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Literary Review
Encounters with the self
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Most nature and wildlife writing in India is issue-based. Walks in the Wild is refreshingly different, says RANJIT LAL.
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NATURE and wildlife writing in India has so far been largely issue related, such as those on Project Tiger, or on the vexed question of people vs. protected areas, or the illegal trade in wildlife, and so on. Most of such writing, while very necessary, is also rather ridden with doom and gloom, and for anyone with a nascent interest in matters of the wild, can be pretty discouraging. Prosenjit Das Gupta has redressed the balance a bit, in his Walks in the Wild, and should encourage many a nature lover to just hoist his rucksack and take off for the magnificent jungles of India. In his walks in the wild Das Gupta has covered pretty much the length and breadth of India, from the evergreen rainforests of the east, to the arid areas of the west, from the Himalayan jungles to the shola forests of Kerala. Being based in Kolkata, his forays to the eastern parts of the country have been more frequent and "thorough" than those to other parts of the country, which personally, suited me fine, as my knowledge of these areas was severely limited. It is nice to know that there are still trees that soar a hundred feet high in Indian jungles, and forests where the only way forward is by hacking with a dao.
From the beginning one thing stands clear: wild animals in their natural habitat have to be taken with all seriousness and given due respect. In encounter after encounter Das Gupta describes the fear of meeting wild elephants, rhino and tiger on their own turf and terms. Anyone who thinks that walking in the jungles is like taking a walk in the local park had better think again. This is one aspect many "nature writers" have either glossed over or ignored — perhaps not wanting to seem like wimps. But Das Gupta has been charged at by elephants, snarled at by tigers, nearly rammed by a rhino and even has had a macaque fall on his head. The fear he says is gradually overcome by learning to understand the ways of the animals. Even so, every walk in a jungle where wild elephants, rhinos, buffalos or tigers roam, is a tense experience, even if you do have an armed forest guard along with you. It is perhaps this very tension that compels one to return to the jungles time and time again. That, and the enjoyment of sitting in a machan (which, once, an elephant investigated with the top of its trunk trying to catch scent of the author crouching inside!) and watching the animals come to water, or simply sundowning in the verandah of a forest rest house overlooking a chaur full of deer and nilgai and wild boar.
Some of the parks and sanctuaries covered include Palamau, Betla, Simlipal, Manas, Kaziranga, Bandavgarh, Corbett, Dudwa, Ranthambhor, Bharatpur, Mudumalai, Nagarahole, Bandipur and Chilka — and I must admit, the list made me go a bit green! The "walks" cover a period mainly between the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, a period during which, tourist infrastructure in these places developed considerably. This, as always is a very mixed blessing, as yet the majority of Indians visiting the parks and sanctuaries think that these places are picnic grounds or funfairs.
Apart from roaming the jungles and photographing wildlife, fishing is the other great passion of the author, and he has described several blissful fishing trips taken with like-minded companions. Now, of course fishing has been banned from protected areas of the country.
Of the several hair-raising encounters described, two stand out: the first being stranded by a broken-down jeep in the Khasi hills and having to walk through the jungle with no armed escort to the nearest road, and the second, having a machan investigated by a suspicious elephant, while the author crouched inside "quiet as a mouse" not six feet away. It's best to remember this when you are next close to an elephant to get a proper sense of the power of the animal and the sheer vulnerability of yourself.
A major objective of the author's forays into the jungle was to take pictures, and the text is illustrated with eight black and white plates. However it is time that publishers saw to it that plates reproduce well, and don't make the photographs look as though they've been processed in chemicals well beyond their use before dates. It does the author and photographer an injustice.
Das Gupta's style is largely documentary, lifting beyond this from time to time with an unconscious ease. The friends and companions on his trips remain more or less background figures as it were, and I wish there had been more dialogue to enliven his interactions with the forest guards that he met in the course of his trips. But yes, by the time you reach the end you want to toss the book into a rucksack and take off to the jungles to, as Das Gupta put it, "find out who you are and what you stand for".
Walks in the Wild, Prosenjit Das Gupta, Penguin Books, 2002, p.315, Rs.250.
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