This is a story I wrote years ago, but reread this morning and found it
funny. I hope you don't mind that it's not a new one. We've all got the
flu around here and I'm not really up to much creativity.
A Magical Mushroom Walk in the Hills of Palni—In Search of the Last Rainforest
"There
are forty different kinds of paranoia," my dreadlocked Hindu guide
Vijay began solemnly, while pouring thick coffee and lighting a spleef.
"Different types affect different people, but since I am a multiple
personality, I have suffered from them all." I was in Southern
India, in the town of Kodaikanal, 7,000 feet up in the Palni Hills, and
I was negotiating with Vijay to get him to take me out on a magic
mushroom walk through what remained of the old broad-leafed shoala,
rainforest, that had once covered the Hills. I was in India to do
a story on Zafar Futahelli, the father of India’s environmental
movement. Futahelli, an elegant and hardworking man in his eighties,
had recently formed the Palni Hills Conservation Society, a group whose
goal is to reforest the Hills, which are rapidly being deforested to
make way for time-share resorts, new monoculture eucalyptus, pine and
Australian wattle groves, and for the building materials and cooking
fires of the people native to the region.
The Society was working
to save the Hills because they are the watershed for the huge Plains of
Madouri, the breadbasket of Southern India. Roughly 20 miles wide and
40 miles long, they rise up from the center of the flat Madouri Plains
to a height of more than 9,000 feet. Hit twice by monsoons annually,
the roots of the old growth rainforest which used to cover them caught
and held the rains like a sponge, letting gravity pull the water to the
Plains’ streams as needed over the course of the dry seasons. It
was a good system until the resort builders began to clear land
recklessly and lumbermen began to convert the ancient forest to
monocultures, starting a chain of events that has led to the plains now
flooding after monsoons, then drying up shortly afterward. To make up
for the recent water shortages farmers on the Plains have begun
drilling wells for irrigation, which have lowered the water table on
the Plains, in turn killing the Plains’ natural covering. Summer sun
bakes the now dry topsoil and seasonal winds blow much of it away. In
short, the Plains don't produce like they used to, so a lot of people
are eating less throughout Southern India, and many of them are
starving. Just another man-made catastrophe which the World Bank will
try to solve with billions of dollars tossed in the wrong direction at
interest rates India won't have a prayer of repaying.
Futahelli’s
plan is simpler: Replant the Hills. Hire the locals displaced by the
newcomers to plant millions of trees of the varieties that used to be
there, and in 10 years time the Hills can again generate water year
round for the Plains. The little funding the project calls for would
come from those people buying time-shares at the resorts. So I was
in India to talk to Futahelli and some of the builders, knowing that
his solution is too clever to ever be adopted on the scale that’s
needed, and after several days of listening to resort builders explain
why their untreated human waste simply had to be disposed of in the
Hills’ natural marshes—"How bad can the waste from my 145 units be?"
one builder asked in the sing-song English of the country. "People must
be using the toilet, after all..."—I needed a break. Which is where
Vijay and his paranoias came into the picture. Vijay had been
recommended by several people, all of whom said he was a bit peculiar
but knew the Hills better than anyone. "We can take some very good
walks," he assured me, when I approached him about being my guide for a
magic mushroom walk. The mushrooms were an unexpected bit of luck.
