We live in harrowing times – there is no doubt about that. In fact, the general consensus is that the world is rapidly going to hell – as it has been for approximately 10,000 years since man first set up his tents in the Valley of the Euphrates and at once began to talk about the golden age he once enjoyed swinging in the treetops long ago.
What makes it even worse is that the news we get is always slanted towards disaster. This is not surprising. It is well known to any journalist worth his salt that good news is bad news. The fact is that we grow bored being told what we already know. We know that most husbands do not murder their wives. We know that most houses did not burn down last night. We know that it is admirable for investments to flow, production to increase and GDP to grow mightily for the greater good of the State. What awakens our interest is the exception which means, broadly speaking, the bad news. I’m afraid that no newspaper or TV or radio is going to make much of an impression with headlines like “Last year almost 750,000 Guyanese did not drown” or “Lightning missed everybody in yesterday’s storm.”
So I myself on the whole accept that the news will be full of mayhem and mishap, dismay and disaster. Yet I do sometimes yearn for a little more light relief, less solemnity, a little more evidence that we can laugh at ourselves even when things are grim and going wrong. I do not think we should always have the heavy brigade charging at us in the editorial pages, guns blazing doom and exhortation. Life certainly isn’t all sweetness and light but nor is it by any means only a tale of unrelieved gloom and the sacrificial summons.
In particular I feel we should receive more dispatches from the battlefields of love, that subject of never-ending fascination. I saw once, for instance, the result of an important enquiry into the sex life of toads which sheds some light on the battle between the sexes, that sweet-and-sour rivalry which enlivens all our lives.
An American researcher, Dr. L. Fairchild, of Duke University, has shown that male toads have found a way of deceiving the females they are courting. The female, apparently, prefers to mate with big males and because she usually chooses her partner in the dark she judges his size by the depth of his voice: the larger the toad the deeper the croak. Deception becomes possible because temperature affects the croak – a cold toad can give a deeper croak. So the male toads cunningly seek out the coldest part of the ponds and croak away. And thus the unfortunate female who thinks she may be mating with a large, warm toad may well have been deceived by a small, cold one. You can imagine her surprise as she realizes, too late, that the louder the croak does not necessarily mean the better the mate. Such is life indeed, among humans as among toads. And so we live and learn. The fascination will never die, however tense and trouble-torn the world sometimes seems to be. And, the next pond you pass, reflect a while on the intrigue in its depths and on the infinite variety of life.
Or the next river you come to, recall the lines from an Indian love poem which I have treasured for a long time. The lines are spoken by a Pathan warrior, brave but very frustrated, as he gazes at a beautiful young woman bending down seductively across the way – and he laments in despair:
“Ah, there’s a girl across the river
With a bottom like a peach –
But, alas, I cannot swim.”
Which lines come into my mind, it must be the Devil’s bidding, whenever I hear sung by black-coated choirs that fine but mournful old spiritual “One More River to Cross” – and I smile to think of that warrior in the lovely poem standing forever yearning for his girl across the river. And I think again how sweet life can be despite the hard and brutal times, and I thank whatever Gods may be for beauty and laughter and good friends and poetry and love and all the flavours of this fascinating and tumultuous world.
