The Wildest Sport of All Read online

  When in Adhnala on this particular trip, I and a few others were out looking for big game on elephants and scouting our surroundings in the routine manner. In our search for spoor and spots in the forests that promised to make our trails cross with our vaunted quarry, we happened to wade our elephant across to the other side of the river. The strangeness of the scene that we stumbled upon, once across the river, compelled the mahout to stop our elephant. A dead and withered vulture lay crumpled in the tall grass and just a dozen metres beyond the skeleton of what had once certainly been a fine cow or bull. Our curiosity was now fully aroused and those elusive stirrings of hope that too often flag were incensed, since tigers are known to kill vultures that come around for titbits in utter disregard of the striped killer’s presence or the grisly repast it might be engaged in. I told the wary mahout to take the elephant forward into the tall dense clumps of grass as it was imperative now to know the true causes of the bird’s and the cow’s deaths. We had gone further into the grass, hardly twenty metres from the cow’s skeleton, when a full-grown tiger’s skin, in a state of total stinking deterioration, was seen to be lying conspicuously on the ground. The absence of any skeletal bones or flesh below the dead and dull striped coat seemed still stranger. As we proceeded further, our minds perplexed with what our elephant was coming across, each amongst us was searching carefully for clues to solve this mystery. Suddenly two tiger cubs were sighted, lying dead like the others, upon the ground a little apart from each other. They seemed gracefully asleep, for this time the skeletons under what had once been furry, striped bodies, were intact. But the dead cubs’ coats were rotting and this deterioration in their skins clearly indicated, as it had in the case of the full-grown tiger skin we had just left behind, that quite a bit of time had elapsed since their deaths. The fact that the bodies of the cubs, unlike the adult tiger’s corpse, were more-or-less intact only deepened the mystery of the situation.

  Needless to say, this series of seemingly unconnected events, occurring one after the other in disquieting succession, had a confounding effect on most of us that were atop the two shikari elephants. So mystified were we that forgetting all else, we spent the remaining hours of that day in scouring the jungle of elephant grass, looking for some clue or a crucial connection to, and between, the dead things we had come so unexpectedly across. But the jungle, housing big and small secrets, maintained its characteristic inscrutability and innocence, and remained grimly silent about itself, as always.

  In retrospect, I can only find two possible explanations for these unnatural series of deaths. But let me hasten to add, none of them entirely satisfies me. I remember the long time I spent in trying to deduce what, luckily for us, proved correct. The big cat – probably a tigress – had killed a buffalo or a calf and some dastardly unwitting poacher, quick to take advantage of the proffered chance, had lethally poisoned the tigress’ kill, thus killing the tigress, whose skin without bones we had seen, along with her two cubs and the vulture. But why only one dead vulture? These scavengers rarely feed singly. Whole hordes of them swarm around a carcass at the very first opportunity, and if the tiger, or tigress, had chanced upon them in the act of filching from the kill, a deadly blow from the killer’s forepaw would certainly be enough to deter them. So this solitary vulture’s death could have come about in this way and the few other vultures that the tiger might have injured while chasing to scare them off its kill could have died elsewhere in the jungle. Then again, there should have been, in that case, their broken feathers lying about the place, especially in the vicinity of the dead one. Of course, there was none. The obvious uncertainties only deepened the mystery, with no clues to our findings. And why had the poacher abandoned his prized trophy, the tiger skin? Could he have buried the beast’s skeleton then? There were no signs to indicate that jackals and hyenas had pulled it apart to eat and chew the bones, for they invariably leave a trail of unfinished bits and pieces.