A day earlier, while returning to my tiny hotel room after several
hours with some of the opponents of Futahelli’s plan, I had bumped into
a shriveled old woman dressed from head to toe in black. She asked me
something in a language I didn't understand, and when I started to
explain that I didn't get what she said she smiled, reached into the
bosom of her dress and withdrew a small package of newspaper. In it
were dozens of tiny psilocybin mushrooms. "Take three and enjoy the countryside," she said in very understandable English. "Take six and talk with Shiva." They
were small headed with bluing stalks and had probably been beautiful
when fresh, but looked like they’d been picked a couple of days earlier
and secreted in her bosom ever since. "Very good, be assured." I asked for six. "I only sell them in lots of two dozen." "Give me two dozen then." She
smiled, tore off a bit of the newspaper, counted them out and handed
them to me. "Watch out for the police. If they catch you with these
they will beat you senseless." Vijay had no problem with the thought
that I would be doing mushrooms on a hike with him. "We can leave this
afternoon," he said. "Go to Berijam and camp there. Of course we will
not be getting there until early morning as it is nearly 30 kilometers
away and walking at night is very slow and dangerous. Then tomorrow you
take your mushrooms, away from the watchful eye of the police." "Why
not just leave in the morning, go see some of what’s left of the old
shoala, and I’ll eat the mushrooms along the way. We can return at
dusk." "Oh no. Not here! The police will get you for sure." "How?" "Suppose they asked me what you were doing and I told them?" "You could say we’re hiking," I suggested. "Yes,
but that would be a sin of omission, and I have just recently become a
Christian. No, I would have to tell them that we were having an
hallucinogenic walk, which is very illegal here in India." "Would
you also have to tell them what we’re having for lunch? If you didn’t
omit anything we’d have to spend the rest of our lives with the
officer." "They would not need to know about our lunch. But if we
were walking to get lunch, then I would have a spiritual priority to
tell them. In this case they are asking why we are walking and we will
be walking for the mushrooms. There is the obligation." "Hypothetically speaking, what if I tell you that if you snitch I’ll toss you off a cliff?" "Then my priorities would change. With no physical life I have no more spiritual obligations." "Good. So what time is good for you tomorrow?" "Shall
we say 4 AM?" He shook his dreadlocks side to side; for a moment I
thought he might topple beneath their weight. "On further thinking, let
me suggest 7AM. It is very cold in these hills before then, and I never
rise at four." And then he was off, an elfinish vision with crazy hair, disappearing into a patch of eucalyptus trees. The
next morning I was up at five. By six I was having coffee at Trichy’s,
the only tea stall for miles which also sold a good cup of coffee.
Though mist hung from the trees, the morning promised to be clear and
beautiful. I breathed the thin, high altitude South Indian air. Vijay appeared at eight. "A cha," he said. "I had so much praying to do, which is why I am late. I have been sinning so much." I ordered us coffee and asked where he had decided to take me. "To
Pilar Rocks," he answered. "The most beautiful free standing stones.
There are two and each stands unsupported for more than 1,500 meters." "Will we pass through the shoala?" He shook his head side to side. "The shoala is all around them." We
drank our coffee in silence, then set off along the town’s main road.
Despite the damage that had been done, the Palni Hills and the little
town of Kodaikanal remained lovely. Prior to its blossoming as a resort
area it was known primarily for its exclusive private school for
wealthy English and Indian children, and for the summer homes their
parents kept there. The homes were nearly all built in British country
cottage style, fitted stone with clay tile rooves. If not for the tea
stalls and the monkeys that roamed freely about, Kodaikanal might have
been a town in the English countryside. We passed Kodai
Lake—surrounded by wretched, two-story brick garden apartments—turned
off the road at the famous guru Sai Baba’s summer home, then started up
a steep stone stairway leading into the hills surrounding the town. At
the top of the stairs we entered an area where locals lived and Indian
temples seemed to blossom like flowers, everywhere. Around us
children in school uniforms and factory workers in overalls made their
way toward their destinations. By nine the morning mist had burned off
and I was in the mood for my mushrooms. I suggested to Vijay that we
stop for a moment. "Not here! Not here!" he said. "Wait until we are in the church." I
had no idea why we were going to a church but waited as he asked and a
short while later we reached an old, unused Presbyterian building high
