I am well aware that I missed out on the “Happy New Year” window and now kindly receive warm greetings from me. I hope this finds you well and that this month that is definitely not January has been kind to you. Mine, on this end, has morphed into a December ultra and something about it feels quite illegal.

Speaking of the holidays, I spent most of mine around fires late into the night with loud music that faded and got drowned in loud drunk talk as the night progressed. The Shawty for the forests, who I look upto and happen to share a birthday with, would not be impressed with the amount of trees that lost their lives to facilitate our trivialities.

It was however not in vain that the trees were felled. We have had the funniest, deepest, most random and often incoherent conversations around the fire. Something was mentioned that caught my attention and I committed to let the world hear about it hoping it is as impressive as I found it to be.

I cannot do justice to the dramatic narration I received, but I am sadly all you have. The narrator painted a picture of a water droplet from the morning dew hanging onto a leaf somewhere in a forest but in my mind, I could only picture the Savanna as in National Geographic shows. This is juxtaposed with a beautiful sunrise by the mountains and as the sun rays hit the morning dew, the ray reflects upon the drop that has now formed a convex lens and there in this beauty a forest fire is ignited. Naturally, I treat information passed in these settings with a grain of salt for obvious reasons. This time however, my curiosity was quite aroused and I dedicated some of my holiday time to look into this phenomenon.

Surprisingly, scientists have indeed found that water droplets on leaves act as a magnifying glass to sun rays falling on them causing fire. This especially applies to plants with plant hairs which hold water in focus. The conversation on forest fires did not stop here and I learnt about a second concept known as serotiny.

Serotiny is the process where some tree species delay seed fall as their seed cones are dependent on a blast of heat to release them. These serotinous trees store their seeds in a canopy in cones or pods as they await a trigger such as a forest fire. These seeds do well in the burnt soil available to them after a fire and offer beauty and variety after a tragedy.

Now I know you are wondering what any of these fires have to do with you. While I indulge you to draw your own lessons from my fire stories, here is my takeaway. I wholeheartedly wish this year is nothing short of an Annus Mirabilis for you. In case you find yourself in a dormant space feeling like you’re in a tightly shut cone, kindly do not yield to the pressure to sprout in anybody’s time. You just might be a mighty cypress awaiting their perfect time. Do not envy the common.

More important, if you find yourself in the heat this year, remember that a fire that won’t kill you will release the seed in you, and you shall thrive on that same battlefield. I found the possibility of small things like a drop of water and hair almost invisible to the naked eye causing a forest fire to be quite appalling. A parallel butterfly effect that calls upon us to examine the small things as they indeed do have a non-linear effect on much more complex matters that we perceive to hold more importance.

If by chance all I have done is ramble and the above sounds a bit far-fetched (or pretty much so) here’s all I am saying; If you happen to be endowed with body hair, do not expose yourself to direct sunlight after taking a bath or simply coming into contact with water.