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This picture is of my backyard. This pond is a government property, God forsaken and left to its own fate.

But if you look around closely, you will find all kinds of wild growth, attracting bees and butterflies and birds of all kinds, Iam no botanist so I do not know the name of the ferns and bushes growing here, however, I cannot stop but admire their resiliency to the apathy of Humans midst this.

I guess the resilient wild bushes grow in a flow of life that unfolds for them, aligning with the daily weather.

The pond is generously refilled by nature ( despite summer, it has been raining in south India, Hyderabad, in the month of May), which has filled the pond with enough water for the buffalo’s to swim and relax. 

I assume these buffalo’s may belong to the milkman, because as a child I was told, as long as buffalo’s stay in water, they yield more quantity of milk, while I never paid enough attention to this magical correlation nor took any effort to understand the science behind it, I just chose to believe it 🙂

Therefore, I find these buffalo making their way to the pond daily.

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The trigger

With the ongoing India-Pakistan War, and every sensible online channel and voice muted by the Indian information & broadcasting ministry, the alternatives are all fake news channels.

 & You really need guts and a lot of courage to stomach the fake channels, which are dime a dozen with such tall claims that can put even Britons who once colonized the entire world to shame.

I tried looking for news on international news channels like Reuters, and with whatever little I could watch, I felt extremely overwhelmed, concerned, and filled with a strange sense of loneliness, but also as if I was part of it all.

I prayed for civilians being victims of wars on both sides of the border town, paying a price for no fault of their own.

I was suddenly overtaken by grief and felt very very sad.

My grief reminded me that most of my loved ones have left this world for the better, and here I was trying to make sense of what’s next in this war that both countries are madly making tall claims about as they go on mercilessly killing civilians at the border towns.

 This month also reminded me of the time when four years ago (Year 2021), my father was extremely unwell, and the world was grappling with the deadliest delta wave of COVID, where people were dying like flies.

I wondered what could really teach us a lesson, if not death?

In search of solace, I came out and started to watch these buffalo’s, which I find soothing. I wish I were one, having nothing to do, except sit on a water body of an abandoned pond and conjure some milk.

I was jealous of these buffalo and the birds around, and the peace that envelops them. But I also realized that perhaps we all pay a price for the most valuable things, and lack of peace is the price for our intellect.

Until next time,

With prayers for everyone,

Warmly,

Mehnaz Amjad