The Jungle!

I was twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. An age where the body still believes it is invincible and the mind still believes it will live forever. I was crazy about jungles. Not the neat, curated kind with benches and signboards. The real kind. The kind that does not care if you live or die.

Kerala has those jungles. Tucked into the Western Ghats like secrets the earth has been keeping for millions of years. I explored a few of them. Not as a trained naturalist. Not as an adventurer with gear and guides. Just a young man with a wild heart and no sense of danger. Looking back, I do not know how I survived. Maybe the jungle knew I was harmless. Maybe it just tolerated me the way an elephant tolerates a bird on its back.

The first thing you notice is the green. Not the green of a garden or a park. A green that swallows you. Thick. Humid. Alive. The canopy above blocks the sky in patches, letting through only coins of sunlight that fall on the forest floor like dropped gold. The air is heavy with moisture. You breathe it in and feel your lungs thank you. It is the freshest air you will ever breathe, and you do not appreciate it until you leave.

There are streams everywhere. Not the wide, lazy rivers of the plains. Narrow, urgent streams that tumble over rocks and disappear into the undergrowth. You follow one and it leads to a small waterfall. Not a tourist spot. Just a curtain of water falling into a pool no one has named. You sit on a rock. You watch the water. You feel the spray on your face. You think about nothing. That is the gift of the jungle. It empties your head of the nonsense that fills it outside.

The smell is impossible to describe. Wet earth. Decaying leaves. Unknown flowers. The bark of ancient trees. A sweetness you cannot place. A sharpness that stings your nostrils. It is the smell of life and death happening at the same time, in the same place, without apology. I would walk through clouds of that aroma and feel drugged. Not sleepy. Awake. More awake than I had ever been.

The trees. My God, the trees. Humongous is the only word. Their trunks are wider than a car. Their roots spread across the forest floor like giant fingers gripping the earth. You stand next to one and feel small. Not humiliated. Humbled. The tree has been here for centuries. It does not know your name. It does not care. That is not cruelty. That is the order of things.

Once, just once, I saw a small spotted deer. It was standing at the edge of a clearing, half-hidden by ferns. I stopped. It stopped. We looked at each other for a long moment. Its eyes were large and dark and terrified. I did not move. It did not move. Then something snapped in the distance and it was gone. A flash of white tail and brown spots and then nothing. I stood there for a long time after, not breathing, not thinking, just feeling the absence. That deer had looked at me. Really looked. Not through me. At me. I have never forgotten those eyes.

The fear was always there. Not overwhelming. Just present. A low hum in the background of every step. The fear of death. The fear of the unknown. The fear that something was watching from the deep green. Not a monster. Not a ghost. Just a wild animal that did not know I was not food. The fear kept me alert. It kept me alive. I did not fight it. I walked with it. That is what the jungle teaches you. Fear is not the enemy. Complacency is.

The pathways were long. Grass-covered hills that stretched to the horizon. You walk and walk and the landscape does not change. Just grass. Just hills. Just the wind making waves in the yellow-green sea. Your legs ache. Your throat is dry. You wonder why you came here. Then you reach the top and look down and understand. The view. The silence. The smallness of everything below. That is why.

In the evening, the birds begin their calls. Not the cheerful chirping of garden birds. Strange, haunting cries that echo through the trees. Some sound like laughter. Some sound like crying. One sounds like a child calling for its mother. You know it is a bird. But your spine tingles anyway. The light changes. The golden hue of the setting sun filters through the canopy, painting everything in warm amber. The shadows grow longer. The jungle becomes something else. Not hostile. Just... other. A world that does not include you.

The climbs were steep. Rocky hills that tested your lungs and your will. You climb and you climb and you think you cannot take another step. Your thighs burn. Your hands scrape against rough stone. The air is thin and your head is light. You stop. You sit on a rock. You wonder if this is worth it. Then a breeze comes. Cool. Gentle. Carrying the scent of some unknown flower. You breathe it in and the pain becomes background. You stand up. You climb again.

The sun at noon was brutal. Scorching. Unforgiving. It beat down on the open grasslands with a fury that made you understand why the animals rested in the shade. You walked with your head down, sweat dripping from your chin, your shirt clinging to your back. Then you reached a grove of trees. The shade was a blessing. A relief so profound you almost wept. You sat there for an hour, drinking water, watching the light dance on the leaves. That is how the jungle teaches gratitude. By taking away comfort and giving it back in small, precious doses.

The landscapes changed constantly. One moment you are in dense forest, the next in open grassland, the next on a rocky ridge overlooking a valley. Shrubs. Trees. Grasslands. Rocky hills. The variety was endless. You never got bored. You never got comfortable. Just when you thought you understood the terrain, it shifted beneath your feet.

There were myths. Every local had a story about a place you should not go. A grove where spirits live. A rock where a god once sat. A tree that bleeds when you cut it. I did not believe the myths. But I respected them. The people who lived in the jungle knew things I did not. Their warnings were not superstition. They were survival manuals written in metaphor.

One friend was an all-knower. He could name every plant, every shrub, every flower. He talked endlessly about medicinal properties. Which leaf cured fever. Which bark stopped bleeding. Which root was poison. I listened, fascinated, but I remembered nothing. I was too busy looking. Too busy feeling. The names slipped away like water through fingers. But the shapes remained. The smells remained. The feeling of holding a strange flower in my palm and wondering what story it carried.

The previous day, someone had seen a tiger. Someone else had seen elephants cross the path. The stories were told with casualness, as if tigers and elephants were just neighbours you might run into on your way to the stream. My heart raced. My palms sweated. I wanted to see them. I was terrified of seeing them. That is the contradiction of the jungle. You want to witness its power. You do not want to be its victim.

Heavy rains came without warning. The sky turned dark. The wind picked up. Then the water fell. Not a drizzle. A deluge. You were soaked in seconds. The paths turned to mud. The streams swelled. You took shelter under a rocky overhang and watched the world turn liquid. The fog rolled in after the rain, covering the hills in a white blanket. You could not see ten feet ahead. The world缩小ed to the space immediately around you. The wind howled through the valleys. You shivered. You waited. And when the fog lifted, the jungle was new again. Washed. Fresh. Glowing.

I was twenty-two, twenty-three. I did not know I was poor. I did not know I was struggling. I just knew I was alive. In the jungle. Breathing air that had never been breathed before. Walking paths that had been walked by animals for millennia. Feeling small. Feeling vast. Feeling everything.

That is all it is now. A memory. A beautiful one. I do not wish to go back. I cannot. The jungle is still there. The streams still fall. The birds still call. The deer still watch from the edges of clearings. But that is for another person, another time. I have my memory. It is enough. It has to be.

I close my eyes sometimes. In my single room. The walls are white. The ceiling is white. And for a moment, I am not here. I am there. In the green. In the gold. In the fog. In the fear. The twenty-two-year-old is walking. I am not with him. But I remember him. That is not nothing. That is a treasure. One I do not need to return to. It lives in me. That is enough. That has to be enough.