I had never heard of Pantanal before I started reading this book. Why should I? It isn’t associated with anything that would catapult it in the Breaking News of the day. No genocides, no bomb blasts, no globe-impacting financial catastrophes, no oil – it’s just one of the few remaining places on earth where Mother Nature still rules. In fact, until the last page of the book accidentally flipped open to reveal the Author’s Note I had happily assumed that it’s a fictional place. :-)

And it has plenty of things to make it appear like a fictional place in this day and age of global warming – a sense of timelessness as the life gently floats on the many rivers that appear identical even in daytime, lakes fed by tribunaries, alligators waiting in the swamps, anacondas lying about in the sun, storms that appear out of nowhere and tiny tribal villages where the tribals roam unconcerned about their nudity. I can understand why Nate has hard time believing that he really is where he is. In his shoes, I would have assumed I have managed to slip through some tear in the fabric of time in an era long gone by. There are times when I envy him for his getting away from it all – even if it means having to eat black beans and rice as the Menu of the Week!

As someone who believes in rebirths, I find it odd that the lifestyle of the tribals should seem so alien to me. Who knows, I might have been there and done it all in some past life now hidden in the mist of time. And yet, despite being born and brought up in a city I have always felt an irresistible pull from the mountains and the forest. Who knows, we might be maintaining a link to our past lives through the likes and dislikes developed through centuries of existence. An unbroken thread of life and death! An old song heard sometime when I was a child says – one thread of happiness, hundred threads of grief make the cloth that is human life.

And so when next time the life in the city becomes a burden, when the traffic jars on the senses, when the stress feels like the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back and when I decide to go on a virtual vacation, I will find myself in Pantanal. I will see myself traveling in a rundown boat, swinging in the hammock, watching the river float by, miles and miles of water without another human being in sight - no deadlines, no hurry. I will see myself eating a simple meal of black beans and rice, drinking sweet coffee from tiny cups, watching the sun set across the horizon - the only sign that another day has rolled by. And then I will see myself in the primeval village of the natives, in simple huts with straw roofs, smoke curling upwards, children playing about in the village square, people settling down to their last meal of the day just before the darkness rolls over the village, everyone going to bed as the world beyond disappears in inky blackness – just as their ancestors did centuries ago.

But I could do without the anacondas :-)