A ramble off the beaten tracks or on thorny, winding and precipitous game trails in the Shivalik foothills yields fascinating observations of wildlife, verging on the “exotic” as these are simply just not known or documented. I will focus on two such “discoveries”.
I have explored the heart of the Shivaliks since my childhood, penetrating the deepest jungles where no human foot has left print on the proverbial sands of time. I had heard tales from grass cutters of Rock pythons or “serpent hermits” inhabiting the peaks, but had never seen one. My usual encounters with pythons were in seasonal rivulets below knifing through the base of hillocks. By pure chance, I stumbled upon a eight-foot young python atop a hillock overlooking Mirzapur dam on a sunny January day as it basked. For 20 years, I had visited the particular spot, but never glimpsed a python. Here it was now, so close, as if laid out as a snake charmer’s street exhibit.
Heavier, mature pythons are to be found in the ravines and rivulets while some younger ones being more agile take up the challenge to dwell on the tops. They can ascend the steep, crumbling hillocks with relative ease. Younger pythons tend to prey on birds and are adept at climbing trees, vines and scouring bushes. Birds are to be found in abundance towards hillock tops. Also, to avoid territorial clashes, younger males distance themselves from the huge pythons that exert dominance over rivulets. Hence, the hillock exile!
A few days later while traversing the Gordian-knot jungles of Siswan dam’s backwaters, I came across a mossy Sambar bone. Unlike the countless, dour bones I have seen, this one was draped in a shade of jade. A surreal green and exquisitely lovely. The bone’s fresh, gleaming hue, I thought, would befit a pendant jewel hanging from a queen’s long, elegant neck and pendulating over the half-moons and vanishing vale of her bosom.
{{/usCountry}}A few days later while traversing the Gordian-knot jungles of Siswan dam’s backwaters, I came across a mossy Sambar bone. Unlike the countless, dour bones I have seen, this one was draped in a shade of jade. A surreal green and exquisitely lovely. The bone’s fresh, gleaming hue, I thought, would befit a pendant jewel hanging from a queen’s long, elegant neck and pendulating over the half-moons and vanishing vale of her bosom.
{{/usCountry}}Novel as the spectacle and the imaginative digression may be, a horrific natural history was embedded in the green bone. It was an unwritten epitaph of a graveyard. Of countless Sambars “murdered” by village dogs in summers past and left to rot when water evaporated alarmingly. That green relic — seemingly isolated, trite and insignificant — was a prophecy of blood that will drench summer 2023. A cruel reiteration of that eternal vulnerability: thirst.
Meanwhile, the jungle has delivered its forecast of spring’s imminent advent. One need not turn to the weatherman’s status updates. Or, realise the change from the welcome shedding of layers of clothes. The jungle’s resplendent “weather cock”, so as to say, is the Silk cotton tree (Semul). Its iconic blooms in variations of red, scarlet, orange and waning vermillion are the augury of “basant ki bahaar”. The tree stands tall and erect, like a Parisian supermodel. It looms over other winter-weary flora of tawny and dull-green hues by flashing the fires of spring.
One day, the tree is naked and desolate in the cold, and before one knows it, blooms erupt like a red rash from its naked boughs. The Semul is a proverbial lighthouse for those fed up with winter. Its silent blooms message: the shores of spring are near at hand.
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