on a promontory bluff overlooking a beautiful valley. We stopped and I
took out my mushrooms while he rolled a joint. "How do you reconcile the dope with your new faith?" I asked. "I am also Rasta," he said, shaking his dreadlocks. "Good answer," I said, eating three of the little psilocybes. "The will of God," he laughed, starting down a path to a little village not far away. It
took less than 20 minutes for the first wave to hit me, and when it did
we were in a tiny hut of a restaurant Vijay had insisted we stop at so
that he could satisfy the craving for food his joint had brought on. I
could not even consider eating: large rats climbed over everything and
while the locals and the owner simply shooed them away I was beginning
to trip and they seemed to be getting larger by the minute. "I’ll
wait for you outside, Vijay," I said, standing. Though the hut door was
only a few steps away I was suddenly uncoordinated and the trip took an
inordinate amount of time. Outside, I opened my little package of
newspaper, ate three more of the tiny-capped mushrooms, and caught my
equilibrium. Vijay joined me a few minutes later, stuffing his rucksack
with chapati, Indian bread, for the walk. "We will be going now,"
he smiled through a full mouth, pointing me down a road that led past
colorful shrines to Vishnu and Shiva, and small houses fronted with
tall brick fences. At the street’s end was a stand of beautiful old
growth forest and my heart leapt at the thought that there was
rainforest this close to Kodaikanal. We stepped beneath it and I
breathed deeply to fill my lungs with the sweet smell of ancient
vegetation. Instead I began coughing and choking: just behind the stand
of old growth was a monoculture tree farm of Vicks-Vap-O-Rubby
eucalyptus and the scent nearly took the top of my head off. Vijay
seemed non-plussed with both my reaction and the fumes. He continued
walking, eating his chapati, and I followed him into a breech in the
tree farm at the base of a steep hill. To one side of the breech was
the tiny remnant of old growth; on the other a eucalyptus tree farm a
mile long and half that wide which had also been shoala just 15 years
ago. But standing in the breech between the two forests was a
sacred cow. Of course it wasn’t just a cow, it was 900 pounds of
pulsating energy wearing a brown and white leather coat, and it was
straddling the very pass we had to pass and taking every inch of it.
Vijay caught my arm and explained that hill cows were known for their
cunning, and that they could be surly and dangerous, though he refused
to be pinned down on exactly how many tourists he’d lost to them. Yes,
I thought, I knew there was something about that cow, something about
the way it was looking at me, so fiercely. Perhaps this bovine
gatekeeper was a sort of test, I imagined, put in place to stump
mushroomed gringos. I gathered myself up for it. Vijay looked for
another way up the hill. There was none. "Perhaps we are not meant to
go this way," he whispered. "Perhaps it’s just a test," I answered. "If I am getting hurt will you be paying the bills?" "Of course." "Then
let us make our way. Follow me. Be careful." He took a tentative step.
The cow didn’t move. He waited a moment and took another. Nothing. He
waved me to follow and we approached with caution. Stealthily we moved
in, angled, feinted, then slid behind its hindquarters. Not so hard
after all, I thought, but just as I did it let out a bellow. It was no
earthly sound, I was sure, no cow sound I’d ever heard. It was more
like deep-tone-vibration that emitted from the mouth of the pulsing
flesh in glorious and frightening color and began to shake the air
violently. The trees responded and began to shake as well, and then the
ground and Vijay and I began a racing assault up the steep hill to get
away from it, clambering over the vine-covered, root-tangled earth. We
didn’t look back until we reached the top; the cow hadn’t moved. The
scene was back to normal. I congratulated myself by exacerbating my
condition with three more mushrooms. Filled with our bovine success we
confidently moved on into the thick of the Palnis, past pilgrims and
peasants, steppe-farmers and their daughters, shimmying past goats and
dogs and monkeys, all unusually alive, all beginning to glow, and all
suspiciously curious. Two hours and five mushrooms later we’d climbed
dozens of hills and reached 9,000 feet. I was out of breath and
watching my skin turn colors from the inside. The smell of eucalyptus
clung to me like a body suit. Then, suddenly we could see a
clearing through the trees at the top of the next hill and I headed for
it. Vijay tried to stop me, but I was sure I was on to something. I
bounded over the underbrush of tiny wattle leaves and broke out onto a
patch of bright green grass that turned out to be the 13th green of the
Kodai Golf Club, which Vijay explained was one of the world’s most
difficult courses. "Some of the holes are very difficult because
cows graze here, and the balls bounce off them sometimes and get lost.
