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It was a routine early morning walk on the terrace of a four-storey apartment building during the month of Aadi (mid-July to mid-August in the Gregorian calendar). The Sun’s transition into Cancer (Karka Rāśi) marks the commencement of Dakṣiṇāyana, ushering in the powerful, restless winds driven by the peak of the Southwest Monsoon across Southern India.
Ever since my boyhood days, the familiar Tamil proverb had been etched into memory: “ஆடிக் காற்றில் அம்மியும் நகரும்” (“In the winds of Aadi, even a heavy stone mortar will budge”). Accustomed to this seasonal tempest, I was briskly minding my stride, focused entirely on completing my morning quota of 6,000 steps.
Then my eyes caught an eagle perched upon the frond of a coconut tree nearby. Known for its unyielding, vice-like grip, the majestic bird was visibly struggling to maintain its footing as the entire tree swayed wildly from side to side. In the month of Aadi, this is hardly unusual; ordinarily, one would shrug it off as mundane background scenery and continue pacing the terrace.
Yet, for reasons I cannot fully explain, my stride broke. My attention locked onto the palm, tracing it deliberately from its base in the earth all the way to its crown against the sky.
A mature coconut tree, standing approximately fifty feet above the ground, weighing anywhere between one and a half to three metric tons, crowned with dozens of heavy fronds and dense clusters of fruit, welcomes the gentle breeze that cradles its tender fronds. It faces that same breeze magnificently when it transforms into a high speed monsoon wind and yields, flexing approximately five to ten feet in either direction, absorbing and distributing immense mechanical forces across its slender frame before snapping back into place.
A coconut tree does not possess a brain. It has no central nervous system, writes no architectural blueprints, and performs no calculus on tensile strain. Yet it demonstrates an exquisite structural order that engineers spend lifetimes deciphering, exhibiting an extraordinary degree of organisation.
Can this palm become my Guru and teach me?
Here is my take on this question.
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