JUNGLY FEELINGS - 1

June 2022

This, says my local guide Akhil as he walks past trampled clumps of grass, was wild boar last night. That, he points to a puddle with massive pug marks, is where the wild elephants were this morning.

'What do you mean this morning? It’s still very much this morning.'

Akhil’s friend, a veteran bare-bodied barefooted forest-dweller who lives on a machaan and always carries a machete, says casually, ‘I can still smell them.’

Akhil vanishes into the thickets, ignoring my alarm and leaving me to sort out my feelings. The problem is: I don’t know what I am feeling.

I am paralysed by two uncertainties:

Q1: When you have no articulable feeling to guide you, how do you take the next step in life?

Q2: Isn’t the quality of your life determined by the relevance of the questions you ask?

These get quickly displaced by another, more urgent, question: That burning sting on my hand, is it a thorn, spider or ant?

My feet and head are muddy when Akhil calls out. I’d prefer to move in his shadows but I can’t see him beyond the foliage.

The machete man moves and starts swiping at the brambles. I slipstream behind him through the clearing.

Beyond the hedgerows, the familiar fades fast.

I don’t know where I am headed, not that I ever knew even in un-jungly situations in life. So, as always, I find it advisable to trust a fellow journeyman and follow closely, submit to belief.

This is not infatuation, this is survival.

After all, at her most benevolent, nature is indifferent to us. In her other moods, she is shades of savage.

When Words Vanish

Analogies and adjectives come gushing when the scene is cinematically, romantically rural: serene, like a painting, pristine, gorgeous, idyllic, blissful, picturesque, nirvanic.

Minutes away when the scene becomes jungle - and not the one we prettily watch as a curated experience from a safari jeep in a sanctuary - the vocabulary evaporates. Citified condescension peels off, a new innocence emerges.

You drown in a sensory flood. You are so consumed by your faculties, there is such constant stirring of the senses, there’s no headspace for verbal embroidery.

You get busy sorting the sensorium, prioritising.

- Did something just crawl up my leg?

- What is that heady earthy whiff?

- From where is that guttural sound emanating?

- Is that a leaf slithering on the squelchy rainforest soil?

- What is watching me, smelling me, feeling my vibrations?

I am aware that my own umwelt – perceptual world – is very limited. Unlike many other creatures in this jungle, I can’t hear ultrasonic or infrasonic sounds, I don’t have thermoperception or echolocation to navigate in the dark. I can’t sense infrared radiation or ultraviolet light.

I taste fear, a tantalising fear that forbids, lures, taunts: Do you really want to experience the pleasures and pains of the unrevealed?

In fear can be rapture, the fierce beating of life. It’s often in those moments that we are most alive. The present becomes so full of itself, there is no room for the past or future.

My two associates, Jogi and Dipu, their pretence of valour thinning, snuffle and snort noisily. D proclaims, 'Yes, there are definitely elephants around.' J dismisses, 'That’s just the smell of stale milk.'

'And you think there’s stale milk here in the jungle?'

Their camaraderie is built on constant contrariness. Barbs help them bond.

The machete man looks at us kindly, scans the landscape, doesn’t say anything, and begins to retreat. We follow.

The jungle is intimidating. You are in the total power of a seemingly singular entity that embraces in its giant web millions of big and tiny creatures. You are made vulnerable in a real way.

Every creature here is ravening prey or restless quarry - be fed or eaten any instant. You better be quick and camouflaged.

The looming trees, at once matronly and menacing, seem to huddle together in a primordial conspiracy. Unlike some city trees that can look exhausted by constant human presence and their dust, the immemorial jungle trees seem to wear their years as wisdom.

They whisper remonstrations: You are nothing here, you silly self-dramatizing creature. Your fleeting life wouldn’t stretch even to a speck in the lifetime of this jungle.

Thus the enduring speaks to the ephemeral.

I realise that much of my life shall be spent growing up and growing old. Prime is a short intermission.

The trees murmur intimations of mortality.

Stepping in Deep

Here’s a confession.

Beneath all the wild photography I attempt lie layers of emotional states: excitement, puzzlement, fright, immersion. Together, they impel me towards unceasing adventures. It’s an addiction.

The excursions so far have been to the fringes of forests. On occasion, I have put a foot in, and then turned back promptly with facile excuses.

How did I then get pulled into the dark and deep – sometimes lovely – woods?

This is The Ballad of Narnia or Alice in Wonderland. You take that one impetuous step, and get yanked into another universe. This chapter can be titled Akhil of Winterfell.

This is how it unfolds.

We are returning from a visit to a famous faraway temple on a hill in the Sahyadri Mountain range. I am not pious, but this temple has emotional significance, a sublime communion some years ago with a certain special friend. Years later, now, an impending send-off. I am a little adrift, seeking ways to keep the connection.

There are dense jungles on either side of the road. We stop at one place but the wire fence tells us this is prohibited area. Every now and then a jeep with forest guards in khaki passes by, so we decide against any tempting trespass.

We stop at a fetchingly desolate café called Winterfell. The owner, a young man called Akhil, is obviously a fan of Game of Thrones. The internet seems to have singularly homogenised tastes and aspirations across the country.

I ask Akhil if one can go into the jungle across the road. He asks me to finish my lemonade and follow him.

As we walk through his compound, I ask if he lets his two big dogs out of their cages. 'I can’t', he says, 'there are leopards and tigers here'.

His compound is too summery and flowery, the abutting farm too spruce and glowing, to bring any serious evocations of hungry tigers. Plus, one has heard endless wild-cat lore which are told for touristy purposes.

'Tigers here? Really?'

'Sir, this area has a large tiger population in the Western Ghats. I have seen tigers several times in my life. One took away a cow a few months ago. Leopards are more common, of course.'

What if human flesh tasted umami?

Past the neat farm, we start clambering up a slippery slope. At once, the sky is overcast. The lights dim, as if to announce the next act. Often in these months in the Sahyadris, dark clouds drift in overhead, look at your for a while, too lazy to rain, and then dissipate.

Today they linger.

~*~