The Deluge

It was a September evening. As we drove on a Gujarat state highway, I noticed deep grey clouds at the horizon outlined by the soft orange hue of the declining sun.
For a hundred or more kilometers I had stared at the thorny grassland, wondering where my father intended to take us. The grasslands vanished gradually and thicker vegetation took over. I asked my father why there was a sudden spurt of vegetation.

The reply was that we were on the fringes of the Gir Forest. The sun was right ahead, we seemed to be driving into it, and it cast oblong shadows on the road. But it got darker. There was thunder and then – it rained.

A rainy forest can be a suitable backdrop to nothing but an action sequence or a horror scene. Or better still – apocalypse.

I let out a scream. The torrent of emotion had to be let out.
That year in geography I had read a paragraph on the Gir Forest, home to Asiatic Lions. I was thrilled. I let my imagination run amok and envisioned Discovery Channel documentaries. I was waiting to boast to my friends – “I went to the Gir Forest!”

Then my dad burst my bubble.

“We are not here for a forest safari,” he said with the authority of a tour-guide.
I wailed and begged him to reconsider. The pleasant pitter-patter of the rain was now louder. Almost like repeated thuds, occasionally drowned by lightning strike.
The driver switched on the wiper and told us that we must cross the forest, the barricade on the other side of the road, before seven.

I failed to notice he was driving “blind” in the heavy rain.
As the Tata Sumo crossed the perimeter of the forest, I wiped the fog off the window. The board proclaimed that we had entered a protected territory, I felt like Jim Corbett. I did not know about the man, but had just read “The Kanda Man-Eater” and felt I could do it too. Children of the videogame era think it is easy to kill, I later concluded.

My father uttered a word of prayer. Crossing the forest was essential. The driver accelerated, splashing water all around, but every few feet he braked. The car’s struggle against the large intermittent pools of water was evident in the hum of the engine.

Through the window the view was mosaic. There were herds of cattle and deer. Their skin looked softer, as if waxed, by the unceasing downpour. I rolled the window a little, just to let a few drops of rain fall on my face.

The smell of earth was overwhelming. I wanted to step outside the car and immerse myself into the moment. Feel the rain and be one with nature.

Just when I was about to pronounce my wish, I smelt something foul. The smell of earth was coupled with that of rotting flesh. The carcass of a cow lying by the road side spoilt the picture, which until now had been perfect. The cow had probably been dead for days..

I closed the window and in a bid to forget what I had seen I looked ahead.
The tar road gave way to a dirt path of mere brown slush. A little further, I saw the carcass of deer, but this one fresh. The goosebumps I had, had nothing to do with the change in temperature. The deluge of various emotions generated automatic prayers in my mind. Like the ones I utter every time I cross the road, “God let me not die here.” And just then I heard a roar.

I screamed, “Papa, why did you bring us here!”

“Just a little while ago you wanted to take a jungle safari,” he told me giving me a silencing glance.

I bit my tongue. Thank God, I hadn’t uttered my wish to bathe in the rain. Is this what Jim Corbett felt like every time a tiger roared, I guess not. My siblings cried because they could sense impeding danger. My parents quarrelled over the chosen path. And me, I thought that someday I could be Corbett.
In my head the forest was no longer something out of “The Jungle Book”. Outside there was water everywhere, the driver joked that we were about to enter “sailing mode”. No one laughed.

The memory of the Forest to me was the stormy sky and the dark premature dusk. Herds of deer and cows, obscured by the rain and in numbers more than my fingers could count and probably running away from an Asiatic Lion. I let myself believe that behind a huge tree or a bush I glimpsed a lion. Later I learnt I never could have.

By seven we had crossed the Forest. It was a relief when we were on actual road again. Just after the small barricade, I saw an arrow directing towards the heart of the brooding Gir Forest, just a couple of kilometres away. The one we had travelled was just the outer circle, a bypass route. Deluge of delusion.