~Zeena Singh ~
Hello folks,
I . believe that life has so much to give if only we cared to give a little thought to the most minuscule of joys (which we’d find so much of) only if we’d stop looking at the looming discomforts and discontents.
So here I am, to share with you the simplest joys in my life as I have experienced some time in my life and those that I take as I face each day, at a time.
The Elephant Experience
Smitten!! when I saw you at such close quarters! The first glimpse had me bowled.
‘Love at first sight’ could have been just the words I’d say to this beautiful creation of God.
So mightily built; so strong yet not fierce – Eyes, the gentlest ever seen, helped me reach out. A handful of tiny shelled peanuts offered, delicately was nibbled out of my hands. Its whopping enormousness was something I surmised only up front and so close. One slurp was all it took for a bucket of water, filled to its brim, to be emptied, just as quickly as it came, with a ‘whoosh’ into what sounded like a hollow drum. A Hand of Bananas would hardly ever make a meal sufficient enough, but she went through it curling her trunk around each piece at a time till with a swoop the entire bunch was wrapped up and swallowed, or so it seemed.
As a return gift for the little treats from us, this remarkable big creature got down on her knees allowing us to be helped onto her back for a ride through the forests of Eucalyptus. It was a short meeting, this, but one that I have held treasured in my list of simple pleasures of life. Treasured not only because of it being one of my firsts but more so because it was my initiation to this being which, from a distance had seemed so unapproachably remote.
In total contrast, beside her a little one, paced restlessly, bobbing its head of sparse spiked hair in boredom. Included in the goodies being doled to the baby, happened to be a cup cake; In amazed wonder I watched as it sniffed at the little cup cake, then gently lifting it out of the hand offering it, threw it on the ground and stamped on it with its foreleg repeatedly, like an angry spoilt child. My astonishment turned to amused admiration in this small creatures’ awareness of a non-familiar object which till then it had never discovered on its familiar menu of eats. Not singularly atypical from another, called a human being, I consider.
This condensed ‘Up Close and Personal Interaction of mine has changed my entire perception of the species, and since, I now but only see and embrace the humility and gentle propriety that I have experienced in something so truly powerful and in full control as in the Elephant.
