Thursday 8 December 2011

Metamorphosis


It is  hanging down from a fresh branch like an inconspicuous sac, camouflaged, quiet and mysterious. It is hard to tell what is going on for many gloomy nights inside that quietness and mystery. Its molten being is taking many forms through the continuously programmed battling of death and life, in the twilight zone of destruction and resurrection.


What a different being it was…born as voracious worm…undergone its juvenile shedding behind its ‘outer’….to grow more…into another ‘instar’…so different from what it is destined to be…. under the blanket of darkness…the chrysalis…!



Through dissolution…self-destruction and reformation, within no time its organs starts becoming distinct…its head and antennae…its legs and wings….and its eyes..!

Nature begins filling that empty canvas with the most spectacular and lustrous colors…interplaying.. projecting…intensifying ..like the view in a kaleidoscope !

The pain of death and the joy of new birth, is intermingled with the excitement of waiting hours…

It starts struggling out of the sac…holding it..pushing it…emerging…being born!!!

Its body is swollen with fluid..its wings short and shriveled…and a final push jerks the fluid out of its abdomen..into its wings…expanding and stretching them to their fullness..


And swooshhhhh…… the redness sets everything free………….

...

In the light welcoming embrace of breeze of the early morning, the newborn butterfly dries its wings and takes its first flight…flying over the envious gaze of flowers stunned by the delicacy and beauty of the marvelous creature flying over them..certainly ..a flying flower!

It flies higher and higher…a never tiring and a never ending adventure…absorbing the smile of the vastness of the blue sky…in its timeless journey…

Attracted by a sweet fragrance, it descends down slowly and gracefully in a garden full of blooming flowers and some youngsters..when it feels the brush of some fiber against its wings…and some of the amorphous color on them gets dispersed..

It is the net of the young zoologist…a deadly trap!

Horrified, bewildered,,,it tries to escape with all its strength…pushing hard for the sake of its life..but nothing helps!

The Youngman immediately puts it in a jar filled with a deadly substance.Very soon its vision starts blurring and the fluttering of its wings weakens. It goes into another deep sleep..this time…never to rise again…

That evening, the Young man wakes up from his nap and quickly pins his specimen’s body on a piece of Styrofoam. He starts stretching the butterfly’s wings when he senses a slight flutter and assumes he might be day-dreaming!

...

  His professor at college identifies the butterfly to be one of the rarest species and send it to the Museum.

The butterfly gets preserved into transparent plastic block…for…ever!


...

Some year after , a group of elementary school students visit the Museum to study Metamorphosis. A boy fascinated by the spectacular sight of the colorless block enclosing such a colorful creature..comes closer… touches the block with his eyes full of curiosity. And starts tumbling and fumbling it between its palms. Through his vision glasses he looks straight into the eyes of the preserved butterfly..the compound eyes..with many facets, blindly staring into the lucidity of the block. The boy gets mesmerized and feels as if those eyes were watching…asking questions…

What is in that block which has factually got preserved…a timeless beauty…an endless time…a mindless crime…an eternal pain….or just a biological process…???????????

Confused…the boy runs to ask his teacher…!



SW