There is a way of looking at little things in a forest when one is carrying the weight of life’s big questions in one’s heart. A breaking twig, a shadow with its reptilian hiss, a little breathing thing other than big muscles with stripes or tusks or antlers.

And then there is another way of looking. It begins at the end of the human’s sense of entitlement, when one stops expecting the forest to perform.

In Kodagu, especially in the monsoon, the treasures of the wild do not reveal themselves in grand gestures. They seem to seep into one’s consciousness only when there is slow deliberation. What we — in our own limited understanding — refer to as ‘lesser-known’ or ‘less charismatic’ creatures exist in expansive silences, as if listening to their own breathing.

Waterfalls here fall like sentences whose long-kept pauses are finally unfurling. Sometimes, there is the earthy scent of leaf-rot, and that implies impending renewal. Moss grows and envelopes things, as if it’s always an afterthought. And somewhere in this softened world, the small sovereigns dear to us emerge.

One might first notice it as a softness of impossible red against the patient greens — the slow glide of the Indrella ampulla, the red snail, carrying its coiled shell-architecture gracefully, like a secret it is in no hurry to share. Its body, a declaration, almost audacious in its redness, as though the forest briefly remembers fire in this little flame. Watching a snail always speaks to one’s sense of urgency, urging some reconsideration.

Nearby, on a branch that has preserved the night's rain into a glistening new skin, a Malabar gliding frog meditates its every move. It opens webbed feet as if stretching into translucent wings, hints of orange flashing like embers. Amphibian turning somewhat avian? Or something in between? The forest is full of such mesmerising metamorphoses.

The Malabar pit viper, on the other hand, appears unannounced. Its morphs are moods that colour the changing seasons. Greens that dissolve into forest-skin, browns that echo the forest-floor, and sometimes, unexpectedly, morphs that feel like the forest has dreamt in a different palette altogether, in yellows and olives, too. The viper does not move unless it must. In that restraint is a kind of authority that no detail can rival. What secrets will you allow the forest to hiss in your ears?

And then there is the small, luminous presence of the Raorchestes luteolus. Golden, as though it has borrowed light rather than reflecting it. A fragile thing existing in the interval between the seen and the overlooked. A subtle note in the forest’s vast, layered symphony that one might miss if one’s listening only for crescendos. Awe is often mistaken for something loud, something big. But the spectacle does not always seek scale, it sometimes is as small and marvellous as a toad or a frog or a little leaf that might be holding one.

In the understorey of Kodagu, among dripping leaves and the soft percussion of water, quieter things happen. One begins to notice how attention itself can birth new ways of seeing. And how seeing can actually become less about discovery and more about being receptive to whatever is.

The so-called lesser fauna — an odd phrase, as though worth could be measured in kilograms or charisma — do not concede to narratives of dominance. They do not conquer space but only inhabit it. One does not feel the pressure to feel a sense of reverence, instead, such needs might even waft away.

And in being and doing so, these little creatures seem to ask questions that the larger creatures do not quite do. What does it mean to belong without spectacle? What does it mean to exist without the burden of being seen?

In the height of summer, when the forest becomes a refuge from heat, these questions linger like the coolness of a shaded stream. In the monsoon, these questions deepen, like the endless conversations between leaf and rain.

Kodagu does not insist that one look at these small beings. But if one does lower one’s gaze from the horizon to the immediate once in a while, travelling a little from the dramatic to the delicate, one might find that the forest always accommodates the human heart, holds it. There is in fact more space than it actually needs. And in that inclusion, the scale of its inhabitants begins to shift in one’s psyche. The large can sometimes become distant. And the small, infinite.

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.

The Small Faunal Sovereigns of Kodagu

Sourabha Rao