  The second possible solution to the unending questions that spring to mind about this singular episode is that a male tiger could actually have killed the buffalo, or cow, and on returning to finish its meal could have found the vulture feasting off the kill. It seems possible that the tiger could have killed the vulture, and also the tigress and its two cubs, who unluckily chanced upon the hungry tiger as it came to finish off the kill. But there were no claw-marks on the bodies off the cubs, or on the dead vulture. Hence, our first explanation was more plausible. It seemed more a case of poisoning. A poacher could have done it, but since the tigress’ skin was found abandoned, it is entirely possible that a vengeful cattle herder, whose cattle the tigress and the cubs must have habitually troubled, could either have put poison in the tigress’ kill, thus killing her and the cubs when they ate off it. The equally decomposed state of the full-grown tiger’s skin, and of the cubs as well, testified to the fact that the time of their deaths was the same, or very close to each other’s. But the full-grown skin’s missing skeleton still defies explanation – as does the absence of any more dead vultures or of claw and violent marks on the dead bodies of the cubs. The dead buffalo or cow’s skeleton too posed its own questions: Why were the bones completely intact? Whatever was consumed from it might not have been eaten by a tiger at all. But then, by what? Was it eaten at the time of its death, or before the death of the others, or afterwards? Strange, indeed, are the ways of the jungle.

  None of the explanations satisfies me. It was uncanny to come suddenly across a dead vulture, the skeleton of a buffalo or cow, a tiger or tigress skin and two dead tiger cubs, all in an astonishingly limited area of the jungle.

  Some might doubt the credulity of these two episodes, especially the first one about Ram Singh’s encounter with three or four tigers. I have only this to say in my defence. I do not seek fame as a hunter of big game, as the time and fashion for that is long gone. At the risk of gaining notoriety and censure, I render these true incidents for your scrutiny in the hope of paying off that debt that each living being, especially human, owes to posterity, particularly where the past is concerned. As the British monarch, George VI, had once said, ‘The wildlife of today is ours to dispose of as we please. We have it in trust. We must account for it to those who come after.’ So abide by me in the faithful rendition of these accounts. Let me assure you that Ram Singh could not have fabricated the events of that night simply for our listening pleasure. That pitiable bunch of nerves that the poor gun-boy had been reduced to when we came on elephants to relieve them the next morning seemed to speak for itself. Ram Singh was an experienced shikari to whom the jungle had always been a second home and shikar, second nature. Shikaris are usually of this ilk, with great abilities and astounding courage. To lie, or look scared about the night that had just passed, was not Ram Singh’s style.

  One shikari whom I came across in a different part of the country, amongst other relatives, was even known by the nickname ‘Tiger’ – for his uncanny ability, despite all dangers, to seek out tigers for his guests to successfully bag. This shikari had once happened to take out a party of foreigners, and his experience, as also his reaction to the outing that night, are worth recounting.

  His guests that night were a platoon of British Tommies with a very drunk senior officer in command of the ‘night-shooting’ expedition for which they had forcibly requisitioned the famed, though totally unwilling, services of the said shikari. After they had got hold of him from his hut in a village on the forest’s outskirts, they all proceeded into the jungle. The power wagon in which they had come crammed enthusiastically bristled with spotlights, light machine guns, machine pistols and Enfield rifles. The Tommies were roaring drunk and the shikari’s head ached with thoughts of when, and in what condition, he’d ever get back to his quilt and home. One hammering thought on his mind was to keep himself unscathed from all those loaded weapons that kept waving around him, the other was to get some order into this unruly mob. But the Tommies’ sole intention, as their vehicle moved closer to the hunting grounds,
was to throw out the liquor bottles as they emptied, and order him in no uncertain terms to get them shikar for the burra-khana, or grand feast, scheduled to be held at the Mess a few days later.

