Week 5 Storytelling: Jungle Secrets

Dear Journal,

Today was an adventure full of surprising discoveries. I started out early in the morning, right at dawn to beat the heat of the day. I wandered through the jungle to the north of where I camped last night, continuing down the scarcely-marked path I had discovered several days before and decided to follow. I noticed as I walked that I would occasionally encounter paving stones among the undergrowth as well as spot the remains of walls and markers to the side of the roadway. These once guided travelers along what I realized must have been a major route – but to where it led I could not fathom. Of all the maps and histories I have pored over, none have given any hint of even a small settlement in this part of the country, much less a location that would demand what was once a very impressive approach!

Just as I began to grow footsore and weary from the growing day’s heat, I emerged into a more open area, where a pleasantly cool breeze blew off several pools of water scattered around. It had been hundreds of years, maybe even thousands, since people had last inhabited this space, but still the jungle had not completely eradicated the loveliness of what they had built. Here and there I saw large walls, expertly constructed of some foreign stone of gorgeous color, peeking out from the vines that now entangled them. I walked towards what appeared to be the largest of these remains, locating through the vegetation a doorway I could clear with my machete. 

Journal, what I found inside was astounding! My attention caught by a spot of color shining through on the floor, I cleared the dirt and leaves – and about had a heart attack, thinking I must be about to fall into another pool of water! Even with age, the vibrancy of the painting on the floor had not faded enough to dispel the illusion. What looked so realistically like water was nothing more than a fantastic trick, a solid patch of floor designed to appear as a pool covered in lotus blossoms. I have never seen anything like it!

I continued walking through the palace, of course, for now I assumed that only a great king could have constructed something like this. There were other illusions: doorways that were solid walls, ever-flickering lamps that were no lights at all, a full garden that, when one tried to step into it, was found to be nothing more than another one-dimensional depiction. Here and there I saw glistening jewels, the remains of tall, wide marble pillars, and much other evidence of past opulence and grandeur…

On the wall behind a collapse throne, I found the inscription. It was written in a strange ancient script, but one similar enough to those I have studied for me to be able to make out most of the text. It spoke of a set of five kings and their single wife, in competition with their cousins to rule wealthy, splendid kingdoms. Each group built their own palace such as the one I was exploring, to prove to posterity their power and grandeur. A shame, I thought, that this place had so long languished in neglect. I was the first to reach it in centuries, and surely by the time the next explorer makes it this far north, the jungle will have covered any trace of this once-monument to kingly ego.

Author's Note: I was inspired this week by the palace built by the Pandavas in The Mahabharata and the envy and recreation it inspires in the jealous Kauravas. It seemed so futile to me to be this concerned with display and splendor, which will inevitably fade with time. The details of illusions were drawn from The Mahabharata as the most characteristic features of the palace the Pandavas built and the sources of embarrassment for Duryodhana (see image below).

Source: R.K. Narayan, The Mahabharata: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000). 

Image: illustration of Duryodhana falling into the water (Wikimedia Commons).