One and Many!

 

Anna takes considerable interest in our garden. So we have flowers most of the time of the year. 

One flower or many flowers!

Or is it one and many flowers!

For the first plant, one flower each time in a stalk is its way!

For the second plant, many flowers in its stalk is its way!

Both plants together with other plants make a garden! 

In a competitive culture, where humans compete to take over others, how profound is the message of a garden!

Each plant has its own nature, colour, fragrance, and longevity, each giving itself to the garden!

I find this a message of some significance! Each person is valuable and enhances each other! That is the common thread in our relationships! That affirms to me that we are connected to each other. 

We need to move away from the pursuit of an exclusive personal identity to a collective identity as people of purpose for this generation and the following generations to come. 

When we follow the pattern of wealth creation and acquisition in a world of opportunities I feel awful that the desire to promote equal opportunities is low in the priority of those who lead and control the market forces. 

About two hundred thousand farmers are parked around New Delhi for the last four days as they feel choked by three new laws which the Indian parliament passed. They fear that the corporate sector is going to take over their rights to produce, market and sell farm produce. The government used water canons, tear gas and even physical force to chase away the farmers with very little thoughtful acts of feeling the compulsions under which farmers live and work. Who in the government has shown sympathy towards these men and women who remain under the open sky day and night, when temperature dipped to the 20 degree celsius range! Are they protesting for no reason! 

We live in a culture when the political ideology has taken control of us that it is no more leading us towards people and their needs, but only for pursuing more of political control. I sometimes wonder, how politicians in the opposition parties have become prisoners of their resolve to oppose and not lead by  a showing an example!

We remember Mahatma Gandhi ceremonially on his birth and death anniversary days, and perhaps while celebrating the Independence and Republic Days! Was he not the person who said,' Be the change, that you want to see'!

The public space where we ought to be normally humane and humanitarian has shrunk and is getting replaced by a political agenda to control and impose! Is it not a regression in the value of human brotherhood! 

Have we heard the ruling and opposition parties say to each other, 'Our ideologies are different but we are fellow humans'! Is there a language of understanding or accommodation between them!

Let even nation be a garden of humanity where the collective identity is that of human brotherhood!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)