I wish I could turn back the clock and bring the wheels of time to a stop. That is what I felt when I looked at grandfather lying on the bed, suffering from high fever and grandmother hovering anxiously around him. Surely it was not that long ago that he was sitting with all of us cousins in his house in Siliguri, telling us tales of his adventures in the jungles as a young forest officer. How many years? Only ten years, I realized. But while I, as a twenty-year old was now discovering the world around me, he had turned eighty-two, and had increasingly become frail and home-bound. That afternoon in Siliguri, when all four of us had gone to visit our grandparents in the winter holidays, was etched in my memory and will never fade. I was just a young girl of ten at the time……….
‘Dada, please tell us your jungle tales!’
Ten year old Mili was not only pleading with her grandfather, but was also tugging at his arm.
Birendra Kumar Deb, known to all his grandchildren as ‘Dada’, was a stern and reserved gentleman. With a head full of salt and pepper hair, a military moustache and heavy-rimmed spectacles, he looked quite a figure to be reckoned with. The entire household was slightly afraid of him.
On this winter afternoon, Biren Deb had finished lunch and was lounging in an easy-chair in the balcony going through the last few pages of the daily newspaper. But in his heart there was a soft corner for his favourite grandchildren. Therefore the paper had to be kept aside. Taking off his glasses, he said,
‘Ok, tell me, didi, which story would you like to hear?’
‘Tell us the one about the elephant.’
‘Tell us the leopard one, too,’ Jeet piped up.
Oh—all of them had gathered in the balcony! Craning his neck, Biren Deb could get them all in his view. His four grandchildren had come to spend the holidays at their house in Siliguri. His daughter’s sons—Jeet and Joy, his eldest son’s daughter Bidisha and his youngest son’s daughter Mili. In all, four eager listeners. Their parents were out at the moment, shopping at a marketplace.
Dusting his memories, Biren Deb recalled his training days at the Forest Academy in Dehradun as a budding Forest Officer. After the training, he had travelled far and wide across the country for the sake of his service and had gathered a great store of unusual experience.
He looked at his grandchildren with fresh eyes. Mili, the youngest, was studying in class four. She was the keenest of the lot to listen to his stories. Next to her in age were Jeet and Bidisha, both studying in class six. The eldest, Joy, was a student of class eight. But really, growing up in cities like Delhi and Kolkata, how much of a taste will they ever get of the charms of the jungle, the dangers of the jungle! The elderly man was lost his thoughts.
‘Dada, what’s the matter? Please start’ pleaded the children, with even Joy joining in the chorus.
‘Ok, ok, I’ll start. Listen now. I had just passed the exam for becoming a Forest Officer. We were sent to Dehradun for training. We stayed in the hostel there.’
‘That’s great!’ cried Mili. ‘Did you have a lot of fun there?’
‘Listen, our hostel wasn’t a chicken coop like the ones you have. There were huge grounds, sports fields, then many rooms like in a barrack and an attached bathroom for each room. There was a common room for food. It was our training period, so we learnt a lot. How to survey a forest, test the soil, how to plant trees, and so on.’
‘Didn’t they take you to the forest?’ asked Jeet.
‘Of course. All the work was learnt in the forest. So once we were camping a little above Haldwani. That is in the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand. The jungle is beautiful there with forests of pine and cheer. We scouted and found a small clearing in the forest where we set up our camp.’
‘You mean you used to live in tents, Dada?’ Bidisha asked.
‘Yes, you couldn’t get hotels there!’ laughed her grandfather. ‘I was the orderly officer of the camp. That means that I was in charge of winding up the camp when we had to shift the camp somewhere else. I had to check that everything had been packed properly and loaded on to the mules. I also had to make sure that everyone had set off for the next camp.’
‘And did you walk to the next camp or take a mule?’ Joy was curious.
‘No I was given a mountain pony,’ replied his grandfather. ‘So, on the last day of the camp, after everything was packed, I was hurrying the others off for the next camp. Because it would be a problem of it got dark.’
