Legend has it that the Pandavas, during their exile, lived incognito in the magical evergreen forests now located in the state of Kerala.
It's believed that the tribals named these forests Sairandhree, after the wife of the Pandavas. Just as Thiruvananthapuram was made Trivandrum by the British to make it easier to be pronounced, Sairandhree Vanam was anglicised to become Silent Valley, so says a popular theory.
The majestic river that nurtured and nourished the Pandavas got their mother's name, Kunthi. In fact, there's a mysterious spot on this river called Paatrakkadavu where they say Sairandhree used to wash the pots and pans of her make-shift kitchen. If you listen carefully in the stillness of the night, at that spot you will hear the sounds of empty pots being filled with flowing river water.
Be that as it may, there is a reason why Silent Valley was silent for many millennia. The cicadas that create a cacophony in all the forests of India created a deathly silence in this tropical evergreen forest by their curious absence.
But Silent Valley is home to many other endemic species of flora and fauna; and many endangered species like the lion-tailed macaque and the Ceylon frogmouth. Being untouched by man, it also contains many unaltered gene pools kept intact for millions and millions of years.
The Government of Kerala, in a moment of madness, decided to destroy these pristine forests by building a hydro-electric dam here to generate a few megawatts of power. That was in circa 1978. Little did they realise that they didn't own these forests; it was in fact Mother Nature's gift to mankind that they were only supposed to preserve and then pass on to generation next.
In the year 1980, a small group of journalists and activists in Kerala collected a princely sum of Rs. 75,000 to make a documentary on Silent Valley. The attempt was to document the significance of these precious forests for posterity, before they were submerged under the rising deluge of the proposed dam. The film was scripted by me and directed by K. K. Chandran, an alumnus of the Film Institute of Pune.
During our recce we realised that the last tribal village was at Mukkali, and the dam-site was exactly 24 kms from there. We were told no vehicles were allowed beyond Mukkali, which meant we had to carry our film equipment, our personal belongings, and the provisions that were to last us for three weeks, on foot.
We desperately needed a guide who would take us to the pathless forests of Silent Valley, and more importantly, bring us back.
Unfortunately there was only one man on earth who could do this; and fortunately we found him. His name was Thekkinkattil Hamsa, whom we later lovingly and respectfully called Hamsakka.
Hamsakka was a recluse who lived in a nearby town called Mannarkkad. Ever since he heard about the impending disaster of the dam, he had become more withdrawn. At first he refused to be our guide. It was only after we told him about our mission of documenting the treasures of Silent Valley that he relented.
Hamsakka couldn't write his name but he could read Silent Valley like the back of his hand. The wisdom he had distilled from living like a nomad in Silent Valley for more than three decades was later passed on to us. Like a father to his children.
The moment Hamsakka decided to join us, he took over as our leader. He told us about the enormity of the logistical problems. And convinced us that we should have a team that's stripped to the core.
Then, Hamsakka laid down his rules.
Nobody will carry any arms, not even a knife. His reasoning was simple: No animal will ever attack you unless you threaten it or provoke it.
The second rule was about food. The food, he said, will consist of rice and a Kerala dal made with coconut, potato and drumstick. If we're lucky, we could catch Paral (a river-water fish), and he would make fish curry for us. Only black tea will be served, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. The same food will be served every day for the next 21 days.
Even after agreeing to these spartan conditions, we realised that each one of us would have to carry about 20 kilos.
On the appointed date, we met Hamsakka and two tribal guides at Mukkali. We bought the provisions there and started on a journey that I treasure as the most memorable days of my 50 years of existence; something that I will not trade for anything in this life, or even the next.
Carrying huge loads of bare necessities, we set out with an inexplicable fear in our hearts. A few kilometres into the trek, we came across a tribal hut. It was used by labourers who had come to clear the forest undergrowth to allow precious forest trees to grow tall and handsome. But now the hut was in shambles. To an urban mind it appeared as if a bulldozer had run over it. The truth in fact was worse. It was flattened to ground zero by a herd of elephants in search of left-over salt from the tribal kitchen.
As we stood there scared and motionless, Hamsakka reassured us: If there was anyone in that tribal hut, even a new-born child, the elephants would not have touched it.
Faith does wonders. It made us take our next step.
