Hello, Sparky here.
Ø This week, as is my wont I start by speaking of the
weather, but not the weather of the week but the reason why I dwell on weather
as much as I do. Recently a human teased me of how the magazine always starts
with a weather report. My reply is a simple one, if I am hungry, I will think
of food but if my next meal depends on the weather, then it is weather which
would be on my mind. This is true for every living thing except perhaps the
humans who live in a ‘bubble’.
Ø If any of us in the animal world forget the weather it
could well be our death knell. If a bear were to hibernate in summer then when
would he eat and stock-up? If mountain goats and arctic foxes decide it’s not
fashionable to sport a thick fur for winter they most likely will freeze to
death. If birds who migrate from cold regions don’t fancy a long flight before
temperatures drop they will soon drop dead. Such is our life, we live and
prosper only if we unquestioningly trust and follow the instructions of Mother
Nature.
Ø Humans have created a world that has come to be almost
detached from the world created by Mother Nature. Humans live in controlled
environments and even short journeys out of their ‘bubble’ that are a matter of
‘discomfort’ is set right as quickly as possible by entering into another
‘bubble’, say, a journey from ‘home bubble’ to ‘office bubble’ involving a
‘transport’ bubble’ in between. Of course, this is not true of all humans –
there are those who toil in scorching heat, those who live exposed to the
vagaries of seasons – but a human who questions the importance of weather is
not someone who lives by the seasons or by the dictates of Mother Nature.
Ø Humans have made so much ‘progress’ that they have even
made weather irrelevant.
o
Seasonal fruits are available through the
year. If a plant is particularly stubborn and can’t be made to grow out of
season, it’s soon rectified by transporting it from the other hemisphere or
from a place where it is in season.
o
It could be raining cats and dogs and a human
could turn up the heat within the house and enjoy an ice cream.
o
Freezing chill? No problem. Just wrap around
a down jacket (made from feathers of ducks and geese) and carry on with life.
Mother Nature equipped these birds to survive bone-chilling winters but how was
She to have known of a new greedy and ambitious predator on the block?
o
Sweltering heat? What’s that? There’s no
summer even for those living in the deserts in peak summer.
This list is endless but the consequence of
their playing ‘God’ is reaching its logical end.
Ø Mother Nature is patient but Her patience is wearing
thin. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones – extreme weather conditions are
becoming the norm. Humans have
thoughtlessly misused their privilege as a ‘thinking animal’ and we are all
having to pay a price for it.
Ø While on this topic, I recall seeing a set of 4 paintings
in the Louvre Museum, Paris. Painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian
Painter in 1573, these portrait paintings show the close
relationship between humans and nature (at least of the humans of those times).
This was painted at a time when disciplines such as botany and zoology were
being pursued eagerly. This was also a
time when the seasons were not irrelevant as it is today to humans and they
lived like the rest of us, in tune with nature and the changing seasons.
Ø Each portrait represents a season and is made up of
‘nature’s bounty’ or otherwise of that season.
o
Spring is a young smiling woman adorned with
a variety of flowers that grow abundantly in spring. She has a lily-bud nose and a tulip ear. Her
hair is made up of colourful flowers while her dress is a ‘jungle’ of green leaves
with a daisy-necklace.
o
Summer is a woman made up of seasonal fruit
and vegetables. Her smiling face reflects the benevolence of the season of sunshine
and abundance in nature. Cherries adorn the hair and upper lip, the cheek is a
peach with a cucumber nose and an eggplant ear. The eyebrow is an ear of wheat.
The clothing is made of straw and an artichoke decorates the chest.
o
Autumn shows a surly man whose body is
covered by a broken barrel and whose face has a pear for a nose, an apple for
the cheek, a pomegranate for the chin and a mushroom for the ear, all ripe and
ready for feasting.
o
Winter is an old man wrapped in a straw mat.
