Music Of The Rainforest
Music Of The Rainforest
Borneo’s melodies resound with life
Narayani Ganesh
Eric, our guide, was swinging the flashlight from side to side — as we navigated the Paku river in Mulu’s rainforest in Borneo in the dead of night on a longboat — so that the light traced shadowy silhouettes on the river’s banks. Trees, shrubs, creepers, nesting birds, animals that shuffled past...
I felt something brush against my head as the boat moved silently downstream. Was that a vine-weed, aerial root or viper, swinging menacingly from that tree? I shuddered. What if I die of snakebite, and that too 5,000 km away from home? Hey, was anyone carrying an antidote on board?
“Don’t worry”, reassured Eric. “Snakes and other animals don’t attack unless you frighten them. They’re not like us”. His dismissal of the human species was spontaneous, perhaps born of wisdom gleaned from Borneo’s rich and diverse ecosystems — the intricate web of life spun by creatures of the rainforest and cave systems — that have been around for millions of years, long before humans appeared on the scene. I was in no mood to argue.
Meanwhile, one group-member asked for the flashlight to be turned off. He wanted to “feel the beat of the forest”. My breathing became shallow as the night amplified the sounds of the jungle. Who made better music — the crickets that rubbed their legs together in a sopranic crescendo or the amphibians that made guttural bass noises? It was hard to tell. Fireflies flitted about — we could see the sparks fly now here, now there, everywhere. Some sounds were unrecognisable; others, familiar. The boatman paddled gently as we slowly slithered down the river, united by the surreal experience.
“May we have the light on, please?” The spell was broken. It was another one of us, not so adventurous. I took a deep breath. Once again, Eric flashed the light, swinging it back and forth, bank to bank. He drew our attention to an overhanging branch as he pointed the beam at a Praying Mantis — stick insect — that blended with its perch. In fact, there were two of them, fused together, anything but praying. We could never have spotted the amorous duo without a practised eye.
“That’s a Tiger Bittern”, informed Eric as he expertly traced the bird’s elegant flight from its nest into the night sky with the beam of the flashlight. We were trespassers — flagrantly violating the rules we lay down for ourselves in our concrete jungles. Would we barge into someone’s home in the middle of the night, and beam a light on him as he lay on his bed? Wouldn’t the one taking flight be the intruder? We continued with our voyeurism — spotting a flower-pecker bird there, a swamp frog here, and in the distance, skimming the
water, was that a python? Maybe.
For more than two hours, we rode the willing river to partake of secrets of the forest under cover of darkness, quiet and stealthy, hearts thumping with fear and excitement, absorbing every little detail that we saw, heard, smelt, felt. When the journey ended outside the forest, we jumped off the longboat reluctantly and walked in silence, clearly overwhelmed.
During the day, we’d trekked through the Gunung Mulu National Park, a World Heritage Site in Borneo, in the Eastern Malaysian state of Sarawak. Its 529 sq km of unspoiled wilderness includes ancient limestone caves, mountain ranges, deep gorges and rivers. With eight types of forest, 275 species of birds, 75 species of mammals and frogs each, 281 species of butterflies, 170 species of orchid, 10 species of pitcher plant and 458 species of ants, and hundreds more of other species, the region is a bio-paradise, with research expeditions continuing to discover ‘new’ species.
At sunset, we witnessed the spectacular flight of some two million bats — from the innards of the huge Deer Cave where they spend the day — that left in batches, circling the sky outside the cave, getting their bearings right before exiting gracefully in a unique, sweeping formation.
Earlier in the day, on the 480-metre-long canopy skywalk 25 metres above the forest floor, we were probably watched with amusement by hundreds of species hidden from sight — long-tailed macaques, silver leaf monkeys, flying snakes, lizards, lemurs and squirrels, bearded pigs, mouse deer, sunbirds, falconets, vipers, beetles — as we made our way clumsily, treetop to treetop, negotiating the unsteady ropeway.
We admired the tall trees, luxuriant shrubs and creepers, pretty ferns, fuzzy caterpillars, colourful birds and butterflies. The paths were leech-free, thank God; we just had to be careful not to step on caterpillars and other little species whose paths we happened to cross. The only sounds were the tup-tup of rainwater dripping through the foliage and the sound of our own voices. The setting sun, however, lifted the curtain on a nocturnal orchestra, when the forest came alive with the chirping of cicadas, as croaking frogs and warbling bulbuls kept up the tempo. Intermittent notes from other species completed the score, with neither conductor nor metronome. Was this the same forest we’d traversed during the day?
Mulu’s rich and diverse rainforest ecosystem — as other natural ecosystems are wont to be — is much more than a tourist attraction or bio-reserve. Its uniquely vibrant and evolving interdependent life strung together in a maestro-like composition is inspiring, even uplifting. It brought home the truth that it is we, the human species, who are the aberration — the false note — in the sensitive and beautiful orchestra of life.
