I am sitting at the edge of a wetland on Sunday, looking in the distance at long-legged birds splashing through the water. There is a bird with a back that looks ancient—the colour of deep, burnished and polished bronze. It prods the water with its ivory bill, and then begins moving along the banks. It lowers itself—walking on water-land-water. With its long toes, the bronze-winged Jacana has evolved to tread vegetation floating on water. It loves lily pads. I’m still looking at the sun shining off the bird’s burnished back when a motion calls for my attention to the shore closer to me. At first, I see nothing but water lying shallowly on the land.
Then as the sieve of sunlight falls on it, a clearer picture begins to emerge. There are things in the water that float on the surface, turning their face up to the sun; then there are those that lurk a little below, loving the dark places of leaf-shadows. On the surface is a buoyant set of lily leaves, held up by gelatinous stems. Then there is a tangle of aquatic vegetation and mosses, and little pops and bubbles in the water point at little legs and fins moving below. A buzzing sound is a giveaway for the presence of dragonflies. But smaller, daintier things are here too. I decide to look deeper, not further. On the mat of vegetation, small, jewel-like things are darting. Some are merged into each other in a mating dance. Others alight with the soft touch of a snowflake on emergent leaves and stems.
These are damselflies, odonates that are like a delicate version of a dragonfly. You could be surrounded by damselflies and not know it—unlike the loud buzzing ‘zzrrrp’ of dragonflies, damselflies are quieter. They are so slender and well-camouflaged that you could easily miss them. There are many things we miss in wetlands, and this is also because our relationship with them is an interrupted one. The intervention of ‘beautification’ is rampant and unnecessary—like an office flow chart for wild things, it creates structures where none are needed. The creation of ghats or steps on large lakes and river sides, or the setting down of marbled, concrete banks for wetlands is ripping away a natural interaction with them.
And the worst idea is concretising the sides and bottoms of these water bodies, with misplaced notions of keeping the site ‘clean’. Some beautification drives destroy natural vegetation so water can be seen. In recent orders, the National Green Tribunal has directed for the suspension of ‘beautification’ structures being made in Tampara lake, Odisha, and Ana Sagar lake, Ajmer, because these were impacting the wetlands. Instead of creating bathtubs out of wetlands, we need to allow natural banks and shores to flourish, with all their attendant life.
Reeds growing on natural soil are used as nesting sites by Red Munias; water mosses are someone’s refuge, lily pads are launch pads for odonates. That day, the honk of a sarus crane broke my meditation. The water seemed to shimmer from the loud sound. Now that I had spotted them, the birds, damselflies and fish all added up to many pairs of eyes looking at me and the world. The wetland seemed sentient, working together as a network of life. A distillation of the beauty in the natural world—one that needs no further touch-ups. Posts on X (formerly Twitter) @Nehaa_sinha