By David Solomon
Tiger tales – narrow escapes, close encounters or those where one ends ups as the big cat’s main course – always make for some gripping story-telling, some real and some imagined. The excitement of such an adventure does get a little edgier if people are perhaps sitting around a campfire, on a dark night lit up only by the stars and fireflies, somewhere along the edge of a jungle- it could be anywhere; just the right kind of scenario to stir the blood. Most people who love stories about tigers or ‘shikar’, would have at some time or the other read about the stirring exploits of British hunter, tracker, naturalist and author Jim Corbett, the greatest shikari India has ever known. Corbett, after whom the Jim Corbett National Park, Naini Tal, is named, was born to British parents on July 25, 1875. He died in Kenya on April 19, 1955.
A colleague’s recent visit to the Ranthambhor Wildlife Sanctuary and her account of a cheetah killing and devouring a deer, set me thinking about my own experiences with tigers. I must admit I’ve only seen tigers from close quarters in the Lucknow Zoo but never had an occasion to see the big cat out in the open country. Although I’ve visited the Corbett National Park on two occasions, on neither of those visits did I ever get to see even half a tiger stripe or whisker.
Tiger Country
Another place I’d visited was Dudhwa, in Lakhimpur district, Uttar Pradesh. This was regular tiger country. But here too, I never had any luck.
Once in the 1980s in Dudhwa, which by now had been turned into a rhino sanctuary, a man-eating tiger was troubling the villagers. The National Herald, where I then worked then, decided to send a reporter there for some first-hand coverage. The task fell upon Sharat Pradhan, who’d recently joined the paper.
A colleague’s recent visit to the Ranthambhor Wildlife Sanctuary and her account of a cheetah killing and devouring a deer, set me thinking about my own experiences with tigers. I must admit I’ve only seen tigers from close quarters in the Lucknow Zoo but never had an occasion to see the big cat out in the open country.
Everyone suggested he should talk to JP Misra, a bespectacled subeditor with a salt-and-pepper shock of hair, a moustache that partially hid his upper lip, completing the overall look of a crusty, old school-master. Well-acquainted with the ways of the tiger, Mishra had many marks and scars to testify to his close encounters with tigers – and other cats, too!
Accordingly, Pradhan went up to Mishra for some helpful tips. This was just the opportunity that Mishra was waiting for. In next to no time he launched himself into an endless monologue.
All Pradhan wanted to know was how would one make out if a tiger was a man-eater or not, if and when he saw one. By now Mishra was enjoying the centre-stage attention from a rapt audience, and was in no mood to keep matters brief or be interrupted halfway through. He went on with unflagging abandon about how tiger pug marks could give valuable clues whether a tiger was a man-eater or not.
After some time his unending monologue became unbearable. So I called Pradhan over to my desk and said: “Look here, old chap. With all due respects to Mr. Mishra. I have a very straightforward solution to your queries”. All eyes and ears turned towards me.
A Simple Formula
Then I said my piece. “If the tiger should decide to eat you in one gulp, you will immediately know that it’s a man-eater. And if he doesn’t eat you, you’ll know for certain it’s not a man-eater”.
After a split-second of stunned silence, the entire newsroom exploded in guffaws of laughter, Mishra kept glowering at me, his face growing redder by the minute. I imagined he might just pounce on me much like an almost maddened, man-eating tiger, so I bolted from the room, not waiting to find out what could’ve happened in the next few minutes.
Anyways, Pradhan did go to Dudhwa, though he never came face to face with that man-eater, so he never got to test my formula.
Tiger in the cornfield
Another tiger story concerns a buddy of mine by the name of Promit Roy; we were neighbours in Lawrence Terrace. He was one of those compulsive yarn-spinners. And this one concerned his Dad, a Colonel in the army. No one was allowed to interrupt because this was after all just a yarn and in that anything and everything was possible. So this is how his story would go: “One day my Dad went on a ‘shikaar’ in a nearby village at the edge of a forest. But all his efforts to find big game were in vain and all his ammunition was spent shooting some miserable green pigeons”.
After a deep breath Roy continues: “As dusk was nearing, my father decided to take a shortcut home through a cornfield. After walking some distance he suddenly came upon a tiger eating, corn on the cob (‘bhuttas’). Both man and beast were surprised to see each other.
But before the tiger could spring upon him, my father stopped the beast dead in his tracks with his words of admonishment.
He roared in his loudest bass voice: ‘Tiger, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! You are the King of the Jungle and you are eating ‘bhuttas’.. The poor beast was so mortified that he fell down, right there and then, and died of shame”.