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A Walk In The Woods

- NEHA SINHA

The water had gone inside our shoes when we saw it. Inside an old Aravalli forest, bearing testimony to structures from at least three dynasties, a black creature with yellow feet sheltered from the rain. It was a scorpion, that nemesis from old trunks with forgotten memories, that reading in the horoscope when one looked for meaning on a fresh new day. The yellow-footed peninsular black scorpion—likely flooded out of its hole—was biding its time till the rain stopped.

We were all huddled under a man-made structure: Four of us, one scorpion. Its tail twitched once, raised and alert, but the animal had resigned itself to devoting its waking and nocturnal hours for waiting rather than hunting. There was a perfect truce between our little night survey party and the arachnid—no sudden movements or snap judgements, united in riding out the storm with as little histrionics as possible.

A few days later, I travelled to the central Indian highlands. Like in the north, the rain pattered, lightning flashed as the world was fondled (or occasionally slapped) by sheets of rain.

In the forest, we watched a bush move with a large animal twitching underneath. A young male tiger, big paws stretched out in front of his massive head, had taken shelter underneath the vegetation. Rain sped towards the earth. It seemed determined to outpace itself, dislocating soil and the tiger's evening plans. We waited, just as we had done in the company of the scorpion. The sun slipped down in the sky, liquid haze through the cloudbank.