And if a monkey gets your ball he will chew it. Very hard to play." I nodded. Though not a golfer I could see where those would be difficult challenges. "Of
course," he added, "there is a course in Kashmir, I forget the name,
where there are tigers. I have heard that is also very difficult to
play." He spoke with an air of authority and while he did he put on
a large cap to cover his locks. "This is for disguise. On the matter of
the course in Kashmir, I have never actually met anyone who played
there, but that is what I have heard." Suddenly he crouched, issued
me a silent warning to keep quiet and broke into a run. I caught up
with him on the fairway and asked why we were running. "To avoid the
greens police." "I’m a tourist," I said. "I’m supposed to be on a golf course." "You don’t know them. Just keep running." It
was useless to argue so I followed. Moments later we caught the
attention of several men with uniforms and sticks who began to chase
us, frightening half-a-dozen cows and a herd of grazing goats into a
frenzied stampede. When I realized they were gaining on me I turned and
asked in a shouting voice for the clubhouse, thinking that might slow
down my pursuers. It didn’t. I turned and followed Vijay, who was
fleeing into the brush at the edge of the fairway. He ran like a man
with the devil at his heels, kicking a poor golfer’s ball wildly as he
did and ignoring several peccaries rooting at the base of a fruit tree.
I had no choice but to continue fleeing, finally beginning to put some
distance between myself and the men chasing us. We fled through the
scrub brush, beneath some trees and finally ran down a small hill next
to a busy roadway and into an open cement culvert that was wet with
sludge. We ran along the ditch for perhaps 50 yards before I slipped
and fell. Vijay stopped to help me up but stopped short of actually
touching me. "That is really too bad," he said when he caught his
breath. "This is the waste ditch from some new condos," he explained
matter-of-factly. "Very disgusting." I got up and wiped myself off
as best I could. "How is it possible that I'm on my knees in human
waste sucking exhaust from every car on the road when this is supposed
to be a nature hike?" Vijay looked hurt. He didn’t answer. I took a
deep breath and tried to calm down. I meditated a moment to see if
there wasn’t a bigger picture here that I was missing. Where was the
Great Spirit in all this, the oneness, I wondered, eating three more
mushrooms. Was it possible Vijay had a plan? Perhaps he wanted me to
walk in the shit so that I would understand India better, or the
pressing need for conservation. Perhaps it was something like that and
I was just too simple or stoned to see it. Yes, I thought, that must be
it. I decided to keep a lookout on my sensibilities and continue to
go along with this guru guide of mine, this man who had such a master
plan concealed in his behavior. We hadn’t yet gone near shoala, but
somehow this would pay off. Yes, a walk through human sludge was
exactly what an arrogant Westerner like me needed. Vijay started
off again, walking now as the greens police had evidently given up the
chase. I ate two more mushrooms and fell in behind him, through the
shit and slime, alongside the roadway. We walked for miles, kicking
discarded beer cans and food wrappers. But somehow it all seemed to be
making sense now, now that I had given myself up to the secret plan of
Universe, and I found myself laughing, grinning, running to keep pace
with my madman companion. The road curved off and we climbed out of
the culvert and up the embankment to the two-lane asphalt; to our right
sat the squat, thrown-together, wretched sludge-producing condos. I
decided to melt them with my X-ray vision, but before I could a bus
careened around the bend and nearly took me to my next incarnation. I
jumped back and breathed a lungful of the black smoke issuing from its
tailpipe. It was followed by a car, and then another, each one taking
the turn too wide, all of them honking insistently, and we hugged the
near shoulder of the road as we followed after them. An hour passed and
still we trudged along the roadway, past stop signs and dangerous curve
signs, past herds of goats and an overturned truck, my guide answering
my question as to why we were taking such a dangerous path when we
could just as easily walk in the woods with a cryptic, "Why must one
assume that the path one is not on is a simpler one?" The sky turned
overcast, the busses and cars passing us became a nearly constant
stream. I wondered where they were headed and why Zafar Futahelli’s
group wasn’t also working to outlaw the diesel fuel that filled the
air. Before I could answer those questions the road took a sharp left
and there, suddenly, unexpectedly, reaching to the sky were the two
pillars of Pilar Rocks. Strong, bold, magnificent and covered in a
thick white mist. Nearly unidentifiable except for the parking lot
signs on the road below me, in which dozens of busses and cars sat with
their motors idling, blowing noxious black smoke and belching tourists
by the hundreds. Near them, adjoining the parking lots, was a wall
