I, the tree

I, the tree

We hallucinate all the time. Our perceptions are controlled hallucinations, and reality as we know is an hallucination that we all agree upon. I was reading these lines the other day, though I laughed it off now it seems to make sense as I negotiated the chaotic bus stand to catch the long-distance seater.  This cannot be real, I tell myself, as the bus is delayed by an hour or so. If reality is collective hallucination, then what is real? My experience can be taken to be real, but if there are no witness, nobody to corroborate, then can it not be seeded in my fertile imagination? Finally, the bus arrived, and I settled on middle seat next to the window. I noticed that for a long-distance bus it was surprisingly empty. I am least bothered on these matters but surely this was weird. Very soon we negotiated the traffic, the city starts to wither as the bus amble out and gains speed and cruise the highway lined with dust covered oleanders valiantly flagging the vehicles. Houses are sparse, shacks clinging to the mirage of opulence while in a cold-hearted response to the beleaguered hope the city sheds its muck on to them, defecates mounds of garbage, piled up into ever expanding horizon, some part smoking and belching, the edges ransacked by malnourished children tussling with menacing feral dogs. The dwellings are rudimentary stand in against the elements, it flutters in the wind exposing the meagre content as a mother sleeps suckling her baby. When everything is being taken away life wrench its human claim. The bleak choking grey sky gets greyer and confused while the occasional trees have given up the pretension to be alive. The city was gnawing the earth on its edges, and spreading, very soon it will be pushed further out as the poor will be evacuated without any trace, not even memory. As the bus sped into the open it seems as if earth has been awakened, asserting aspects not yet claimed by human greed. I settled down with the collection of Nabakov I was carrying, sliding the window slightly to let the fresh gust of air, it rushed in a hurry onto everything it could meet, to cuddle and rejuvenate. Apologising every living thing it could encounter for the sins of men, for the incursion into their being, and maybe as an atonement. Trees are alive in hues of fresh green, flycatchers swept onto flitting butterflies while the raptors encircled. Array of paddy in rainwater filled field reflected gnawed blueness of the sky. Farmer ploughed while excited egrets and ibis feasted on the escaping insects. Slender supple coconut palms sway in the monsoon breeze giving the impression that field too is alive. The river squirms in murky brown splashing its banks gathering and pushing in more mud. Further down it frothed and rushed into itself with great anger. Its been raining quite heavily in the last few days. The clayey ground so saturated that oozes water on slightest pressure. Like a deep scratch on the skin the water gathers into rivulet breaching the barriers in a constant urge to sneak and escape. 

The shadow of the bus playfully slithering into the depth, emerge sinuously on the termite mounds, cluttering the lantanas and dispersed in the glint of sunlight, then rapidly move to merge into the darkness of the shade. Herons pulsate in the horizon, the slanting rays split the hues of dusking sun, soon the miracle is enveloped by the night. I was lulled into the dreary frequency of the engine drone. The bus has entered the forest, we have well past last departing lamps of highway. Only the headlight tunnels into the thick dark curtain of humid darkness as the deciduous leisurely shift into dense evergreen, frightened deer have taken refuge along the vehicle disturbed thoroughfare, staking their life on stray human impulse to lurking leopards. I always felt that one needs a special permission to enter forest, not the one by the authorities, but by the consciousness that extends to all living beings. A special kind of permission that acknowledges a deep connection with the cradle of life that is fiercely resisted from human encroachments. All the evolutionary drama unfolded in these dark foliage, as the ancestors sifted the genes from species to species to emerge as unique. The forest is where the human species gathered its bearings and sharpened its instincts that resides dormant in modern comforts. The unconcernedly rushing knocking piston hum provided an assurance in creeping stillness of the night. On the map we were in a deserted patch extending to and running parallel to western ghats before it merges into the wet evergreens.

“Do you see pattern?” I was startled by sepulchral deep voice, who had placed himself next to me without me being least aware. In the faint light in the bus I could trace his thin features, a prominent hook like nose his hair strangely curly, it elegantly weaved on his face, on closer look it seemed like scars, skin like parchment. His eyes were gentle but had unusual feline like glint in hollow socket. Suddenly I realize that I was talking to him.