When we reached the dam-site at noon, we witnessed a manslaughter. A tree that had withstood the onslaught of time for two centuries was brought down in two hours to make way for the dam. As we captured on film the heart-rending cry of that tree, we had captured the spirit of our documentary. At that moment I remembered a shloka from the Upanishads: 'It takes many brooks to make a rivulet; it takes many rivulets to make a river; it takes many rivers to make an ocean; it takes many oceans to make one tree.'
Carrying the helpless scream of that tree in our collective consciousness, we proceeded to pitch our tent on the forgiving banks of River Kunthi.
With a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, Hamsakka showed us the spot where animals descend to drink water at night: It was barely 50 feet away from our tent. The only thing that would deter them from sniffing at our sleeping bodies was the stolen property of Prometheus: fire!
When we collected enough firewood to last till the wee hours of the morning, Hamsakka lit the fire that stood between life and death. And it burned on till the first rays of the sun lit up the rooftops of the forest.
Then we set out to film what was to be the opening scene of our film. It was to picturise my opening sentences: 'The cycle of night and day. Early memories of the first dawn of man still flowing along the mystic river. This is the morning the first man saw, and this the view.’
At a small waterfall, where the perennial Kunthi River comes cascading down, we waited and waited for the sunlight to light up 'the scene'. We had to wait for over an hour. Later we were to realise that in a tropical evergreen forest only 10% of the sunlight reaches the forest floor. The rest 90% gets absorbed in the canopy. This practically meant we could shoot in Silent Valley for barely four hours a day.
Winding up at three in the afternoon, we were back to the errand of finding dried wood that would be our sentinels of the night. As it was our first day of shooting, we were all too tired to gather enough firewood. Looking at the measly pile, Hamsakka declared, 'This will only last till 2 in the morning.'
The fires that we lit near the tent on either side raged on. And our tired bodies went off to sleep as soon as we hit the rough gravel beneath our bodies. In the middle of the night, the five of us who were city-bred souls got up all at once as if woken up by an alarm clock. Our subconscious mind knew that the fire will only last till 2 and it had woken us up exactly at 2. And true to Hamsakka's words, the fire had indeed died down. As we lay awake waiting for the sun to wake up, our tribal assistants slept on blissfully with their posteriors barely three feet away from the cinders. And we witnessed the deep, prehistoric relationship between man and fire.
Later, Hamsakka gave us a few tips on how to escape from animals in case of close encounters:
If an elephant crosses your path, give him/her the right of way. Stay as far away as possible from a lone tusker, especially if he's in 'masst'.
Stare a tiger in the eye, but don't move a muscle.
If a wild boar attacks you, wait till the last second. Then step aside. The wild boar will pass you and keep on going at the same speed, because it doesn't know how to turn.
When a bear charges at you (it's one of the few animals that doesn't need to be provoked), climb a thin but sturdy tree. As the bear's hands get locked at a particular position, it can only climb trees that are fat and well-fed.
At the river-bed lit up by the lazy sun, Hamsakka showed us the pugmarks of many animals, and showed us how to identify them: the visitors of last night were a jackal and a barking deer.
As our unit moved on, we encountered one of the eeriest scenes that can be imagined. We had to either cross the Kunthi River about eight times to reach the new shooting 'location', or take a short-cut and walk across a gigantic carpet of blood-sucking leeches. Hamsakka advised us against crossing the river, what with each of us carrying about 20 kilos and the rocks in the river being slippery with prehistoric moss.
Hamsakka then prepared a paste of coconut oil, snuff (tobacco powder) and salt. He then asked us to apply it on the exposed parts of our body. Armed with the ultimate leech repellent, we walked gingerly on a massive carpet of leeches; and to our utter amazement only a couple of them managed to cling on to our bodies.
That night, as we lay in the cocoon of our tent, we realised for the first time that the sound of silence was becoming unbearable. After Hamsakka ran out of his bedtime stories, one of us let out a false cough just to break the silence. And then we took turns in uttering non-stop nonsense, just to keep us on the acceptable side of sanity.
The next day I came across a scene which made me think that I had indeed gone over the brink. As we were climbing down a mountain slope, I saw a white apparition with long, flowing hair and a bare torso, walking in the valley below. With a lot of hesitation, I nudged KK and asked him whether he could see what I could. And he said yes; he too had seen it but he was too scared to tell me lest I think he had gone crazy.
