My last week's article about sunsets drew many responses from readers with all of them agreeing that watching a sunset was one of the most relaxing moments that one could spend almost every day, free of cost. But my cousin Dr. Irfan Riazi, who is well - known for his poetic talent and who is one of my most frequent responders, took the cake as usual by penning his poetic tribute to the setting sun through a Urdu couplet which reads:

Ek Sabaq lutne lutaane ka who beshak de gaya,
Sub hunar apne, ubhar kar doobne tak de gaya,
Khud tahakamaanda tha sooraj jaagte jalte, magar
Jaate jaate bhi thaki aankhon to thandak de gaya.

For the benefit of my readers I have translated it to the best of my ability as:
Before leaving, a daily lesson in erasing oneself away in charity it gives,
All its bounties, it unfailingly leaves behind for our own lives,
Although itself tired and drained at the end of the day,

The setting sun as a final gift burns itself away to soothe our weary eyes.

But just because it is an everyday event most of us take a sunset for granted and do not consider it worthy of a second look. On the other hand, an eclipse, be it solar or lunar, which is not half as beautiful as even the most ordinary sunset is waited for and watched by a great many people with great fervor. It is only because it is not an everyday event like a sunset, being available just twice or thrice in a person’s lifetime. People go to great lengths preparing themselves to be there at the right time at the right spot from where it is best visible to catch a glimpse of it before it is lost for a few more years.

While pondering over these matters I am reminded of a quote which asks: "What would you not pay to watch the moon rise if nature had not inadvertently made it a free show?" There are a whole lot of free shows going on all the time all around us which we hardly notice and which if noticed with the seeing eye can give us much solace and peace of mind. Sunsets and moonrises are only a few among them. Take for instance the chirping of birds. It is divine music for which most of us have sadly lost the ear due to our hectic lives. You may ask where it is available with all the birds having been driven far away from our cities. Since most of our cities still have many parks interspersed among our concrete nests birdsong is really not so scarce if you know how to find it.

All you have to do is sit down or stand quietly for a few moments while on your morning walk and shut your eyes and mind to all the visual input. You will soon notice the melodious notes of a distant, divine music, which can relax both your body and mind like none other. Even without stirring out of my house, every morning as soon as I wake up, I lie in bed and listen to it which seems to have been designed by a divine hand to soothe my day. Perhaps because I am a little different from most other “normal” people, instead of simply listening to it I also make it a point to identify the different birds that are the members of this orchestra, like a conductor who with years of experience tunes in to every instrument to catch any errant notes.

The interesting discovery that I have made from this exercise is that this music is never the same all through the year. With the changing seasons it changes frequently as many new birds come and go like guest artistes at a concert. Much before the fruits themselves arrive the cuckoos with their sharp short calls tell me that the mango season is around the corner and when their song turns sad and mournful I know it is on its way out. When the pigeons that roost on my bedroom window lintel begin to coo to attract their mates I know that summer is about to begin and when they begin to gurgle to soothe their little ones I know that cooler days are ahead.

There is much that nature can tell us if only we train ourselves to understand its teaching. The gurgle of a brook as it jumps from one level of rice fields to the other, the whispering of the breeze as it flows through the casuarina trees and the songs of shepherds as the drive their flocks home are not rarities for us if we decide to venture just a couple of miles out of the city on a Sunday instead of staying glued to our humdrum existences. It has been said that simple leisure activities like trekking, camping, stargazing, bird watching and fishing that tend to slow down the pace of our lives, add twice the time we spend on them to our life spans. It is not the fish that we actually catch that matters but the time we spend on it, sitting in quietness and tranquility shutting away our tensions that do the trick.

Just yesterday morning, while I was in the company of a senior physician of the city and a cardiologist friend of mine, after he had completed an angiogram on one of my not so old patients only to find multiple blocks in his heart, we were discussing why things like this were on the increase. Among the many perplexing paradoxes that we find in medical practice today is the fast growing incidence of heart attacks and sudden deaths in younger patients.

Despite growing health awareness, a very preventive lifestyle and despite the best medical surveillance available through advanced technology the trend does not seem to be showing a shift towards the better. After a brief and inconclusive discussion we could only conclude like the many studies done worldwide that this was perhaps the price we were paying for the stress that we are building up through our over - ambitious and under - relaxed lifestyles. The proof that this conclusion may be very true and logical lies in the fact that our immediate ancestors of just two generations ago, let alone from the distant past, had much longer life spans than what we are having now. They had their long lives despite a much richer and creamier diet than the lean and mean fare that we are now promoting as the right fuel for a longer life. Perhaps it is still not too late to put the clocks of our lives back a little and postpone our final sunset. Maybe through a little less ambition and just a little more leisure we can not only add some life to our years but also many years to our lives.