lined with chi stalls and tourist stands. I was appalled. I was
tagged and weaving. Worse, I soon found myself the curious object of
attention to dozens of tourist families. They flocked to my side, lined
up near me and posed as if in conversation with me while friends and
family took photographs of them with their gringo friend. Whole
families absorbed me into their Pilar Rock snapshots. Some even pushed
me into positions they thought would look more conversational, sitting
me on a rock wall overlooking both the Rocks and the parking lots,
telling me to smile or talk or turn this way or that. I went along with
the game, imagining some ancient ritual with foreigners I knew nothing
about—perhaps there was a story of luck associated with taking photos
of outsiders at Pillar Rock. Certainly there had to be something more
than that my guide had simply walked me into a tourist trap. So
there I stood, and sat and posed, waiting for direction from Vijay, but
I soon realized my guide was nowhere to be found. He’d wandered off and
lost himself in the crowd. I’d been abandoned. I slipped down from
my perch on the wall and into the nearest chi shop, where comments were
made about the smell and look of my clothing and shoes. And all the
while the insidious Hindi-Christian-Rasta guide of mine stayed hidden
from me—me, ripped out of my mind, being fed cupfuls of bacteria and
sludge, up to my ankles in Indian refuse. But why? Wasn’t Pilar Rocks
his idea? What happened to the shoala and why weren’t we in it? Dozens
of questions flooded my mind, but they were too complex for anyone with
five uneaten mushrooms to consider, so I ate what was left and decided
to remain calm. This was India, after all, so I knew I wasn’t lost. Instantly
the recognition of that calmed me down and I decided that as long as I
was here I would try to get a closer look at Pilar Rocks. But the mist
which had been gathering just a few minutes earlier had now fully
enveloped not only the great stone monuments but the tourist busses as
well. Everything was being enveloped in white mist and disappearing
like a ghostly visage. Where are you, my intrepid guide? I wondered.
Pour me another cup of that sludge tea, my good man, I’ve got enough
bacteria in me to infect a small village. I’m a biological warhead.
Point and shoot me, I’ll infect the lot! Suddenly it hit me and I
knew—knew—where Vijay had gone. I felt it and knew I was right. I left
the chi shop and slowly worked through the mist to a stand of trees the
tourists were using as a latrine, moved past a squatting family and
called out his name. "Over here," came the feint reply. I headed
toward the sound and nearly bumped into him. He was sitting on a stone,
rolling another joint. "I knew you would be here," I said. "Less tourists. I like nature," he commented. "Me too. Let’s find some. I’m hoping you thrust me into the pit of snakes for a reason. Did you?" "You are a tourist. I thought you wanted to be with other tourists." "I wanted to go to the jungle. The shoala. You brought me here. Are you insane?" He moved away, out of reach. "You are going to be yelling at me now, aren’t you?" "No.
I am going to forgive your lunacy. But you are going to get me away
from here and take me to the jungle. I am going to walk with the shoala
beneath my feet. No roads, no drainage ditches, no diesel fuel, no
tourists. Only jungle." Without a word he stood and started up a
near sheer cliff of loose boulders. I followed up the incline, forcing
my wobbly feet one in front of the other, nearly falling, nearly dying,
and finally reaching the top of the hill. "There," he said, pointing 30 yards to our left. "There is the shoala." Indeed
it was. Beautiful, gnarled ancient trees clustered with hanging vines
and flowers, thick, dark, wet, ominous and beautiful. "Let’s go," I
said, already forgiving him the first five hours of the day. "In there?" he asked incredulously. "Of course. That’s why we came." "Oh, no. It is very dangerous. There are wild animals and snakes, and crevasses in the earth." "Let’s go look at them." "They are very deep. If you fall in you will never get out." He
hated me. I knew that now. We were walking on a scrub path littered
with paper and beer cans, not 50 feet from a rainforest at nearly 9,000
feet, but he was not going in. "Too, it is not allowed." "No one will see us." "Like the golf police?" "That was nothing." "Still,
that is how it is." And then, diverting his attention to the path we
were on, he fell to his knees. "Look! Some wild animal has passed here
recently...yes...follow me quietly. No laughing." And he was off and running, the banshee who hated me. "Yes...an animal. Large...possibly dangerous...." The
track he’d seen looked common enough to me but I took his word since I
realized I was not thinking clearly any longer. Somewhere along the way
I’d stuffed my pockets with sticks and stones which must have seemed
important at the time, and I began unloading them. What were they doing
in my pockets? I certainly didn’t remember doing it. Perhaps the
tourists had made me little presents. Strange. I followed after him... "Yes!"
