I watched how these domestic goose, after having been released early in the morning from their shelter at night, kept searching for their feed from the wet ground. They were together as a group to begin with and were later found to be in twos or threes.
It looked to me that they waited for each other and kept pace that gave me a sense of a bonding that was spontaneous. They communicated with others with bird calls and turned towards each other.
Is this just a herd behaviour for utilitarian purpose of ensuring safety form predators! Or is it an instinct that arises from natural affinity to each other. When I went to look for them in the evening, I noticed a similar behaviour of two or three moving about together.
Following this intriguing sight, I went out of the campus where I was living to take a walk along the road to the next village. I found two similar looking houses in a farm land. They were separate with a common courtyard and separate backyards.
As I stood watching this sight, a man walked towards me from the farm who was interested to know about me. During the conversation, I happened to enquire how these two houses are located adjacent to each other! He mentioned to me that brothers live together in adjacent houses in that community although they function as two households. They share common meals on Saturdays and Sundays, taking turns to cook for each other's family. This custom in that particular community they belong to, is an old practice that some families hold on to, especially if they are engaged in farming. I was delighted to hear this practice as privacy and independence often are the overriding factors for many families normally.
It is when this friendly stranger explained to me about the history of this community I found a connection with their past. They originate from a background of families who were nomadic and lived in the forests. Since about two hundred years, they have got used to live in the plain and live from the produce of the land by farming. They need work force to farm and labourers are not easy to find. So they help each other to farm and harvest.
The ducks above and the two families of brothers convey the same message- the fulness of purpose of being together.
This spirit of neighbourliness is a virtue we seem to loose in a world of acquisitiveness than the social habit of sharing the resources and seeking for the welfare of each other.
I have often wondered since the Israel's war over the Palestinians for over a year now, how Israel and the Palestinians did not consent to accept each other as two nations, existing adjacent to each other, although the United Nations Organisation prosed it about fifty years ago.
We are progressing technologically, economically and industrially, but seem to regress in values of tolerance, equity, justice and mindfulness!
Elizabeth and Mary, cousins, who were both pregnant met together to greet each other, about which there is a vivid description in the Bible in the book of Luke, chapter 1 verses 39 to 56. The baby of Elizabeth 'leaped in her womb with joy'(v 44). The song of Mary in that passage is a moving account of her experience of joy, as expressed in the Magnificat. Mary's song, 'He has filled the hungry with good things and sent away the rich empty handed'(v53) is indeed a promise of hope for those who still live at the mercy of others.
Watching the ducks for about forty minutes, while they searched for their food from the ground, brought me the hope that those 'who seek shall find'!
It is one time in our history after the second world war, we need to seek for peace and wellness for humanity, when war, invasion and domination, which were instincts of the past, have returned to afflict us!
We need a heart that feels and hands that hold others to feel strengthened!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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