Jog, incidentally

The four famous falls of Jog: Raja, Rocket, Roarer and Rani (in order - from left)

The swirling mist that rolls around the four falls

To understand the meaning of futility, you must try to describe in the written word, the beautiful fury of nearly 900-foot waterfalls plunging down in cascading roars – it’s absolutely futile. I’m sure there is a language sans words for everything not manmade – I just don’t know it. It’s not just Jog’s four famous falls but the whole spectacle – the sudden changes in landscape and climate as you near the falls, the sleet rain, the thick swirling mist that covers and uncovers the four falls in a dramatic “now you see me, now you don’t” playfulness that takes your breath away. But Jog is only the destination, incidental to the whole experience of the journey.
 

There’s no better season (and no better reason) to visit the Malenaad region than during the monsoon when nature is renewing herself, and as a side effect, stirring hope in the souls of her audience. The road to Jog gives you one of the most spectacular window-seat views of ever-changing terrain – a startling field of sunflowers dazzling in full bloom, the freshest green of just cultivated paddy fields, dark and broodingly ominous hills turning and running away out of the crosshairs of your camera lens. The scale and beauty of the terrain is enhanced a thousand fold by the silence. The silence touches you deeply – in some forgotten corner of your spirit - and the vastness of the silence stops you in your tracks. No beeps and clicks and horns and mindless chatter - the general jarring cacophony of daily life - nature has pulled the plug in one fell swoop. You don’t need to meditate. You’re part of nature’s meditation. It is in silence that she creates, sustains, regenerates, hopes, and yearns. Nature is constantly doing all of this – in stratospheric proportions: flaming dawns and mellow twilights, rainbows that span the horizon, entire forests in rebirth, brooks and streams that sustain and renew everything they touch for hundreds of miles, thousands of birds migrating a thousand miles uncannily guided by an internal GPS – and all of them perfectly quiet, their movement in their stillness, their grandeur in their subtlety, their imposing majesty in their humility.

In the countryside, nature seems to yawn at Life’s dramas. She simply couldn’t care a hang. “Okay –Lord of the Animal Kingdom - get over it and get on with it,” she seems to say “...and come to me when you’re done.” The thought makes me want to curl up and lick my wounds. It’s liberating to know that there are spheres where I simply don’t matter – in fact, from nature’s perspective, I’m completely irrelevant. A speck in the grand scheme of things. How’s that for a humbling weekend lesson?

At Inchara

Sunset at Chithritha

At Chithritha