“Yes sure. Sometimes”

“No. The patterns others cannot see” His eyes were steady and rarely blinked. I sensed aroma of rotting flowers. “You can see it whenever wherever you want to. In the clouds, in the trees, in the floor, on the roof…” he paused “even in the darkness”.

I thought he was being funny and felt an urge to laugh but I couldn’t as though my mind and body had disconnected. I have been dissected.  A horrifying realisation that my naïve inquisitive receptive mind was going to be an easy next target and I cannot do anything about it. The shadows deepen and connect into a mighty swell and sway in the breeze. A power not altogether friendly displayed its immense capacity and fiercely insidiously attacked my mind.

The forest was alive, numerous noises that came out from nowhere, agitated against each other, and rose into a crescendo sending a shiver down my spine. The fear sprang from a firm realisation of my insignificance in this mesmeric aliveness contained in the darkness that could unleash its unrestrained power anytime. Huge trees that hung knotting the darkness within itself in sinister excitement sensed my fate. They watch, they listen, they wait. And I in turn was strappingly aware of having trifled with mighty elemental forces that nurtured life. I could see the devastations, the tsunamis, flash floods, heatwaves and the famines. The unbalanced force ricochets to establish the poise.  I felt suffocated by my human experience.  

He stared into the darkness, his hands like branching sticks that would easily attach to a tree. Swooping nightjars like the startled souls of the darkness churred in a steady tone as if to warn. Fireflies swarm gave myriad furiously floating eyes to the darkness conjuring multilimbed antediluvian monster baying for blood behind the ever thinning pall, further stirring in me a sensation of strange rising distress. I am an intruder, a world where I am not wanted, nor even invited to remain, unless the pattern is set back, or atleast I justify my intrusion with a new pattern – for which I am acutely incompetent. I know only to acquire, to consume and to destroy.

“Patterns come alive when you trespass them”. He took a deep breath. It seemed to have sucked air around me. I felt delirious. He held my hand and said, “It’s time to go”. I realised profound changes happening around me. The world was getting grey and darker, devoid of any colour. The moon was skull white and sprayed its eerie whiteness onto the darkness, as the stars blurred the white and black in its swirling self while growing larger by the minute. It was engulfing the reality. I thought I will scream but the voice wouldn’t come out. During this moment of terror my mind grappled for reason. One thought threaded into another and it got tangled into tighter knots. My head was getting heavy, pressure thumping the rhythm of the heart, it was unbearable. As a last recourse I trap myself in my brain and shut out all the escape route, so that I became a mute witness to the unknown conceiving reality. The surrounding was losing its shape. Very soon I was in the swirl. I felt an upward surge, there seem to be some compulsion working very strongly that I was becoming aware of. My body elongated like a sheet and spiralled onto itself, the decaying skin began to peel and replaced by rough bark. Radical alteration was happening to my body, as if pre-planned by nature, a metamorphosis of sort. As abruptly a wave of whispers caved in before a long pause. I had entered a new order of experience where nature of reality was ever shifting, cause and effect slid on to each other. 

I am a tree and my hands have become inclined branches on which my fingers have sprouted out leaves of different shapes and size, fiery prickly leaves that snap. Legs are arachnid like roots breaking into hundreds of willowy twining, searching deeper and deeper into the wet warm earth. I feel the rhythm of living and life in all living. It is ghastly what it all have become, beaten and bruised. The fishes, the birds, the elephants…I let out a primal cry. A cry I never knew I carried. I realize that I had molded into the roots of absolute existence. I haven’t experienced so much pain so swiftly enveloping into each cell, a new consciousness was centering into my being.  I know I will not be able to sleep again. It’s the human flesh I need to masticate and churn into mud and spit into the forest floor. The forest has to grow, life has to give. A frightening expectancy was defining my action. I sway in the dark, whisper with the breeze and sniff for passerby.