Skip to main content

Bonsai

I hate bonsai trees. They are great to look at. A whole tree in a tiny pot. Looks like a classical case of 'Honey I shrunk the kids.' 
I hate growing bonsai because it's where we humans exercise our domination over other living beings and shape them to our fancy. It is just like a sculptor shaping a crude stone into a 'beautiful' sculpture.
Does the plant want to become a bonsai?
Does the stone want to become a sculpture and look beautiful to man?
Don't you think it is cruelty? How would we humans like it if someone stronger than us diminish our size and shape us according to their whims and fancies?
Do you want to be free or look beautiful to the world?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Two separate questions

Guess I am out of touch with everything right now, so no blog entry for many days. From many days, a question is bothering me. I haven't found a satisfactory answer yet. So I'll write it down here. Maybe anybody who reads this may know the answer. "Just because we are journalists, writers, opinion creators and thinkers, do we have the right to judge others? Either personally or professionally?" I think we don't have the right to judge a person, even if we are right. But as writers, we would have to judge others whether we like it or not. And it's very difficult forcing people to think, but that's what we are doing or pretending to be doing right? Another question: "How come life is so simple if you just let it live by itself without bothering much and so complicated if you try to manipulate it or even understand it?" Blessed are the ignorant. We who can understand everything, try not to let anything go by without understanding and thus miss the b

Caterpillar or butterfly?

'Caught in a strange land in a net with other butterflies, I'm a caterpillar yet undecided to remain a caterpillar and perish or turn into a beautiful butterfly and live a life full of joy.' Readers don't laugh. But I came up with this one night recently when I was travelling in a train. I tossed and turned, not being able to sleep, upset over unexplainable things and frustrated over events not in my control. Then it occurred to me that our life and its usefulness depends on our decisions -- whether to remain a crawling caterpillar whose existence otherwise is either ignored by all and sundry or who is cursed for just being there and thrown out with a stick, or to develop wings of life and metamorphose into a beautiful butterfly whom everybody adores for its beauty and colour, for its flitting liveliness, for its service to the flower's pollination... I thought that I should be a butterfly, of service to others, but then again I thought, anyway, who really cares? 

The next step forward

“ What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” -- Jack Kerouac (American Poet and Novelist) From what I have seen and admired in humans, they are eternal optimists. Goodbyes seem to break us, but we straighten up and walk, holding our head high, blinking away our tears. And as regards the specks of people dispersing, when something moves away, something else comes near. Guess that's how laws of nature move. If a time comes when nothing else comes near, it's when we will become really alone; alone to live and love life without any reason, taking the next step forward.