  The shikari, apprehensive of the ridicule that might hurt his touchy sense of honour should they indeed return empty-handed, took pains to direct the drunken company to take their ponderously noisy vehicle into a part of the jungle where he knew they would certainly come upon spotted deer and sambar stags. These sahibs would relish nothing more, or less! Luck was with them, and in the very first clearing beside the jungle track, a spotlight being wielded from the top of the wagon illuminated a family of half-a-dozen sambars browsing contentedly, unmindful of the mechanical roar of the power wagon that struggled to slow down near them. All but clutching the drunken driver around his warmly wrapped throat, the shikari managed to get the hurtling power wagon to stop a dozen metres down the road from where the sambar had been. Luckily, the enthusiastic Tommies in the back of the truck had seen the animals and held them dazzled under an array of spotlights as the vehicle was made to reverse. The senior officer woke up from his sozzled stupor to realize that game was afoot. He swore, as the wagon ground backwards over the broken track, at his platoon to shoot, and shoot fast. The shikari, who had been with his employers since boyhood, was used to a different modus operandi. Sensing what was about to happen, he cowered down in the rush and covered his ears as the guns opened up from all around him. Snapped out of the momentary clutch of raw fear induced by the mind-rattling cracks of the rifles and the automatic weapons, he peeked in the direction of the clearing where the sambar had been so conspicuously standing, exposed under all those beams fully to view. Six of them and one, a veritable king of stags. Imagine his chagrin and surprise when only the emptiness, in which the bullets being fired from beside him tore up the dust, was all that greeted his eager gaze. He couldn’t help seeing the withers of one animal as it vanished into the dark jungle behind the rest of the getaway herd. Without a thought for his personal safety in the midst of that irresponsible pack of merry soldiers, the shikari mustered up his broken vocabulary of the Queen’s English. Turning to the lolling officer, he said scathingly, ‘Major, if this is the way you shoot, I will take on the whole British army single-handed!’

  Not so long ago, a series of mystifying events occurred in the few villages that lie along the northern boundary of the Jim Corbett National Park, an area I have extensively hunted through in the old days. When I first heard of this occurrence, I laughed and found it frankly outrageous, but I sadly neglected to confirm the facts. However, so convinced was Negi, the intrepid little forest guard who told me the tale, that I feel sorely tempted to recount his story.

  The national park officials began to receive sporadic reports from harassed groups of villagers that a tiger, or leopard, had been attacking their cattle sheds to lift calves and goats while sparing the larger bulls and cows. But there were no reports of cattle being snatched from the open pastures or even when grazing in the forest. Hence the authorities paid little heed to the complaints. In the meanwhile, the cattle-lifter continued with its depredations, killing infrequently but still adding to the villagers’ woes. Rendered helpless by laws and strictures that forbade the killing of tigers or leopards, even in self-defence, the villagers were left utterly at the killer’s mercy. Official apathy to their plight only heightened their perpetual insecurity. Before long, an element of dread crept into their minds as they gradually perceived that the marauder’s method of breaking into the cattle sheds and then snatching away a victim was indeed uncanny and scary. It always seemed to come at the dead of night to strike with unerring stealth, for no one had ever seen it. All that the unfortunate owner was fated to find in the morning was an irregular hole torn through the thatch or rafters of the cattle shed’s roof and an empty place at the stake from which a calf or goat would be missing. The killer seemed to enter through the hole in the roof that it tore out first and then exited through the same aperture a few moments later with its hapless victim. This unique method gave rise to some serious speculation amongst the villagers, as no one had ever heard of or seen such a thing before. The lack of any pugmarks around the sheds that had been attacked only served to further accentuate the mystery.

  Then, one morning, pugmarks were sighted on the stony soil near the thatched wall of a cattle shed which the killer had scaled or leaped over to get to the roof and so make its entry. They seemed to belong to a small tiger. There were only one set of paw prints on the ground, probably those of the hind feet, but at that moment no one paid much heed to this unusual fact. The relieved villagers, now that they knew their tormentor to be mortal, got together some guns and began to mount guard on their cattle. Despite their vigilance, the cattle-lifting continued, for the alert killer switched from attacking cattle sheds to killing strays and stragglers, even as those village cattle and goats were being tightly herded by their owners.

  In effect, the menace of this phantom tiger, which had showed no signs of moving on, loomed larger than ever in the minds of the concerned villagers. Deprived of easy pickings from amongst their wary herds, this cattle-lifter could now begin to hunt humans. Many lives would be lost, once this began to happen. The depredations of this man-eater-in-the-making would shatter the peace of the village before the forest authorities roused themselves to take measures. Raw fear began to grip the minds of the community and the villagers began to call and hold large prayer-cum-talk meetings in an effort to solve the problem. In the meantime, the killer continued to take its toll of the sheds and the grazing herds every fortnight or so.

