The Enchanted Woods

“I don't believe in things like that - fairies or brownies or magic or anything. It's old-fashioned.'
'Well, we must be jolly old-fashioned then," said Bessie.

- Enid Blyton, The Folk of the Faraway Tree

It was a cold comforting glow, a speck of light blue that sat still. 'Glow-worm' came the helpful explanation from somewhere. It was difficult to stop staring at this 'ineffectual fire'. This speck was the tail end of a fairly large worm, half a finger large but the body was invisible - dissolved by darkness in the mushy blackness all around.

We had just started on the forest trail to Rajmachi with Trek-o-phy, a Mumbai based trekking group. The day before had seen the first showers of the season drenching Mumbai, the Met and private forecasters were still debating if it was monsoon or pre-monsoon. The showers had still to reach Uttarakhand with their devastating impact. Our currently worry was their immediate effect on Rajmachi woods.

In pitch darkness, our group of fourteen was taking slow careful steps around the beautiful valley from Lonavala. The holiday homes of the rich and famous had been left behind with the dusk, giving way to a dark moonless night in the forest. Night sounds were seeping in. Frogs had started croaking full throated. Here and there, you could hear the sounds of water flowing, last nights showers draining off, punctuated with the prittle-prattle of 28 feet. Bobbing torches were being switched on.

Then, we saw the first yellow twinkle, a shine in a bush nearby: a firefly. Everyone gathered round and soon there was another flash and again another - flying yellow dots were increasingly visible. As the night grew darker, the dots increased in density - glowing in large numbers with stunning periodicity.

The woods it seemed were waking up in another magical land. All tree-tops were lined with magnificently shining cold glows. It seemed the forest was decked up for Diwali (which reminded of Chinese lights and how fireflies look like Chinese lights). At each nook, you could feel you would run into gandharvas dancing, goblins celebrating or leprechauns collecting the golden lights. Vast arrays in trees - thousands strong - would go on blinking relentlessly, unmindful of our fascinated eyes staring with a deep sense of the fantastic. The stars had decided to decorate the earth for a day.

Lights would start at one end and move on to the other. These were also friendly creatures - easily captured in a hand, you could notice the tiny speck between fingers as it crawled out from the palm and tried to walk outwards. They were also either too lazy or naive - you could run after one to catch it. Catching a firefly and releasing it into a blinking mass is the closest to Harry Potter that I have ever actually come. Seeing a lot of them captured in a bottle (with holes for oxygen) is the easily the most fascinating array of live night lights I have seen in a room.

It was hard to believe in the actual reality - that these were fireflies gathering for a humungous mating festival - lasting 2 - 4 weeks. Most of them would die within days - now that the rains were here.