A softness on another, of reptilian slithering on the monsooning, moss-ridden hard rock. A Malabar pit viper — a green one of the many morphs it exists in — moves slowly, every inch gained meditatively. Is it aware of your existence near it? Will it affect the course of movement? How much of an intruder you really are in its own habitat, its home? Will you ever know? Does it even matter? Somewhere between these questions and the mulling over, you will continue to watch, mute in awe, remembering the eternal words that Rebecca Elson gave us all: we all have a “responsibility to awe”. The questions can wait.

Somewhat a contrast is the low roar of a waterfall in the backdrop, redolent of what restraints mean to the human heart, especially to ones that wrestle with constructs and norms of the human world. But here, for now, restraint of an element that changes form as ordained by the force of life. Restraint. Contained before swelling into a thundering holler. Always poignant in its prudence. Always also equally strong in this sobriety. So much conversation happening in the silky-smooth flow, with the flow.

A fleshy frankness, moves slowly. Leaving a sticky trail in all quietude. A shell on its back. The heaviness of lifting something, carried with an honour that never allows the crushing of the softness beneath it. An Indrella ampulla on a twig, gliding in glacial silence, undoing uncertainties and un-dealt knots within you. A melting prompted by a mollusc. It glistens, savouring a furtive joy of its own, as it were. A celebration you will be part of by just being a witness.

A verse, humming the demure, delicate decorum of symmetry, of balance. A fern. The forest now blurs away into a deep darkness. In the foreground, this emerald quiver with its luminous veins and its geometry turning into gentle taperings towards each leaf’s tip. A wildling. Crooning until withering. Calm and composed. Fragrant. Perhaps leaving your heart swarmed with Whitman’s words:

That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

An occasional bug whom you cannot identify in terms of names given by us humans. But it pronounces itself beyond the limiting idea that identity is. It is red. It is loud but not harsh. It is as if you learn how to listen to a colour, not only see it. This is how it ensnares you, confounds your senses, teasing and taunting them to exchange their roles between them, beyond your conventional understanding and unconscious uses of them. Such a tiny thing. Such an enormous presence. Tempting you to redefine notions of strength. Daunting but oh so dear.

It is all this life, in all its forms, that includes you to simply be, like all its forms. However romanticised and however much of a cliché and deceivingly simple this ‘to be’ is, it is absurdly also the hardest thing to do. But you try. You let life’s intelligence flow through you, the same intelligence that made the wings and also the roots. The same intelligence that made water and vapour, that made flowers and fragrance, that made flesh and bone, that made water water in the river and the stream and the rain and the sea.

In the rainforest of Kodagu, a slowness visits. You will see how one thing or another always stands before you as a mirror to all that you feel that fall in a seemingly unending spectrum of human emotions. Stands. Or flows. Or flies. Or crawls. Or slithers. Or sways. Or quivers. For there is that tree. This waterfall. A bug. A snail. A snake. A blade of grass. A fern.

In the rainforest of Kodagu, wonder visits. You will befriend it. There is tremendous trust here. Colossal but quiet. You let it scribe its presence on your heart. Your heart is now an inscription. Invaluable and sacred. Your very own secret of a treasure. Not for unearthing but only for taking deeper roots within you. Fluttering its wings within you. Crawling, coursing like lines of a beloved song in the veins of you. Blooming like clouds within you, pouring down to soften the soil of your soul.

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.

Reptilian Sibilances, Mollusc Stillnesses, Fern Rustlings

Sourabha Rao