By Jeena R. Papaadi
They found him wandering, kilometres away from where he was lost. Starving, malnourished, dehydrated. Hair, like straws, rising in all directions. Unkempt. Untidy. But with stars in his eyes, and head in the clouds.
To their questions as to what had happened, where he had been all these years, he only pointed backwards to the forbidding mountains. His replies didn’t make any sense. There’s a world out there, he said. People. Lots of people. A community. Life was such a dream. A fantasy. Perfect. Ideal.
Expedition after expedition set out into the deep dark jungle, which, generations ago had been explored and abandoned as uninhabitable, unattainable. They sent their best women and men. They found nothing, no one could pass, climb or survive; nor did they see anything when they flew over, but thick green canopy.
The mountains and the forest stood firm like a wall, unnatural. Yet he persisted, and his words were met with scorn. Because, as he spoke, he giggled like a child and said, of course you will never understand. You’ll never see. You’ll never find it. That’s its beauty. That’s how it’s designed. Life is not what you think it is. You live in a fool’s paradise. They’ll never let you in. Actually, you’re in and they are out. You just don’t get it.And never will.
Everything you see is an illusion.
He was the only one to ever slip out of the Valley. That had been an accident too. He would never have returned of his own accord.
*
Months would pass before his delirium came down. He woke up gradually to the reality of who he was, where he was. As time passed, he grew more and more confused as to the time he spent in the Valley. He always called it the Valley, because that’s what the people over there did. The Silent Valley or the Shielded Valley, he couldn’t recall which.
“Do they exist, these people?” they asked.
“I—I think they do.”
He would try to explain it with theories, the well-wishers convinced him he was hallucinating, but no one could explain how he survived fifteen years in the wild. Least of all, himself.
Five years after his return, with the memory of the Valley but a dream, he set out himself to find it again, if only to satisfy his curiosity. He remembered people working, living, with animals and birds, peacefully and collaboratively. A world more naturally advanced, without the technology of this side. There was something otherworldly about it. Almost magical.
Now, back home, in control of his senses, he could feel it. He flew once again into the woods and parachuted roughly where he had crashed the last time, though the wreckage was never found. He had his gadgets, recording devices, tools, everything a human could think of. All he had to guide him was the memory of a tunnel he had passed through. He believed he could find it again.
He wandered, lost his way. When he slept, his stock of food was taken away, stolen. The bag was ripped open and the food was gone. None of the equipment was touched, they were only discarded in the search for food; some were damaged. It must have been a monkey, he concluded, although he could see none. But now he had a new problem—food.
He looked around and sensed a familiar aroma, so strong that it dislodged memories which then fought for his attention. He walked towards it. The mountain approached. Ominous, grim, hostile.
He was hit again by images, one after the other, by déjà vu, everything spiralling inside his head. He knew he was on the right track, and the reason why the others before him could not find it. Abruptly, he came across a clearing, where a shrub grew in large numbers, not exactly by happenstance, but cultivated.
He remembered this. He remembered its roots: fresh, juicy, nourishing. And the cool, low shade it provided. This—this was why he had left the Valley in the first place.
At that moment, he also realised that the Shielded Valley or the Silent People were closed to him forever. He opened his backpack and pinged his location for the pilot of the helicopter to find him and made his way to the centre of the clearing.
*
Back home, to the eagerly awaiting community—his family, well-wishers, scientists, health care professionals, and curious onlookers—he said that he had found nothing. He had lost his way, his food was stolen, and he wandered for a while and came back.
He had been gone one whole week.
Everyone was disappointed. They had been looking forward to the solution to the baffling mystery. No one noticed the same starry-eyed, head-in-the-clouds look he wore. He returned to the routine he had created for himself in this new, post-disappearance life, happier than he had ever been.
He turned down book and movie offers, interviews, documentaries, and invitations to study the forest and the mountain. He declined everything. When new expeditions were proposed, he refused to assist or guide. Leave them alone, he said. Nothing could entice him.
“Do they exist, the people?” they asked again.
“Yes, they do,” he would say with a smile, no longer any doubt in his eyes.
Every once in a while, a group would set out to find the silent, shielded Valley. They would battle the wild, and most of them would return, drained, spent, disheartened, injured. Some died. He never showed any interest whatsoever in those missions.
The unsolved mystery—and the fact that one person knew the answer and refused to divulge it—disturbed the collective human mind.
Sometimes, when alone, he would bring out the ripped backpack and settle back in his armchair. And his heart would return once again to the peace of the Valley and its People, float to the stars and kiss the clouds.
I’m not the one hallucinating. You are. All of you.
Jeena R. Papaadi is a writer based in Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram, with six published books. Her work has appeared in several publications including The Hindu, Borderless Journal, The Hemlock Journal, Dissent Dispatch, The Wise Owl, Kitaab, European Association of Palliative Care and Aksharasthree. Jeena’s published work is listed at: https://linktr.ee/jeenapapaadi
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