This is how it begins – an exotic affair with a land on the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats. A hard rain. Beating down violently on a car we call ‘Ibex’ for the reassuring grip she offers in rugged terrains. There cannot be a more befitting prelude to one’s story with Kodagu when India is monsooning. We roll the windows up and feel the velocity of water. Each drop falling a pearl’s heart shattering against glass.

This is how monsoons happen – an exuberance to a few of us humans or a deep melancholia for a few others. And as you venture deep into the verdant heart of Kodagu’s rainforests, you may oscillate between the two, a privilege by itself.

This is how you give in to noticings – of the more delightful dichotomies of the land. Where the finest of the Kodava heart coexists with the rawest of Kodagu heart. Where beloved large mammals walk stealthily and tiny little crawlies scribe poems on moss- and lichen-ridden ground. Where abundant endemic flora and fauna exist in protected wildlife sanctuaries and waterfalls roar wild in private coffee estates. Where ferns grow ferociously bigger than adult-looking humans and the Sholas roll smoothly into the horizon.

This is how you tumble into this love – like a stream in search of its eventual sea. One that does not forget the joy of flowing before dissolving in the ocean-bosom. This is where trees rise from the ground like they are teasing gravity – a whole underworld of roots rearing life like light itself, without facing the sun directly. This is where the elephant trumpets echo while the glorious colour-morphed individuals of Indrella ampulla quietly leave a trail, defining time as it were with their own pace. This is where the tiger remains as elusive as it can be while pit vipers coil around a tree-branch in the slow strangle of a caress.

This is how you might become a Mary Oliver – whether or not you love her or have even heard of her. For it is where a tourist becomes so much more than just that. This is how you are newly alert to olfaction – when the scent of the rain-soaked soil mingles with coffee freshness mingles with pepper pungence mingles with citrus crispness mingles with cardamom opulence mingles with wildflowers mystery, all of whose names you need not know to behold them in mute admiration. Each fragrance folded into invisible pleats of air. This is how a few forms of hedonism learn to be harmless.

This is how you soften – for the world here turns you inside out slowly. Like you were an orange. A tangerine tantrum as the sun sets in scarletty colours. Behind the fabled hills whose zenith you want to hike up to, to be enveloped in the morning mist and zephyr, the world continues to sprawl in an eternal yawn. But it can wait for another day.

This is how you see nature being deified – how River Kaveri is nothing less than a goddess and how a world of songs are dedicated to her in the precious oral heritage of Paṭṭōle Paḷame. How indigenous folklore has preserved the natural world long before the assertions of science continued to do it in its own way. How the humility of its peoples’ hospitality makes this greenheartland alive with welcome, always.

This is how home grows like a breathing thing – becomes as big as the whole world. For it was never the four walls within which we keep our things and sleep in on most days of the year. For there was never much to do but love places we call Kodagu and rivers we call Kaveri and languages we call Kodava. For they are but names, these fun things we put meanings into, which become portals through which our arms come out to learn a largesse large enough to embrace all places and all rivers and all languages. For this is how we love all that is human against the unimaginably bigger backdrop of the more-than-human.

This is how it ends – coy ploys of revisitations in you for a later time. To keep coming back and to gather more raintime songs. In the monsoon, the world outside soaks. Within you, a joy swelling. As the rain pelts down and you are descending the slopes, do you hear its oceanic roar?

Sourabha Rao

Sourabha Rao is a professional writer, poet, translator, former freelance columnist and voiceover artist, with literary proficiency in English and Kannada. She deeply cares about producing stories primarily on nature and wildlife, social issues, history and art. She strives to write truthfully and creatively in an earnest attempt to create content that educates and entertains, has impact, and mobilises positive social change. She has written op-eds and photo-stories for leading Kannada and English newspapers, and has collaborated with filmmakers in wildlife conservation and water conservation. Sourabha lives in Bengaluru, while a big chunk of her heart has stayed back in Mysuru, her forever-muse.

Kodagu and Her Raintime Songs

Sourabha Rao