The Night of the Fireflies and the Thunderstorm
written by: Dr. Elizabeth V. Koshy
At twilight, we walk in trepidation, down the steep slope of loose rocks and gravel, hewn out from the hillside to create a campsite housing a hundred multi-coloured tents, towards the lake.
We are at Bhandardara, a village situated on the banks of the Pravara River. The Arthur lake can be seen in the distance. Its waters lap quietly around the foothills of a few of the highest peaks of the Sahayadri mountains situated 2400 ft. above sea level. The waters glisten with light reflected from the flashlights of a few adventurous campers.
We sit on a boulder midway to the lake. It is a warm night in the first fortnight of June. The sky is dark. Surprisingly, there are hardly any stars. The forecast for the week is of heavy thundershowers. We wonder whether it would rain.
The lakeside has a number of campsites lit with golden lighting. Music can be heard playing from afar. A singer from our campsite sings popular Hindi film songs. We friends talk for a while and then fall silent looking at the lights reflected in the waters. The smell of barbequed chicken and paneer wafts through the air after a while. We climb back gingerly in the weak light of a mobile phone, making split second decisions regarding where to land our feet.
After a hearty meal, we go with a local guide to a village nearby, to see fireflies. The villagers sit in the pitch darkness of the night to sell local produce in the light of their flashlights: guavas, small jamuns, karvanda and tiny juicy mangoes. We walk along the dark road, pointing out to each other the flashing pin points of light in the trees. The headlights of passing vehicles show us hundreds of tourists from other campsites, trudging along with us in the darkness. The guide leads us up the course of a stream and we reach an ethereal place filled with Bondara and Soundhada trees studded with twinkling diamonds, making them look like Christmas trees.
A million fireflies! They shine their light in unison too, in a light show like a choreographed dance, drawing gasps of wonderment and squeals of surprise from the city-dwellers who have come in hordes with their small children to see them.
Seeing a firefly sitting on a low branch, our guide holds his hand near a leaf. The insect walks across his hand. He transfers it in a similar fashion to our hands. The tiny insect has a brown coloured head, brownish gold wings folded over a luminescent body that looks like a tube light or a glowing grain of rice. Unafraid of humans, the fireflies move across our bodies and sit on our clothes and in our hair. The fireflies can be seen only during this small window of four weeks, four weeks of heaven on earth, a fortnight each in May and June before the onset of the monsoon.
We request people to switch off their torches and maintain silence to soak in the euphoric experience of witnessing bioluminescence in fireflies during the mating season. We see thousands on each tree, and marvel at the wonders of creation. A mystical experience to be treasured for a lifetime.
Having witnessed an unworldly experience, we go back to the campsite feeling blessed, to rest in our tents for the night. Groups of people sit on the mats in front of the tents playing word games and antakshari. Past three, people drop off to sleep. Lying in our tents, we can hear others talking. Friends opening their hearts out to each other in the darkness, talking about high school romances and current love interests.
The heavy rain and thunderstorm predicted, lashes the campsite in the wee hours of the morning. The thunder is so loud that all of us are awake at once and the rain so strong that micro droplets of rain enter our tent through the seam and soon our hair and clothes are wet from the spray. We fear that the flimsy tent will get blown off by the wind into the lake below. Water from the mountain side flows out from under our tents within minutes. The only woollen blanket and sheet in the tent are soon drenched with water seeping from under our one inch water resistant foam mattress. It probably had a hole in it! We sit huddled together in the tent, the three of us with our backs towards each other, saving our mobiles, bags and shoes from the water, waiting for the thundershower to pass. The water collects under our tent to the extent that we feel afloat!
Soon, there is nothing else to do but get out of our tents and escape to our cars. When the thunderstorm abates, all the campers flee the campsite, though it was not yet dawn. The rough drive up the hillside to the tarred road is fraught with risk. The car could very easily slip off the track into the shrubs and the trees below. We heave a sigh of relief as we speed to the nearest town in the orange light of the morn.
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