The Sound and the Flurry

Driving now in a taxi between Ramnagar and Haridwar, in the first bit of flatness below the foothills of the Himalayas, the roadside terrain is thick with shady mango groves, the stout trunks branching prolifically near the ground and reaching out to form a dense canopy. Planted 25 feet apart in a regular crystal lattice, the intertwining network of limbs provide a private silence below, the ground cooler and dappled with dreamy cloud shapes of light where little else grows.  Movement there is scarce, except for the rare plunk and thud of a fallen fruit.

Occasionally, this landscape gives way to open spaces, newly tilled soil or brick kilns with great towering chimneys that cough as they turn the red earth into building material for the towns nearby.  Somewhere just out of sight, melons are being grown, as shown by the old men pushing squeaky wagons loaded down with the sweet orbs on the edge of the dusty road.  Swoosh, whoosh, as girls and women hack away at tall grasses destined for the family buffalo.    Two bent men labor to start an old engine to pump water into a greening field. Deftly guided by expert reinplay, a bull manages a tight turn as it ploughs the hard-packed soil.

Small noisy villages emerge between the trees and the fields with their bustling activities, the clatter of wagons and the horns. Bicycles and carts, tractors and donkeys ply the narrow roads amidst the through-going traffic. Gangs of boys rush off with purpose. A small engine drives a wheel that chews up sugar cane, dripping sweet juice from its jaws.

Meanwhile, I daydream of my own piece of land under cultivation, the small ornamental gardens I have contrived at home. Jill tells me the butterfly weed and the salvia have flowered and the St. John’s Wort; the creeping phlox I planted ten days ago is producing small purple flowers all around the base of the edgeworthia. Our gardens have their own sort of quietude, a sweet void against the subtle urban hum of town, punctuated by the birds and the episodic sounds of neighbors.

And the past two days, we have experienced another sort of landscape, the uncultivated wilderness that makes Corbett Tiger Reserve home to wild elephants, leopards, several sorts of deer, hundreds of species of birds, honey badgers, and, of course, tigers. The rolling hills and tangled brush make that land ideal for stealth, concealment, and silent approach. It offers a flickering soundscape, undoubtedly meaningful sonic contributions drifting in from all directions to produce a mad symphony of whir, buzz, flush, rustle, and trill, without overall rhythm, coherence, or pattern.  It is rather the interruption of sound, like the forest catching its breath, that carries meaning and tells all of the dangerous approach.  A flurry and a hurried scurry and the forest exhales again, as creatures flash and take cover.

It is biodiverse and richly productive, active and disorderly, but only wise conservation efforts early in the last century prevent it from now being the domain of the quiet still mango.