Aranyak by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay

Author:Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay [Bandyopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789354923210
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2022-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

[1]

I had spent fifteen days living in the wilds here and during this period, I had had to live just like the Gangotas or the landless Brahmins did. Not that I had a choice though, the circumstances were such. Where would I find milk and ghee and fish in the middle of these jungles? All I had to live on were rice and curries made of sponge gourd. Sometimes, the sepoys would pick wild kantolas, spiny gourds, or dig up sweet potatoes in the forest—and I had to eat them, either in boiled or fried form.

Not that there was any dearth of pheasants and peacocks in the forest though. But somehow, I did not feel like killing those birds; so, despite all the guns with us, I preferred having vegetarian meals.

There was a fear of tigers in Fulkiya Baihar though. Let me tell you what happened one night.

It was freezing that night. After a long and exhausting day, I had finished my dinner and gone to bed by ten in the night. Sometime late in the night—I didn’t know when exactly—a loud and tumultuous uproar woke me up from my deep slumber. Several men had gathered by the edge of the forest and were yelling at the top of their voices. I got off my bed and quickly lit the lantern. My sepoys had come out of the adjacent khupri by now. We were wondering what to do next when suddenly, a man came running to me and said, ‘Manager Babu, please bring your gun. A tiger has dragged a little boy into the forest.’

Less than a hundred yards from the edge of the forest, in the middle of the farm, a Gangota farmer named Domon had built a small khupri. His wife was sleeping in the khupri, along with their six-month old baby boy. To save themselves from the bone-chilling cold, they had lit a small fire inside the hut itself, and in order to let the smoke out, they had kept the door slightly ajar. The tiger must have entered the hut through this open door and taken the baby away.

But how did they know it was a tiger? Could have been a fox too. When we reached the spot though, there was no more confusion regarding the matter. On the soft ground at the base of the crop, we could clearly see the pugmarks of a fully-grown tiger.

My surveyors and sepoys were keen to avoid any rumours from being spread about our estate. They immediately began to say, ‘This animal can’t be from around here, Huzoor. It must have come from the Mohanpura jungles. Look how big the pugmarks are!’

I had to explain to them that the origin of the tiger was a point that we could debate later, and that the baby had to be found. I asked them to gather all their men and light up a few torches—we were going into the jungle. On seeing such massive and fresh pugmarks in the middle of the night, most of the men had started trembling in horror.

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