If one looks at it from the perspective of ‘being’, or ‘consciousness’, insects can be intriguing… their interactions with humans are mostly harmless, the nature of their existence is seemingly linear and unassuming, even mundane maybe, yet they stand out enough for them to superimpose their behaviours and characteristics upon us… social organization, collective intelligence, labour, family or the struggles of existence… the idioms are all around us, if only the busy bee would once in a while see life from a snail’s pace…
Modern times see insects vilified as a general perception – creepy crawlies that tend to startle or pests that lay to waste a precious crop – yet they are embedded so indiscernibly into human ecosystems that it is but impossible to not take this relationship for granted – the hullaballoo about loss of pollinators that was going unnoticed for decades being a case in point… food, medicine, textiles, research – there is hardly any pillar of modern economy or society whose plinth is not raised on the back of these critters…
The mountains, where the human is compelled to slow down, are where insects break into the empathetic side of our imaginations, for both dispositions must toil unceasingly in these undulations where time is sieved through the cold symphonies of rock and water… if the landscape is a prose, insects are its punctuation, affecting a pause for minds bewildered by the constant churn of life and death, offering them a chance to decode the abstruseness of existence…
Time, and its transience, is the message that they leave us with… the song of a cicada more than a decade in the making… the gluttony of a caterpillar that just can’t wait to fly… the demureness of a slug crawling rather nonchalantly, impervious to the terrain… the contemplative trudge of a beetle, like an octogenarian enjoying an evening stroll… ‘tis a microcosm of life, one that begins with the monotony of subsistence and ends up in the folds of the metaphysical… more than creatures, insects are a medium, a sort of catalyst that keeps curiosity alive lest it be lost in the humdrum of civilization…
Musings on insects, walking in Western Himalaya…
Beautifully written Parth! Can’t agree more! There’s a saying in my tongue that even the tiniest of beings have the right to Earth… so it does. In 2017, my Inktober theme was Insects and I called it “Tiny, but me!” We need to acknowledge that they are all here for a reason!
“If the landscape is prose, insects are its punctuation…”