Interlude at Agumbe

I learnt a new word. Vertiginous. And I was slowly savouring the meaning. After dissecting the word. On an old teak armchair of the Raj Era. In a moss-walled, tiled house of this Era under assault by unrelenting precipitation. Under a tiled canopy shadowed by unruly festoons of wonderous red and yellow blossoms of the clock vine. Unruly after swirling in successive sweeps of monsoon fury. And deep in the folds of vegetation, fighting the batter of wind and rain was a precariously placed (as it now appeared) nest of a pair of ruby-throated bulbuls. With two naked chicks inside. They were my teachers. Rather, in a curious manner they were like a time machine of sorts. The parent birds appeared agitated, stretching their usually demure, low-key notes into a rather unsettling acoustic performance with a stream of affronted, unsteady and interrupted gurgles. The chicks look frightened. I go back four years.

I look away from the birds and pick up my umbrella. I walk into the rain. And walk across the short path to the pond. The agitation on the water surface is evident, and necessary, with thick raindrops falling across in constantly mutating lines and curves. The lily leaves in the pond alternate between drowning and floating. I walk back to the house. The birds are as agitated as before. I go in. It was four years ago. And I was in the Nilgiris, near Ooty. And it was raining. I was snug by a logfire with S. We had just made love and I was, as it was usual, whispering nonsense about the rejuvenating rains. He appeared nonplussed.

S: “Rains wash away things”

T: “Yes, but rains bring new life”

S: “Rains reopen old wounds and create new ones”

T: “Well, some mud is lost here and there, but all that goes elsewhere…”

S: “This is more than mud Teju, its me…”

T: “What do you mean?”

S: “I have cancer”

Vertiginous. It was rather so. I defocused as I did when I once saw a solitary beautiful mauve peony along a steep, windy precipice in the Himalayas. It could have been blown away anytime.

I boil water for coffee. I can hear the birds still. And I will hate Hitchcock forever for making that film, and Daphne du Maurier for writing the story. Birds are *not* crazy creatures. They are under your mercy and mine, and of the rains. There is a sudden, miraculous pause in the rain. A thick streaming fog envelopes everything. It begins to rain again.

It is early evening. The rains have temporarily relented once more. Times are rather difficult to discern at Agumbe during the rains. It rains come 12 O’ clock, come 6 and 12 again. A tiring night drive had installed us at the house, which at some distance from the town itself, and enveloped constantly by the rainforest and the monsoon darkness. My brother was promptly claimed by slumberland. I was left in solitary splendour to revel in the sensuous rains. But the rains aren’t as generous as I had hoped. And the birds soon distracted me. And its now evening. I plan to trek the next day in the nearby forest. But I’m running a temperature and coughing rather badly. I begin to harbour flickers of faith in bird premonitions. I decide to test the waters and take a short walk. The orchids are in flower. The opulent to the minute, densely crowded to retiring, ebullient and inviting – orchids abound in the rainforest. Balsams abound. There must be a few species of either waiting to be described someplace. It was in the Nilgiris that I had come across some strange balsams that I thought were new, and had sent preserved specimens of the plants, and photographs, to the Kew Botanical Gardens, for identification. The 5 pounds fee per identification notwithstanding, they were all returned with polite comments on the lack of novelty. I was rather dejected.

S: “Well, you can’t like them less if they aren’t new”

T: “But they aren’t, and that’s sad”

S: “Why should it be sad? I’m not new”

T: “Now, you have nothing to do with this…”

And in fact he did. He is now like the balsams, in photographs. Not new, but there. Immortalized on film. Not new, but unique. And he’s dead. Just like the balsams.

I conjure rather tasty pumpkin gravy, cooked in curd, and we have it with hot boiled rice. The rain pours with reinforced venom through the night. I’m not very much better the next morning and we decide to cancel the trek and stay mostly indoors. I have a choice of books with me – The Magic Mountain, a rather scholarly book on the Ramayana in southeast Asia, and Kawabata’s “The Sound of the Mountain”. But I can’t bring myself to read. It’s the rain. It’s distractingly distracting. I try to sing and out comes a croak! I go back to watching the birds. The tenuous nest is still around and the chicks alive and well, innocuous and flustered. The parents are calmer. The rain much less vigorous.

S: “I can’t, it’s just not possible. I have to go, and you’ve got to let go…”

T: “But how can you let go? I can’t. You can’t…”

S: “Look, I know there isn’t much hope…no point in prolonging it…please”

I let go.