Cities need islands of wilderness

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough/A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou/ Beside me singing in the Wilderness/And Wilderness is Paradise enow," goes Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation of Omar Khayyam's famous Persian rubai (quatrain) written nearly a millennium ago.

- SATISH KUMAR SHARMA

It is Khayyam's most quoted, portrayed and painted rubai. In the first reading it sounds like the poet's imagination of a paradise, but when you look deeper you find that actually a compliment, a tribute to inner self represented by wilderness.

The poet likens wilderness to paradise. But the quatrain's beauty lies in how in the first three lines Khayyam goes on assembling the requirements of paradise - food, shade, wine, book of poetry, music, a loving companion or romance and finally wilderness. But by the time he comes to the last item - wilderness, he has a sudden change of mind and, as if by epiphany, realizes that wilderness (inner self) itself is paradise for the enjoyment of which the earlier things - even as sublime as poetry, music and romance are not only redundant but also distracting.

And that is the meaning of the emphatic fourth line of the rubai. One can be sure that poet's view of wilderness has been shared by travellers, ascetics and seekers of inner peace throughout the ages.

But what is wilderness? The simplest explanation is that wilderness begins where civilization ends. Looking that way, cities are perhaps the last place to find it. But even there, we can and should create islands of self-growing or wild greenery amidst the sea of noise, light and smells of civilization. And we should have it not only for the retreat of our own souls but also for the survival of diverse flora and fauna.