‘Why, dada?’ asked Mili. ‘Why would it be a problem?’
‘There are so many animals in the forest, didi, and they come out at night. In the darkness, we may not be able to see anything, but they may attack. Anyway, I had finally started my journey to the next camp on horseback. The mountain track was very nice, a narrow track climbing among the tall pine and cheer trees. I soon felt refreshed with the mountain breeze and, in fact, it began to get cold.
After some time I noticed that my horse was going at a very slow pace. Sometimes she would stop to eat grass here and there and then just amble along, even when I tried to get her to speed up. Meanwhile it began to get dark.
Suddenly my horse started to gallop very fast. Taken by surprise, I somehow managed to hold on to the rein and kept myself on the saddle. She kept running through the forest like the wind and then all of a sudden I saw the faint glow of light far away. My heart lifted. That must be our new camp!
My horse stopped only when our camp came fully into sight. The campsite was a busy area,
a fire had been lit and was burning merrily, people were moving about, busy in their work. The pony came to a halt there, although it was panting after having run so fast.
But somehow, some doubt was nagging me. I turned around and looked at the jungle that lay in the darkness behind us. And suddenly, in the inky darkness, I saw a yellow streak jumping down from a high branch. It ran like lightning and vanished into the forest.’
‘What was it, Dada’? Jeet hazarded a guess. ‘A leopard?’
‘Yes, you have guessed correctly, my boy. That leopard had followed us all the way to the camp.’
Bidisha was surprised. ‘You couldn’t sense it at all?’
‘No, I just couldn’t.’ replied Biren Deb. ‘But the horse could smell its presence and ran like the wind to take me safely to the camp, saving her own life and mine.’
The sun by now was on its way to setting. Grandma, too, had finished her afternoon nap and had come out onto the balcony. She was a jovial person and was clearly happy to find all her grandchildren in the balcony.
‘Oh so all of you have been chatting through the afternoon?’ she asked, a wide smile wreathing her face.
Mili tugged at her Grandmother’s sari.
‘Why don’t you sit down, too? Dada has had so many adventures!’
‘Come on, all his adventures were on his own! Has he ever taken me along? Go on, ask your Dada,’ joked Grandma. Then she went on towards the kitchen, saying, ‘Let me go and see about tea. Otherwise your Dada won’t spare me. I’ll ask Laxman to make namkeen and we’ll get some pakoras. Is that ok for everyone?’
‘Yes, Dida, that’ll be great.’ Said Joy hurriedly, adding, ‘Next story please, Dada.’
‘That’s the end of the story-session,’ said his grandfather with an air of finality. ‘It’s tea-time now.’
‘Why don’t you tell them your elephant-story?’ requested Grandma.
‘You tell them. I’ll go and freshen up’. Biren Deb got up from the easy-chair and stretched his arms. Once he had been used to spending many nights in the jungle in rough terrain, and now he felt stiff uncomfortable when he sat too long at a stretch.
‘Alright. Wait, children. I shall go and get the tea.’
Soon Grandma returned with the tea, while Laxman brought the delicious snacks.
Grandma pulled up a chair and started her tale. The dusk had fallen quickly as the days were short. The crickets were chirping outside among the trees, deepening the sense of nightfall. There was a chill creeping into the air. Bidisha went up and brought jackets for everyone.
‘Your Dada was posted in Tripura at that time. There was a baby elephant who was very fond of Dada and this elephant was also very naughty. Didn’t listen to its mother at all….a little bit like all of you I suppose?’ Dida was smiling.
Mili was amazed—‘Didn’t listen to mother—what do you mean, Dida? Elephants can’t talk!’
‘Still—they, too, have to obey their mothers, as you will see from the story. One day your Dada was going out for a tour in the forest. He had put all his luggage and bedding on the mother-elephant and was travelling on elephant-back. He had a few people with him.
