Skip to main content

Forest of Longings


Nisargadhama's longings
Nisargadhama forest is one of the tourist attractions in Kodagu, Karnataka. It is an island formed by the river Kaveri.  What you see everywhere on this 64-acre island are bamboos.  There are also some sandalwood and teak trees.  As you walk along the mud track, some deer will gaze at you with a strange longing in their eyes.  Their gaze looks plaintive. 

You enter this forest through a narrow hanging bridge which raises your hopes if not dreams.  You walk along chasing those hopes or dreams.  Bamboos blink at you everywhere. An air of desolation overwhelms you slowly.  You long for something more than bamboos.  More than the wistfulness in the doleful eyes of the deer.

One of the many huts on the way
For a change you can choose an elephant ride.  Or maybe look out for a peacock.  The easiest diversion will be the elevated huts.  Climb up and then climb down.  Back on the mud track, philosophise about life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Take the path leading to the river.  You can step into the water.  Wet yourself.  Immerse yourself if you are in the mood. It’s precious water.  It’s the water for which Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have fought many a battle.  It is the symbol of an endless conflict, endless human wants.  You can remember the other conflict that Tamil Nadu sustains in Kerala for water from the Mullaperiyar dam.  You can contemplate on the history of human struggles.

Kaveri
Of human longings.  Nisargadhama is a forest of longings.  You can feel its uneasy breathing.  A suffocation that chokes the air passage within you.  You realise that the mud track beneath you has raised enough dust to block your nostrils.  Take out the Otrivin phial that accompanies you like a faithful companion and squeeze the drops into the ducts that connect your life with the universe. 

What nasal drops can save the universe?  Kaveri gurgles down.  Longing to revitalise the universe, perhaps.  But she is powerless.  Power belongs to the biped whose longings have no end.


PS. I visited the place on 31 Oct 2016 along with a group of students of mine. 

At the Harangi dam across a tributary of Kaveri

Indian Bloggers


Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 4, 2016 at 10:24 PM

    It is indeed a charming forest location. I worked for seven years in Karnataka, and, visited many places,but some how could not get info about this spot !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 5, 2016 at 6:04 AM

      The river makes it charming. Maybe it has seasonal charms too of which I'm not aware.

      Delete
  2. Amit AgarwalNovember 5, 2016 at 12:56 PM

    Lovely description!
    The powerful, longing biped are crippling the Ganga and Yamuna too:(

    ReplyDelete
  3. IndraniNovember 5, 2016 at 2:30 PM

    Good travelogue. :)
    I like the humor you put in mentioning the war over waters.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownNovember 28, 2016 at 5:28 PM

    नोटबंदी के बाद डिजिटल पेमेंट पर जोर, जानें क्या है डिजिटल पेमेंट
    Readmore Todaynews18.com https://goo.gl/BgzxC9

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
8 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
16 comments
Read more