72: Whispers by the Water

Dear reader,

Last week, I spent a few days soaking in the benevolence of the forest. Here are some excerpts from the words I penned in Pench. Happy reading!

December 18th, 2023

A pair of tiger butterflies dance in spirals, descending to the ground, circling one another, chasing each other with a sense of dedicated desperation; as though the other is the sweetest, most fragrant pollen there is. Lines of gleaming silver appear revealing the extent of webbing that surrounds us when the sun tilts itself in the right direction, unfolding secret pathways between trees. The remnants of a stream call out to me - puddles of water, muddy moss, stillness, the absence of a bubbling brook echoing in every corner. P and I move past rocks of all shapes and sizes, smooth to the touch, shaped by and bent to water’s will. The ghosts of leaves look down on us, and all the while unbeknownst to us, a spotted owlet watches our adventures, making its presence known only at his departure.

Sunlight dances on Mary Oliver's words as it reaches me through the canopy of leaves whilst jungle babblers and a rustling breeze add a gorgeous soundtrack to the afternoon. As I examine the vastness of the Banyan tree in the camp, I can trace out the branches of the Haldu tree it has surrounded and taken over.

The babblers have formed an alliance with the squirrels and one greater racket-tailed drongo and this hunting party spends its time feasting on breadcrumbs, nuts, seeds, and anything else it can find. In their spare time, the babblers vehemently protest everything else they encounter - a spotted owlet, a juvenile paradise flycatcher, and even me.

P and I watch a pair of ruddy shelducks, migratory birds that have made their way to Pench all the way from the Himalayas, that are believed to mate for life. And as I look at them, gliding along the river, I wonder if love can truly last a lifetime anymore, if it can overcome the arduousness of a journey like theirs.

Deep in the forest I find a lost fawn, it looks inconsolable, separated from its herd, from its mother with dusk fast approaching, and darkness descending. Will it find its way back before night falls? Will any of us? I do not know.

The forest teaches me acceptance, for with every breath it takes, it accepts everything around it. It exudes acceptance in every corner, with every twig.

And I find that it is accepting of time too. 

I can trace out time in the lines scratched on to the barks of teak trees and in the peeling bark of the ghost tree. I can find time in the remnants of fraying leaves eaten away by defoliators. Time shapes itself as the black band found across the long-tailed shrike’s eyes and it shows up once again as the molting antlers of the chital stag. 

The sun begins to set; gold and orange peep out of the canopy of leaves, an exhilarating, bewitching dance. A few turns later, all that’s left of the sky is the dusty grey colour of dusk. Moments pass, we turn westwards and again the gold jumps out at us eliciting sighs and desire.

December 19th, 2023

I wake up to the sound of dew drops pooling together, falling off the tent, and the beginnings of birdsong. Dried leaves fall to the ground as the birds begin to move. The sunrise this morning shapes itself in streaks of pink scattered across a baby blue sky. A Barbie set come to life. The sky is blue here. The same blue that I would colour the sky in my childhood. What happened? What have we done to our skies that they are no longer this blue? 

I fall in love with the emerald and chestnut tones of the male Eurasian teal, a patch of exquisite green around its eye extending towards the neck. A tiny grass blue butterfly hypnotises me as it flutters in the grass, venturing up the trunk of an Arjuna tree, and returning to the grass again. The colours I encounter in the forest make me ache for my watercolours, but could a pigment ever do justice to the magic that sunlight weaves?

My experience of the forest this time, is one like never before. When I look at a bird, I look down into the river, to see how it appears in the water. I look at a tree, and gaze upon its reflection in the moving water. I look at the deer and trace out their antlers in the ripples. And when there is no water, I look to the dry riverbed, gazing at it, seeing from its perspective, and trying to picture what everything would look like if there was water here.

This time, I realise, I see the forest, from the water.

The moon accompanies us on each safari, silently streaking across the sky even in the mornings, until it is finally swallowed whole by the clouds. At night, the moon is the brightest source of light around us, and on each night accompanied by Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn it dances over our heads. I trace out my favourite constellations, but my eye keeps wandering over to Alcyone and the Seven Sisters which have this endearing habit of fading and reappearing.

We eat our dinner under the stars, and a sprawling cluster-fig tree, surrounded by candles, lanterns, and a roaring fire to keep us warm. I miss the magical presence of fireflies, but it is winter, it is not the time for them.

December 20th, 2023

The trees watch it all.

They see the lost fawn and they don’t intervene. They see the shikra feast on a pond heron and they look on wordlessly. They look at the ficus even as it takes over other trees, and still they stand in silence - the great chroniclers of our time.

And when the last tree has fallen, there our time shall end. 

In silence, as they stand observing all there is around them, they teach me to look with equal devotion at all that I can see - at the leaves that have fallen to the ground and at the wiggling ears of the leopard cub; at the jackal by the banks of the river in the far distance and the spider moving along its web just overhead.

They teach me to look at the way the water changes colour in different parts of the forest - muddy brown, teal green, sunlit brown, dazzling aquamarine and even just a simple blue. And they teach me to look within.

A curiosity awash with reverence.

We go past endless trails, surrounded on all sides by tall teaks, silent sals, fraying ghost trees, sturdy crocodile-bark trees, and a magnificent banyan every now and then. So it comes as a surprise when after three days in the forest, we turn a corner and find ourselves in a grassland, surrounded by dry shrubs and tall grass, and everything is suddenly golden.

The forest holds within itself infinite surprises, if we’re willing to look. And Time once again, meets me, in the way the colours of the forest turn.

The clouds voraciously chase the sun through the day, eager to devour it, their appetite bottomless. We watch as the sky turns from blue to pink, to red to lavender, to lilac, and all of a sudden two brown fish owls fly over us to a dead tree, and there in the quiet of a fading sun they mate.

As night takes over, one by one the stars make themselves known to us. The moon is surrounded by a halo. An optical phenomenon that occurs when ice crystals around the moon refract the moonlight, creating a ring of light that encircles it.

I could stare at that sky endlessly, frozen in place, immobile, but here too Time decides when the moment ends, and we are left standing there in the grass, with only the wisps of what we have witnessed.

December 21st, 2023

The nights are cold, but the bonfire eases their effect. It is the mornings where the cold seeps into my bones, clinging to my toes and my nose, and the wind presents itself as icy and biting at every step of the way. The wind also makes me exceedingly thirsty, longing for water - both to drink, and to sit by, its company compassionate and blissful in comparison to the wind’s onslaught.

In the evening I sit on a rock by Pench river, watching the sun begin its descent; the water gurgles away as it crosses over the rocks jutting out from the river bed. And as it does, it speaks to me. Telling me, urging me, to be a witness. Like the trees. To see it all, and say it all. To write everything down. The story of our times and our actions, our choices and our deeds, of what I see before me - the beauty and the darkness. 

The sky, the trees, the wind - they echo the words of the river, and I am moved to tears as I feel a burden rest on my shoulders, but in a second, that burden feels weightless; rendered invisible once it has made its presence known to me, a companion for the rest of this journey. 

I sit there and grieve all that I have lost.

I grieve my losses - the ones that have already happened, that have twisted my heart and pounded it into a million shattered pieces and the ones that await me in my future. The loves I will lose, the people that will disappear, never to return, the words they will never say again.

And I see there is a before, and an after. In every life, a moment that marks time and divides one’s existence into two separate realms.

And I grieve it all, because the river asks me to. 

And then I close my eyes and breathe, letting everything within recede with the water, disappear with the setting sun. So at every step, at every turn, I can come back to this moment. And I can write.