  Then, at one of these community gatherings, a villager, his voice quavering with uncertainty, got up to speak when all was silent. His voice broken at first with suppressed emotion and guilt became firmer as he began to tell an astounding tale. At first he berated the assemblage for not giving a certain holy mendicant his honorary due and reminded them of how, instead, they had all reviled the yogi when he had first come amongst them. Spurned, the yogi had taken up his abode in a mossy cave on a thickly-jungled hillside some distance away from the village. The assembly, so reminded, seemed to recall the holy man whose austerities had indeed appeared strange to them. Since none had seen the yogi for quite some time now, a few villagers interrupted the speaking man to ask what had become of the person. The anger in the man’s voice seemed to abate and was replaced now by self-reproach as he continued to speak.

  ‘Like all of you, I too did not believe that he had any special powers. But, unlike you, I never made fun of his needs. I took to spending much time near his hill-abode. I watched him and occasionally brought him food. But seeing him sit, day in and day out, in his usual trance, I frankly expressed my doubts and asked him one day to exhibit some of his powers to me. He seemed to grow angry at my request but when I persisted with my pleas, he relented. Asking me to fetch a cloth bundle from the recessed hillside that was his cave, he opened and extracted two objects from it. He handed me one. I saw it was an irregularly shaped small piece of some apparently common type of wood. The other he retained in his fist. Asking his permission, which he reluctantly gave, I examined the object in his hand and saw quite clearly that it was a small piece of wood of a colour I had never seen before. The holy man told me that he was going to swallow what was in his own hand and that, after a while, his body would undergo a transformation. The condition he imposed was that under no circumstances was I to get frightened by what I saw and come what may, I would have to make him swallow, as quickly as possible, the wooden piece I held close to my palm, once I had seen him change. Eager to see what would happen to the yogi and half-disbelieving it all, I agreed. Sadly, I did not pay much heed to what I was supposed to do.’

  The villager paused in his narration and looked around at the baffled faces of his audience confronting him. Then he began to

  speak again.

  ‘The yogi put his hand to his mouth and glancing finally and meaningfully at me, gulped down the wooden piece h
e held in his own bony fingers. Then he gradually went into a deep trance and within minutes his skin changed colour. Striped animal fur appeared over his scalp, as his facial features changed. Ghastly fur, the tiger’s stripes and whites, thickened perceptibly on his neck, while his face swelled, mouth opened unnaturally wide, and inch-long fangs seemed to emerge from that ever-widening maw. Petrified, I sat looking as the yogi, then stood up. His face was now entirely a tiger’s unforgettable, horrifying face! Neck downwards, he appeared hairlessly human but his feet, calves included, had certainly changed into the hind paws of a tiger’s. His hands were growing larger before my transfixed eyes as they changed into a tiger’s forepaws, complete with claws and pads, reminding me of my all-important part in this transformation deal. Jaws gaping wide with the fiercest of expressions in those slanted, tigerish eyes, the yogi came towards me. My nerveless fingers had apparently long ago dropped the piece of wood that he had explicitly told me to feed him, or rather force into his mouth. Of course, I had absolutely no idea of the transformation I had triggered or of the events that would follow! Forgetting the yogi’s instructions, because I had erased every thought in my mind excepting immediate escape from this approaching apparition, I bolted and ran, stumbling down the hillside. Dazed by what I had seen, my mind still refused to believe my eyes. If only I had retained sense enough to put that piece of wood into the yogi-tiger’s open mouth when he came towards me – perhaps swallowing that object would have restored him to his human shape. But I left him hurriedly near his cave, roaring madly, a half-tiger, and none of this cattle-lifting would have occurred if I had indeed fed him that piece of wood. It is him, that very same yogi whom none of you regarded as genuine, that very same mendicant who is now no longer a mere man but a fierce tiger, who has been killing your cattle and goats. That is his life now. He might begin to hunt you all too.’