Nature for you, Ma’am!

I was in the living room when I heard something that sounded like the vroom-vroom of a car revving. It went on for a few minutes, and then, over all the din, I heard my two cats meowing urgently at the door. When I opened the door, they came bounding in and hid under the sofa – which is when I noticed that someone was de-weeding the empty patch of land opposite my house.

I live in an independent house inside a gated community. Every house has a neat little garden with flowers and lawns and fruit trees. Except the patch of land in front of my house – no one built a house there and now it’s over-run with mounds of unused construction material and weeds.

My cats love the weeds. They like to smell the weeds and snooze under the cars parked there . They spend most of their day in that plot of land, chasing insects and rats and each other (I never quite figured). Naturally, they were terrified when a man with a thresher started cutting through the weeds – vroom vroom vroom. They tried hiding in the remaining patches, until the very last one was cut into mulch and they had no other place to run to. Deforestation in my front yard, and my cats the displaced species.

After the din died down and the cats calmed down, we sat in the balcony, my cats and I, looking at the nice and trimmed ankle-length greens that remained in the plot. Perfect, comfortable, harmless – just the way we want our nature to be. Someone had taken the opportunity to dispose off the cut branches of an overgrown tree in that freed up space. Maybe they had a perfect tree now. Then the house-keeping guys came back and sprayed the whole area with a mosquito repellent. With that final step, a neat little green patch all suited to human residence was created. The cats, of course, had run away from the balcony when the spray guy started.

The primary difference between us humans and all other species is that other species find the most suitable place for themselves and make it home, whereas we, bestowed with the power of imagination and creation, choose a place and shape it our way to make it home. Why is our imagination so lacking then, our creation so tame? Why are our houses homogeneously cuboid, impervious to every possible element of nature from above, below and around? Why is every park that humans see fit for use all trimmed down, grass below the ankle, trees about the head? Why is every resort so sanitised – just enough green so you can call yourselves ‘lap of nature’, not so much that the little kid would be scared of insect noises at night? We spend most of our life inside sterile, temperature-controlled safe-houses. Then when we head out, we order the perfect nature experience – a slice of wood, a brush of green, sprinkled with a pinch of wildlife, conditioned to the perfect temperature – not too hot, not too cold. The lap of nature – a place of no imagination and minimal adventure.

Why rant, though? No need, really. The cats are back in their plot now, sniffing at the new things and looking for their old things in the new world. They keep meowing, presumably for me to come sort out the situation. Cats only meow for humans, did you know? Among themselves, they have a more evolved language involving growls and tails and posture. I don’t know what their posture and tail means just now. They are in the far end of the plot, a corner that had remained hidden by weeds so far. Every morning, after breakfast, they would join me for a walk in the lane, and meow for me to join them in their weedy corner. They don’t like playing in the house – they would rather drag me outside so I could pet them in their resting places – the top of a tree, under a car, or in that weedy corner. Maybe I can go there tomorrow – finally venture into nature after it’s cleaned up for the madam – comfortable, harmless, perfect.