His head is made up of an aged tree stump with the gnarled wood showing the
wrinkles of age. He has a swollen
mushroom for a mouth and has a lemon and orange hanging from his clothing
representing the frugal offering of the winter season.
Ø Looking at these paintings makes me wonder. If humans
know how important Nature is, how essential order and balance is in the natural
world then why are they going around destroying their one and only earthly
home?
Ø In news from Banyan Island, I still keep bumping into animals
and birds still munching on the fruits and berries from the fair last week. It’s
a good thing it’s winter, had the fruits been hoarded this way for ‘later consumption’
in summer, there would have been a nasty stink on Banyan from all the rotting fruits.
Ø Popularity of Mr. SBK, the stork-billed kingfisher who drew
everyone’s caricatures in the fair last week is spreading by the day. This week
he was invited to a get-together party on another island for drawing caricatures
of all the revelers. Between invites like these and visitors (mainly birds) who
come over to have their caricature drawn we hardly see Mr. SBK these days like we
used to before the fair – hanging around with someone here, chatting with someone
there, trying his best to make matters worse for someone else. I have got one thing
to say to Mrs. Ulukah, the leader who is responsible for this transformation in
Mr. SBK – ‘Mischief managed and how?’
Here are a few activities for this week. Amuse
yourself with these puzzles and warm your heart.
·
Here’s a photo of an agricultural field’.
Look at this photo and see how many words you can identify which begin with the
letter ‘B’. Don’t limit yourself to just what you see, widen your imagination
and look for intangible things as well.
·
Here’s
a Crossword puzzle for the week – all the words end with the letters ‘tion’.
·
These
are a few famous monuments from around the world – can you identify them:
·
In last
week’s fair, I had my entire collection of jigsaw puzzles – 42 puzzles, to be precise
– on display and for anybody to try it then or borrow it later. As promised last
week, here is the list of the benefits that come of solving Jigsaw puzzles but you
will have to solve a puzzle to get to the benefits.
Match the 2 columns
below to get sensible words that are the benefits of solving jigsaw puzzles.
|
Brain |
Reasoning |
|
Increases Cognitive |
Enhancement |
|
Increases Spatial |
Stress |
|
Attention |
Solving |
|
Memory |
Function |
|
Increases |
Blood pressure |
|
Improves |
Exercise |
|
Relieves |
Dopamine |
|
Lowers |
IQ |
|
Increases |
Mood |
|
Problem |
Self-confidence |
|
Produces |
to detail |
Little Readers’ Section
·
Here
is a photo of a beach, can you identify who belongs in the beach, who is a
visitor and who is an intruder?
See you all next week with more news,
activities and answers to this week’s puzzles.
In the meanwhile, if you would like to write
to me, email me at Sparkyatbanyan@gmail.com
Answers to last week’s puzzles:
· Here’s a photo of an intertidal beach or a ‘foreshore’, which is the part of the beach which is exposed at low tides and submerged at high tides.
Look at this photo and see how many words you can identify which begin with the letter ‘C’. Don’t limit yourself to just what you see, widen your imagination and look for intangible things as well.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of
answers. What has got exhausted is my ‘imagination’ and ‘inclination’.
o
Crab (though there are no crabs, the
round mounds all around their holes were made by crabs while searching for food
in the sand)
o
Clayey (the wet sand looks like clay)
o
Car (track of the car tyre)
o Canine
(Dog’s pugmark)
o Cute
(the bird’s feet marks)
o Callousness
(of someone driving on the foreshore)
o Casualty
(nature is a casualty of man’s apathy)
·
Match
the words in the left column with the meanings in the right column.
· We all live in a variety of habitat, eat a variety of food - it has been fine-tuned over the millennia to be what it is today and this process of fine-tuning will continue as only if a species can adapt to changes will it survive and thrive. This is evolution.
Birds have different types of feet to suit the environment they live in and to aid in a particular function like grasping, perching, catching, swimming and so on. In the puzzle below, can you match the feet on the left with the birds on the right? Asking where the bird lives and what it does will help with the matching.
