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SHELIDAH,
_9th August 1894._
I saw a dead bird floating down the current to-day. The history of its
death may easily be divined. It had a nest in some mango tree at the edge
of a village. It returned home in the evening, nestling there against
soft-feathered companions, and resting a wearied little body in sleep. All
of a sudden, in the night, the mighty Padma tossed slightly in her bed,
and the earth was swept away from the roots of the mango tree. The little
creature bereft of its nest awoke just for a moment before it went to
sleep again for ever.
When I am in the presence of the awful mystery of all-destructive Nature,
the difference between myself and the other living things seems trivial.
In town, human society is to the fore and looms large; it is cruelly
callous to the happiness and misery of other creatures as compared with
its own.
In Europe, also, man is so complex and so dominant, that the animal is too
merely an animal to him. To Indians the idea of the transmigration of the
soul from animal to man, and man to animal, does not seem strange, and so
from our scriptures pity for all sentient creatures has not been banished
as a sentimental exaggeration.
When I am in close touch with Nature in the country, the Indian in me
asserts itself and I cannot remain coldly indifferent to the abounding joy
of life throbbing within the soft down-covered breast of a single tiny
bird.
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