he suddenly said. "An animal. I am sure of it." And then, further on,
another 20 paces, we came on it, a mangy dog sleeping in the dirt. "Look! A jungle dog!" he announced. Taking
no more, I dashed into the shoala despite his protests. I filled my
lungs and ran through the thick underbrush, catching my clothes and
hair on vines and branches, then tumbled on a tangle of roots and came
to rest at the foot of a small shrine to one of the people who had
investigated the crevasses without benefit of a rope. A plaque on the
shrine at the yawning mouth of the black hole read: "Dedicated to my father SHEN BAGANADAR May 12, 1955 Body recovered, May 13, 1955 From a depth of 500 feet." I peered into the hole and wished him well, then praised Shiva that while Shen had bought it I had only window shopped. "You see I am not fooling now," I heard Vijay say from the top of the embankment I’d fallen down. I
looked around. It was finally beautiful. Even to be in a rainforest
which had been chopped to bits, a piecemeal patchwork of old forest
interspersed with eucalyptus, wattle and pine, it was still rainforest,
thick with vines and new and old growth and moving underbrush alive
with things. My little Rasta was off rolling another joint but I was
practically dancing, making my way to one edge of the cliff the forest
stood on, looking out onto the only uninhabited piece of India I’d ever
seen. Utterly inaccessible cliffs, sheer mounts fronting strange vapor
covered valleys, home of the few remaining spotted panthers and
mountain goats in all of Southern India. A verdant landscape of living
moving things and dancing trees, filled with white-faced macaques and
Ghandi monkeys, rooting boars, snakes and a host of birds. What wonder!
What splendor! I pictured the entire Palni Hills covered with this sort
of vegetation, and imagined what the dry Plains of Madouri must have
been like with forests like these draining out into year round streams.
How golden and green those plains must have been a generation ago. Reality
began slipping and I found myself picturing giant sponges like these
hills dotting all of those places where greed had gotten the upper hand
and left desert where there once was forest. I imagined us piling up
all the beer cans and papers we throw away and instead of tossing them
into holes in the ground to make land fill, piling them into heaps in
the middle of deserts until the heaps were 9,000 feet high and 20 miles
long by 40 miles wide and then covering the piles of garbage with dirt
and planting millions of trees on them and watching our trash turn into
sponge, bringing verdant life back to those dry places. Sponging the
Sahara! Sponging Death Valley! Sponging the Gobi! I sat at cliff’s
edge and felt the forest around me for as long as sunlight held. It was
just a speck of ancient deep green surrounded by a more modern world.
Still, it was thick and lush and full of life and mystery. A person
could spend days, months even, in that little rainforest and not learn
all of its secrets. It was the same in every beautiful spot in the
world, I thought. People find something extraordinary. They want to be
near it. They build their homes and condos and resorts and hotels until
very little of the original is left. It was just our nature to smother
things. When the crevasses became difficult to see, I headed out
with my wild-eyed guide who was sure we were going to die in there,
back to the scrub brush road and the homestretch. The road back was
as asphalt as the one enroute. We stopped at every chi shop we saw for
tea as Vijay tried to tack on the hours to increase his pay. I went
along with the madman until my bladder began to float, then paid him
off and zeroed in on getting back to town, back to my room, back to my
own worries about conservation in the Palnis, and back, of course, to
the old woman who’d sold me the mushrooms.
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