Mustering courage, we shouted out to the white apparition. And our collective scream echoed in the forest. The white man finally spotted us and came running towards us. He was Jacques, a school teacher from Holland, who was lost in the pathless land of Silent Valley for eight days; of which the last two were spent only on water from River Kunthi.
Hamsakka made an early lunch to celebrate the survival of Jacques. That night Jacques sang a pastoral song that shattered the silence of many centuries. His songs were to become our lullaby, putting us to sleep, night after night.
The next day it drizzled. We took refuge in a nearby cave, hoping against hope that it's not already occupied by a predator. As we re-lived the anxiety of the prehistoric cave man, Hamsakka pointed out to a group of liontailed macaques on a nearby tree taking refuge from the rain by holding up a branch. And he said, every time it rains they take refuge under a temporary shelter, making a firm resolution that next year they will build a permanent shelter for themselves before the monsoon descends. And the moment it stops raining, they forget the resolution.
By now, we have been living on our spartan diet for a week. And we were craving for a change. We persuaded Hamsakka to take us fishing. He made a fishing line for each one of us and unearthed worms from the forest floor to be used as baits.
We sat on the river bank and threw our baits into the river. Probably because no man had ever fished in the Kunthi River, the Paral fish in all their pristine innocence would come rushing to bite the bait. And every time we pulled the line out, invariably there would be two or three fish desperately clinging to one bait!
After 21 days of shooting we finished our schedule and returned to Mukkali.
When we bid farewell to Jacques and Hamsakka, little did we know that it would be the very last time we would be holding hands.
Our bus stopped at a small town, and I rushed to a nearby PCO to speak with my parents. But believe it or not, the days spent in Silent Valley completely cut off from the outside world had such a cathartic effect on me that I had forgotten my own residence number. It was only after two days in the bustle of the city that I could remember it.
As we had overstayed in Silent Valley, by the time we finished editing the film we had run out of money. That was the time I met Ms. Dilnavaz Variava who was the Chairperson of the Save Silent Valley Committee. She donated Rs. 10, 000 from their corpus to help me complete the film. Thanks to the baritone voice of Zul Vellani, and the masterful composition of Ustad Faiyaz Ahmed Khan (both worked gratis for the film), we had 18 minutes of a powerful anti-dam documentary.
When we submitted the film for censorship certificate, we got a rejection certificate. The ostensible reason being, the film was one-sided. Our argument that it's an anti-dam film and therefore had to be one-sided fell on deaf ears. That was when Ms. Dilnavaz and Mr. Soli Godrej sprung into action and fixed up a meeting with Mrs. Indira Gandhi.
And soon, the silent forests of Silent Valley travelled all the way to Delhi and decided to speak for themselves.
We screened the film for Mrs. Gandhi; and after seeing for herself the richness of one of India's untouched natural treasures, she patted on the back of a stunned 24-year old and whispered in his unbelieving ears: 'Don't worry, son. This will be declared a National Park.'
And it was, in the year 1984.
For 26 years, I resisted the temptation of going back. The only reason was, my trip to Silent Valley was my initiation into the ways of the forest. And I didn't want to touch the gossamer wings of those memories lest they disintegrate.
After much persuasion by my wife Anita and my son Akash, I made my second trip. In the year 2006.
From the forest gate at Mukkali, we drove to the erstwhile dam-site, where a 100-foot watch tower had come up. Standing atop that tower I surveyed the green 70 mm panorama called Silent Valley. The first thing that struck me was a change in the forestscape itself. In 1980, dense evergreen forests alternated with shola grasslands. Now it was wet, verdant forests across endless stretches. The leeches were as vicious as ever, and the only plants that a dinosaur would identify (if it were to be born again today) were still there: cobra plant and tree fern. The endangered liontailed macaque and Ceylon frogmouth had survived in large numbers.
But the most distinct feature of Silent Valley, the cold, chilling silence itself, was gone. Because of human encroachment and destruction of habitat in the nearby Attappadi forest, and an overall rise in temperature, the cicadas had made their entry into the innards of this pristine, evergreen forest.
Today, I have none of the treasured souvenirs of my journey made 26 years ago. The audio tapes on which we recorded the soulful songs of Jacques are gone. Hamsakka is no more; and the prints of our film which created a surging wave of public opinion in Kerala against the dam have vanished; the negatives have been lost forever.
All that remains is Silent Valley, the mystical forest that our film helped preserve.