So the whole team set off on their way on a few elephants, with the huge mother elephant leading the way, the baby running alongside its mother. On the way, there was this river—what was it’s name? Wait, let me think…’
‘You’ve forgotten even that?’ Grandfather had returned and was aghast at Grandma’s loss of memory. ‘The river was Gomti’.
Reclining on his easy-chair, with a steaming cup of tea in hand, Grandfather picked up the reins of the story once more.
‘The water level was not very high in Gomti then, but there was current in the river. An adult elephant can withstand the current, but a baby elephant would be swept away. So the mother shields the baby against the current with her own body, and crosses the river diagonally. The baby clings to the mother’s side and crosses the river safely.
But this baby elephant was very frisky and playful. While frolicking around, it got detached from the mother’s body and was immediately swept away in the river.
Do you know what happened then? The mother elephant at once raced after her baby, dropping all of us, our luggage and all into the river in the process. We all fell into the icy water. Dripping wet, we somehow retrieved some pieces of luggage and waded ashore.
Meanwhile the mother elephant had gone further down into the river and rescued her baby. We all saw mother and baby on the river-bank, the mother kicking the baby as a punishment for disobedience!’
Dada started laughing while finishing his story, and the children, too, by then had dissolved into laughter, imagining the scene.
‘How about a final story, Dada?’ suggested Jeet, with the others backing him up.
‘Didn’t you have a pet snake some time, Dada?’ Mili threw a cue at her grandfather.
‘Yes, I did.’ Laughed Biren Deb. ‘Not any ordinary snake though, I had a King Cobra. Ok, let me end with this final story then. This, too, was in Tripura. There was a mahout in our forest range. One day one of his friends caught a huge cobra from somewhere and brought it along to me. All of you would know that a cobra is a unique snake and one doesn’t come across it easily. So as the District Forest Officer I thought that if I can present this to some zoo, that would be quite a feat.
But at that time there were no mobiles or internet like today. Communication took a long time. Till the time any zoo agreed to accept it, I would have to keep the snake. So I got a wooden cage made, a really sturdy one, with strong nails holding it firmly together. The snake was kept there and I was feeding it regularly.’
‘What is the diet for a king cobra, Dada?’
Grandfather smiled at Bidisha.
‘I doubt that you would like such a diet. Rats, hens, these are food I had to supply. But I had to keep the cage well-covered with a cloth all the time, so that people could not get to know that I had kept a King cobra as a pet.
But somehow, the villagers around the forest range got to know that the DFO had a pet king cobra and there was a real ruckus. People were boiling with anger.
Then soon one day, after finishing breakfast I had just reached my office, when my orderly came running in. He told me that the snake had escaped from the cage. And it had been seen going near my quarters.
I was thinking furiously. If by chance the snake bit someone within the Range or someone in the village outside the forest range boundary, then nobody would be able to stop me from being arrested. Because, as you must know, a king cobra’s poison is fatal.
I ran home immediately, put cartridges in my rifle, and went in the direction where the snake had been last seen. I was lucky and soon spotted it on the top of a bamboo grove, staring down at me.’
‘And then?’ Four pairs of eyes were fixed on Grandfather’s face, as he paused.
‘Then what? I took aim, fired, and with the first bullet, the snake dropped down to the ground. With the second bullet, it was all over.’
There was a collective sigh for the dead king cobra. After all, the snake was not to be blamed. Everyone was lost in thought.
All of a sudden the silence was broken by the sound of a car coming to a halt. Their parents had returned from the market. Carrying packets of all shapes and sizes, Bidisha’s mother called out to them—‘Hey, none of you wanted to go with us? We had so much fun.’
‘Yes’, agreed Mili’s mother, ‘The shopping mall here is quite nice.’
The children looked at one another. For once, they were at a loss for words. Actually, they had been lost in a green world far, far away from cities and shopping malls. It was only natural that it would take them a little while to return.