The Mangrove Park

The floodwaters brought in a new species of a wild plant in the fallow paddy field by the side of our house in the village. Within a few months they spread like a scourge, smothering the soft grass which grew on the land with their tentacle-like roots. Then the rains started and the bushes grew thick and tall and the strip of land took on the appearance of a mangrove forest.

They were alien shrubs and looked completely out of place amongst the coconut saplings and mango trees dotting our land. I missed the clean view of the paddy fields and the limpid pools of clear water which rippled and danced when the raindrops came down in buckets from the dark sky. Now that open space had been replaced by a mass of tangled roots and dark green woody bushes which turned the water into the color of syrupy molasses.

No worker was prepared to wade into the mess and clear the ground.

`Let the rains stop. We can’t get into that now’, they would say, looking at the Waterworld and imagining all kinds of horrors lurking beneath the murky waters.

So I waited. I sat in the verandah looking at the rest of the Monsoon scenery: wet tailorbirds and woodpeckers trying to shake themselves dry on the high branches of the mango trees and squirrels racing each other up the slippery trunk of a tamarind. Surprisingly there were no mosquitoes to spoil the peace of the evenings. I wondered what had happened to them. Had climate change arrived in our village?

Soon I had to leave the place for a month on an urgent business. When I returned, the rains had abated in the district and the waters had receded.

It was a spectacular sight which greeted me when I entered the grounds early in the morning, straight from the train station. The mangrove thicket looked the same, but now it had taken on a lovely pink hue and the whole scene looked like a Monet water-lily painting. There were light pink flowers the size of hibiscus blooms on all branches and they had transformed the ugly forest into a vast flower patch.

The wonders of nature! A wild, damp thicket had turned into a flower garden within a month.

I was on the horns of a dilemma now. Should I cut down the bushes and clear the land or just let them be – perhaps even nurture them to their flowering glory? Trim them and feed them bloom-booster fertilizers?

Then a notice came from the Village Office which put an end to my dilemma. There had been a new directive to resurvey all landholdings and the land had to be made accessible to the surveying team when they reached the spot.

So the very next day a couple of workers came and started to hack their way into the bushes. Immediately a swarm of insects rose from the field and the sky turned dark as they frantically flew in all directions in alarm. These were skimmer dragonflies who had made their home on the stems and leaves of the shrubs, enjoying an undisturbed existence, till the hatchets cut away their perches in a few swift strokes. They flew around, confused, like miniature helicopters under gunfire and left for safer sanctuaries on neighbouring properties.

In two hours the land was cleared, and the flowers turned the bed of the ground into a pink carpet. The resurvey was conducted two days later, with the surveyors making their way over pieces of twisted roots and pink petals to get their coordinates.

A week later I sat in the veranda in the evening, listening to the shrill calls of homing birds. In the field the roots and stems were shrivelling up and drying. There was no trace of the dragonflies, they had completely disappeared.

Then I heard the drone in my left ear.

I turned my head and saw a mosquito dancing around the verandah heading towards the open front door. Immediately two more came in from the yard and joined the first and the little gang headed for my living room, no doubt anticipating a lovely blood feast during the night.

I jumped up from my seat and ran inside like Usain Bolt and slammed the door in the face of the invaders. After a long absence of nearly eight months, the mosquitoes had made a comeback!

As I stood there pondering on this new development, something clicked in my head. I went upstairs and located `The Illustrated Handbook of Insects’ on my bookshelf-bought long back from a second-hand bookstall in the town-and turned to the entry on the eating habits of dragonflies. It said:

“Dragonflies are skilled aerial hunters. They eat hundreds of mosquitoes and flies daily. Their larvae live in water, consuming aquatic insects, mosquito larvae, tadpoles and small fish”.

So that explained it.

The flood brought in the wild alien bushes, the dragonflies built their colony on the branches, ate the mosquitoes and their larvae, and all this helped me sit in the verandah in my shorts ,and sleep peacefully through the night without the foul fumes of mosquito coils.

Nature’s web is ineffable, and too intricate for the human mind to figure out.

Now that the mosquitos have returned, I am hoping that the bushes grow back again, bear those gorgeous pink flowers and bring the dragonflies back.
I will stop now. Because wishing for another flood will be a bit too much.

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Rajeev Bhattathiripad

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