Home and roam are rhyming words
Lessons from a squirrel
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I was aware that I looked dirty and unkempt as I journeyed back. I smelled awful too. I was used to people looking strangely at me in Kerala. I was very evidently a Malayalee who was not raised in Kerala. But the reason for this special look of concern mixed with disgust became evident only when I stripped for my bath. There was a large patch on the back of my kurta, soaked in blood. More blood on my salwar.
24 hours earlier
He told me I couldn’t stay overnight at the watchtower.
“You are alone,”
“But you just said there will be a guide, no?”
“But you are alone, isn’t it? Single?”
“If I were a man, would you let me stay the night?”
“That is very common, madam, so no problem.”
So, I was as uncommon in his forest as the bird I wanted to see was in forests close to me.
“So, you think the elephant singles out single women for attack?”
“No, it has never happened before. No single woman has been given a permit to stay. No single woman has asked maybe. I don’t remember at least. But you won’t be alone, guard cum guide is there. But still”
“So guard cum guide cannot be trusted?”
“Madam, you are making it very difficult.”
“It is not difficult, it is easy. Just give me the permit to stay the night.”
30 minutes later, I walked out with the permit.
It was about 2 p.m. as the guide cum guard rowed our little boat on the Periyar waters and unleashed his curiosity about the single woman he was going to spend the evening and night with. I must have stopped answering at some point as we fell silent.
I was a little lost in how the reflection of trees and the depth of water turned a bright yellow day into a sappy green afternoon. Water and forests are the most trance-inducing of combinations. I was moving along the arteries of a throbbing, ticking, breathing, brimming with stories landscape of the river and its lands... Reflections created shapes that geometry had no vocabulary for. This aloneness I had been craving for years was finally here. The boat turned into a narrow opening, it led to an emerald pool, cupped around the edges by dark dusky limbs of the forest.
We reached the watchtower in barely 15-20 minutes I think and locked up our food. On my way to the top of the tower, I was assaulted by a stench… the guard cum guide laughed - turns out it was monkey poop! The previous guests of the right gender and numbers had left a window open and monkey poop welcomed not only on the stairway but also the room. This was a problem for later in the evening when the sun had set and forest floors were no longer safe. We locked the windows and headed out for our short hike. I tucked my salwar into my socks naively hoping it would deter leeches. He showed me many paths, we stopped for hornbills and not for much else. He didn’t seem very interested and my goal was to walk the forest and see the bird if possible. Less chatter, more ease. He tried talking about the forest but the mild daze induced by the warm humid monsoon afternoon had me zone out again. The tree trunks made me feel so small and frail—what was this sensation? A beam of sunshine making its way through the canopy, filtered, luminous… soft-treading joy.
We did see the frogmouth pair. They sat perfectly still and camouflaged. Guard cum guide asked me to be still too. On the way back, he paused and tensed up a little and asked me to quickly touch the trunk of a massive tree. It was moist and darker than the rest of it. “Wet, no? This is not very old… Just some minutes since an elephant scratched himself against it. Only one elephant, not a herd. That is not good.” He pointed to the path it must have taken; I pretended to see what he was trying to show me. We darted through shortcuts, stopping to speak only once we were inside the watchtower and he had switched on the electric fencing. Did this really happen, was I just rushing through a forest to avoid an elephant? Was this ok seeming man being truthful?
Before speech, it was the sensations on my skin that returned. I was trying to wipe off moisture from my neck and realized there was a worm on it. “Ammo atta (leech)!” he exclaimed. I could feel them everywhere. I slowly lifted up the leg of my salwar and found tiny streams of blood. He handed me salt and we stood side by side, pant and salwar hiked up slowly rubbing salt and peeling off leech after leech. I counted over 20 off my body, clothes, shoes, and cap.
He had prepared his drink for the night. We heard the trumpeting of the elephants. He asked if I wanted to partake in his stock of liquid ‘courage’. I did, but while he did seem on the straight and narrow, I wasn’t about to take chances and be served up as a cautionary tale for other birders with breasts.
I went up to the room nursing the uneasy feeling that both man and monkey knew how to open these windows from the outside. I spent the night texting a few friends for courage and listening to howling winds and some rain. At dawn, I stood outside with the thick canopy just an arm's length away when I heard the giant squirrel/s. Noisily rushing from tree to tree.
The guard shouted out his stories from below, “They have many homes, it gives them and their babies options to access safety quickly from unpredictable weather and predators.” I was fascinated. In a way the home of the squirrel was a range and not one nest. Within what it considered its range were so many possibilities for a home. One for every season, one against every predator? This sense of safety that the warden, the guard, and I worried about came with having a limited range. Take space, she seemed to say, homes will make themselves. I watched her lush plump body leaping through the tree cover. The branches swayed gently under her agile weight, for she carried it lightly. I spent the morning only watching her, the elephant/s were still around when we slid into the boat, and he rowed us back to the main entrance. I was a happy, matty-haired mess, that had cleaned monkey poop to spend the night in a forest to see a bird. The forest warden looked concerned but happy. He asked if I’d like a shower. Not taking a hint, I refused and headed back.
**************
This was the beginning of a series of walking through small and big forests alone and with company, landing on my feet and knowing when to call for help. Like the squirrel, I’m becoming good at carving out safety as I expand my range. Oh wait I think being here on Substack feels a bit like this too!
Piece written as part of the Ochre Skies Writing Circle, facilitated by and
😭♥️🫂 no words, you've got them all
Omg Roshni! You mad woman! Loved the piece, loved your journey 💚