I was working near the window of the first floor when I heard two sounds. One was a faint drumming, the second a whispery rustle. To my amusement the drummer was a bold squirrel who was leaping about on the outer sill of the window and looking into the room with the eye of an explorer, while also throwing enquiring looks at me. They say we humans can read facial emotions but we have nothing on other mammals. A cat or a dog can in a split second assess whether or not we are well disposed towards it. So too this little furry bundle whom the current silence from our species had encouraged. It was trying to ascertain whether it could expand its territory into my unnatural habitat—steel and concrete with a strange instrument blowing a breeze from above.
It took me a while to fix the source of the other sound. It was from the green leaves of the drumstick tree outside my first floor window. From time to time I used to impatiently move its tendrils aside or clip them as they brushed closer and closer to the window grill and even tapped it. They too looked glad and expansive. Were they greener or did it just seem so to my imagination? For the first time I could actually hear the sound of leaves. Not to be mistaken for the sound of the wind as it moves through trees but the faint sound that leaves make when they quiver all together.
The green leaf! Earth’s messenger on which so much depends! I recall a cooperative activity for young children developed by Sherif Rushdy and Shaku Raniga involving a large leaf. Stand all the children in a straight line, one behind the other. The teacher would then give a large leaf to the first child and say “Take this leaf. Hold it above your head, don’t drop it, pull it carelessly or tear it. Pass it backwards over your head to the child behind you.”
The second child was to receive the leaf very gently, and taking care not to drop it or bend it out of shape, had to pass it over his or her head backwards to the third child and so on till the leaf reached the end of its journey in the hands of the last child. The last leaf-receiver was to give it back to the teacher who would hold it up for all to see. The purpose of the lesson was to teach children how to handle all of Nature.
Time to listen to the sound of leaves?
Mini Krishnan
Email: minioup@gmail.com