A splendid morning surprise after several days of overcast sky and random drizzles. It was hard to make out at first from a distance. It looked like a piece of delicately embroidered lace design or a fine lattice work in milky white soft-paste porcelain. Then it revealed itself as an exquisite mushroom that lay upside down amidst the decaying fallen leaves. It had unfolded in all silence in the night’s darkness on the damp compost of twigs, leaves and fallen fruits from the chikku tree above. No one would normally suspect anything so beautiful to emerge from such sombre circumstances. Yet it is there, the transient beauty, a passing delight to us, passers by as well.
The sudden rise of mushrooms take us by surprise. But their tiny spores are all around waiting for the favourable conditions of dampness, darkness and decay. Our languages have adopted the term and the metaphor “mushrooming” from the suddenness of their growth in large numbers and in unexpected places. Found in more than ten thousand varieties and belonging to the humble fungi family of ancient lineage, some mushrooms are edible, some poisonous, and still others ‘magical’ or hallucinogenic.
Even if our civilisational edifices crumble and decay the mushrooms will still grow hilariously over their sad remains. Does it give us some glimpses of hope for the future of life that we humans try to eliminate ruthlessly in myriad ways?
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