Sweet is the lore which Nature brings...
   Date :13-May-2019
 
 
 
By Kartik Lokhande
 
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: -- We murder to dissect.
 
These wonderful lines are from the famous poem ‘The Tables Turned’ penned over two Centuries ago by William Wordsworth, a legend. However, one finds in these lines description of what is happening in the present-day city of Nagpur, or, for that matter, any major urban centre.
 
 
Nagpur is proudly called the second greenest city in India, thanks to its green cover. However, in the past few years, owing to so-called fast-paced development, silently the trees are being killed. There are ‘n’ number of methods -- choking the bases, exposing the roots, hammering nails into them, butchering, chopping the crown, etc. All this is being done for various projects, construction of footpaths and roads in the name of making the city ‘livable’ for humans.
 
 
One finds similarity between this style of operation of urban planners and Wordsworth’s expression ‘meddling intellect’, which ‘mis-shapes’ the beautiful forms of things. It is this pursuit of concrete-centric development that one can connect to Wordsworth’s expression ‘We murder to dissect’. If good care is taken of the green cover in city, without allowing the intellect to meddle and murder it in the process of development, the enlightenment that Nature brings will be sweet for all. One does not have to go places in search of rich dense green cover. Nagpur city still offers several such spots. The road stretch from Police Gymkhana to Ramgiri bungalow, Seminary Hills, Maharajbag road, the ‘Kiplingesque’ Bharat Nagar forest, campuses of National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, etc are fine examples of wonderful green stretches that act as lungs of the city.
 
 
One can find trees bearing colourful flowers in different seasons and presenting a picturesque sight that no painting can provide. Often, a sensitive person can feel as if multi-coloured leaves of trees are waving to the symphony played by breeze.