Wild Ways

It's strange how I await my birthday as the the single most important annual event when it's actually on other occasions when I'm totally unprepared, that the grey cells multiply to mark my mental growth. I've finally identified a pattern in this behaviour, and come to the conclusion that it's when I travel that this metamorphosis hits me out of nowhere and transforms me.

It took a recent journey into the wild for me to grow up a notch more. Determined to see Corbett, I set off for a tryst with India's first wildlife park ever. If not from the very beginning, I could feel a wave of difference washing over me the minute we entered the Sal forests. The two-hour drive to Dhikala in the heart of the jungle was so bumpy and so beautiful that it sure shook me.

Early next morning, I mounted on Pawan Pari's back to catch the sunrise by the river side. Riding into the dense thicket of elephant grass and wet greenery, I realised how different it was from my last visit to a tiger reserve. A year back at Ranthambhore, I hadn't learnt my lesson in the ways of the wild and had sulked and sulked till I spotted the big cats. Silently appreciating everything from a jungle fowl to a lone tusker, I heard others whisper murmers of disappointment. I couldn't help but feel a mix of contempt and anger rising in me at the ungrateful attitude that made them oblivious to the sudden start of a barking deer or the flutter of a spotted dove's wings. But then again, I wasn't entitled to feel that way since I had, in many ways, once been there. Gazing at the female elephant carefully nestling her 10 day baby between her legs simultaneously as she walked, it dawned on me that I had new found respect and understanding for the animal kingdom.

A visit to a sanctuary requires an open-mindedness that has finally come to me. I definitely don't expect to see animals the way I did in zoos as a child, but instead where they truly belong, in the wilderness. I'm glad I've grown up.