8

Shankar awoke in the dead of night. A sound was coming from deep within the forest; some strange event was unfolding somewhere in the woods. Alvarez had also sat up on his bed. The two of them listened, their ears pricked. A most peculiar affair! What was happening outside?

As Shankar quickly switched on his torch and started to go outside, Alvarez stopped him. “Don’t go rushing out of the tent like that at night in these unknown jungles,” he said. “I’ve warned you about this many times. And where do you think you’re going without a gun?”

Outside the tent, the night was pitch-dark! Shining their torches, they both saw a sight: herds of wild animals, crashing through the vegetation, stampeding breathlessly, madly, with no sense of direction, pouring out of that terrible western jungle and heading towards the mountain in the east! Hyenas, baboons, wild buffalo. A pair of leopards bolted past, almost brushing against them. And still more came… in droves… in droves… Troops of colobus monkeys, males and females clutching their young, were fleeing. It was as if all of them were escaping for their very lives from the face of some sudden calamity!… And all the while, from somewhere in the distance, came a strange sound—a low, deep rumbling, like the growl of thunder, or as if a thousand great jaydhaks were being beaten at once!

What could it be? The two men looked at one another, both of them astounded. Alvarez said, “Shankar, build up the fire, and build it up well! If you don’t, these herds of animals will trample our tent to pieces, and us along with it!”

But the number of animals only continued to grow! Above their heads, flocks of birds were deserting their nests and taking flight. A vast herd of springbok appeared, coming within ten yards of them.

But the two of them were so dumbfounded by the spectacle that, even with the animals at such close range, they forgot to shoot. They had never in their lives witnessed such a scene!

Shankar was about to ask Alvarez a question when the cataclysm occurred. At least, that is how it seemed to Shankar. The entire earth heaved and trembled so violently that both men lost their footing and fell to the ground; at the same instant, it was as if a thousand thunderbolts had struck somewhere close by. The ground seemed to rip asunder—and the sky itself seemed to shatter along with it.

Struggling to rise from the ground, Alvarez cried out, “Earthquake!”

But in the next moment, they were astonished to see the pitch-darkness of the night suddenly disappear, as if fifty thousand electric lamps had blazed to life—but from where?

Then their gaze fell upon the peak of the distant mountain. A great conflagration seemed to have begun there. The entire horizon had turned crimson in that cataclysmic light; clouds of fire-red smoke were fountaining up from the summit, two, two-and-a-half thousand feet into the sky—and with it, a vile, acrid, suffocating stench of sulphur filled the air!

Gazing in that direction, Alvarez cried out in a mixture of fear and wonder, “A volcano! Santa Ana Gracia da Cordova!”

What a strange and terribly beautiful sight! For a time, neither of them could tear their eyes away. It was, Shankar thought, as if a hundred thousand tubri spark-fountains had been lit at once, as if a hundred thousand coloured rongmoshal flares were burning together. The cloud of red fire would sometimes dip low, then suddenly—like resin flaring up when thrown on a flame—it would erupt again, shooting a thousand feet higher. And with every eruption came the sound of a thousand bombs exploding.

All the while, the earth was trembling so violently it was impossible to stand; one could only stagger about, on the verge of falling. Stumbling, Shankar made his way into the tent—and there he saw a creature the size of a small puppy, huddled in a terrified ball on his bed. Startled by the beam of Shankar’s torch, it stared into the light, its two eyes glowing like jewels. Alvarez came into the tent, saw it, and said, “A wolf cub. Let it be. It has sought refuge with us out of fear for its life.”

Neither of them had ever seen an active volcano before; they had no idea what dangers it might pose. But before Alvarez had even finished speaking, the sound of something tremendously heavy crashing down made them rush outside the tent again. There they saw that a rock weighing some fifteen sers, glowing red-hot like a lump of burning coal, had landed on a nearby bush—which instantly burst into flames. At that, Alvarez cried out frantically, “Run, Shankar, run! Strike the tent—quickly—”

As they struggled to strike the tent, several more heavy, incandescent, fire-red rocks crashed down noisily here and there. By now, the sulphur fumes in the air were so thick that it was becoming difficult to breathe.

Run… run… run. For two hours they fled, dragging some of their belongings and carrying the rest, until they reached the foot of the eastern mountain. Even there, the smell of sulphur hung in the air. Half an hour later, the rocks began to fall there as well. They started climbing the mountain, forcing their way through the terrible jungle in the dead of night. By the time dawn broke, they had climbed two and a half thousand feet and had collapsed, panting, under a large tree on the slope.

With the rising of the sun, the terrible beauty of the eruption greatly diminished, but the noise and the rockfall seemed to intensify. Now it was not just rocks, but a very fine, grey-coloured ash that fell from the sky. Before their eyes, a thin layer of it settled over all the trees, plants, and vines.

The fiery spectacle continued unabated all day long, and then night fell again. The great hemlock forest in the valley below was completely destroyed by the brushfires and the rain of stone. With the darkness, that terrible beauty returned: for miles around, the forest and the sky, the distant horizon itself, glowed red from the fire in the mountain’s cauldron. By then, the rockfall had lessened somewhat, but the cloud of red, fiery vapour remained as luminous as before.

Sometime after midnight, the sound of a tremendous explosion shattered their slumber. They looked on in terror to see that the very crown of the burning mountain had been blown off—spreading ash, fire, and molten rock over the valley below, burying what remained of the forest. Alvarez was wounded by a flying stone. The canvas of their tent caught fire. A branch from a tall tree behind them snapped and fell, struck by a piece of rock.

Shankar thought to himself: this colossal natural cataclysm has just taken place in this uninhabited region of the forest, and had they not been here, no one would have ever witnessed it! The civilised world does not even know of this volcano’s existence, hidden in the depths of the African jungle. Perhaps, even if they told people, no one would believe them.

In the morning, it was clearly visible that the mountain’s peak had taken on a new shape, like the jagged, uneven top of a candle that has guttered in the wind. It was just as if someone had taken another bite out of a cone of kulfi.

Alvarez consulted the map and said, “This isn’t marked as a volcano. This is probably its first eruption in many, many years. But the name it’s given on the map is very meaningful.”

Shankar asked, “What is its name?”

“It is listed here as ‘Ol Doinyo Lengai’,” Alvarez said. “In the old Zulu language, that means ‘The Bed of the Fire God.’ Looking at the name, it seems the volcanic nature of this mountain wasn’t unknown to the ancient peoples of this region. It has probably been dormant for one or two hundred years since then, perhaps even longer.”

Instinctively, the hands of Shankar, a son of India, came together and touched his forehead in a gesture of pranam. Pranam, O Lord Rudra, pranam. You granted me the chance to witness your cosmic tandav; for this, O Lord, accept my obeisance. Before this manifestation of your power, a hundred diamond mines are as nothing. All my hardships have been made worthwhile.