have to leave its wheel marks for his eyes to see. For the unsophisticated however, the one free from earth desires, the invisible is not impossible; ‘His chariot has wings’.

The chariot then can be seen only by a few like the simpleton.

“The Minister asked, ‘And where is that chariot now?’ The wretch pointed – two newly bloomed sunflowers flanked either side of his doorway.”

Probably Tagore wanted to communicate some lofty truth to us, telling us not to run after the chariots or any kind of exhibitions of the world, but to look at nature which is the creation of God, and allow it to help us praise Him by  observing His powers all around; the power that has the strength to make a most delicate flower shoot up from a hard surface of a rock, the power of a stream to flow and make its way to the oceans, the power to help understand things unfathomable.

(Pic.courtesy: Google)