I had a chat the other day with Jaideep Bhattacharya @jadeepb, a twitter friend, reminiscing about our similar past, the colonial bungalows and gardens we lived in, and about the wild animals we had encountered, and thought why not write about the forest creatures of my childhood and youth. So here goes, a glimpse into my world of snakes and monitor lizards and other creatures.
During the rainy season, rains pour incessantly day and night, causing mould and fungus to erupt in green and white furry patches. Clothes remain damp, get a fusty smell. The air feels wet wet wet. The earth is clogged and saturated with water running in rivulets, which become streams, which become gushing rivers, that overflow their banks, and flood and cause havoc.
I remember at the start of the rainy seasons of being warned about watching out for snakes. For it is in this season that snakes come out from their water logged burrows. Our houses have these little jutting steps constructed at the foot of doorways which are supposed to snake-proof our dwellings. Well, they didn’t. Snakes, determined to come in from the rain, always managed to breach those snake-proofs. So it became almost second nature to look before you did anything…check behind you before you sink into that sofa in your sitting room, there could be a snake snoozing there! Watch out before riffling through your books in your study, there could be a studious snake hidden among the tomes! Do make a thorough reccy before entering your bathroom, snakes too love that sanctum sanctorum that you prize!
The coal pile outside, at the back of the house, was a favourite haunt of snakes. Coal was the fuel we used since we lived in a coal mining region, so every once a week a truck would trundle in and tip over a truckload of coal behind each house of the bungalow area. I loved to spend time mucking around there, getting myself coal black all over, much to my mom’s constant horror. Coal comes in various textures and shades of black, some soft and powdery, others hard and glittering like black diamonds. I used to hang around Rajam, our servant, when he broke the big chunks, which had come straight from the mines, into small pieces, which he then arranged, almost artistically, in the huge cast-iron oven-cum-stove in the kitchen.
Anyway, like I said, snakes too loved the coal pile, because it was kept dry under a shed, had plenty of nooks and crannies, and most of all provided almost perfect camouflage. We always had to take special care in the coal-shed, because snakes always lurked there, and not only in the rainy season.
The garden of course was perfect for snakes to loiter in. They swung greenly among the branches and only our eyes trained by experience could pick them out. They hung about in the gullies and ditches dug to collect water, probably hunting rats and squirrels, or in the summer, to cool off. While there were a great variety of kinds of snakes, from the harmless rat snake, to the poisonous krait, the most common snake we encountered was the cobra, or the naag. The common cobra is quite different from the king cobra. The cobra is mud-brown in colour usually marked with dark striations and the characteristic U-shape marking displayed on its flared hood, and is smaller than the king, though large compared to other snakes, and faster, and certainly more adventurous, since they always seemed to be about. The king cobra, on the other hand, is huge comparatively, coal black, sluggish and slow. And very shy – they were hardly to be seen. When they were spotted, they were treated with great respect and awe by us. A king can be a match, strength to strength, with a python. We found engorged, snoozing pythons sleepily digesting their meal against fallen trunks of trees in the jungle that surrounded our bungalow area. We found slewed off snakeskin, transparent, and still marked with patterns, all over the place. Sometimes I would touch them and feel a shiver run down my spine as I felt the dry smooth texture.
Where there are snakes, there are also scorpions. Another thing we were told to keep a sharp watch for. They came in all sizes and shades. From the huge, deadly looking black creatures, their sting looking like scimitars, to the little brown things that crawled into your cupboards and lurked among your clothes. Where there are scorpions, there are centipedes and millipedes, looking for all the world like trains going to some destination, when they crawled in the house or in the garden. Large black ants, red ants, small black ones, bees, wasps, dragonflies, beetles, butterflies – insects were everywhere in abundant numbers, turning sleepy hot afternoons into an opera of buzzing, droning sounds.
Where there is snake, there is mongoose. The snake is the favourite snack for the mongoose. Watching a snake and a mongoose fight beats any heavyweight championship, or a karate or judo match. They are usually equally skilled in speed and lightning strikes – the fight could go either way – fifty-fifty chance of one becoming the meal of the other.
Where there is snake and mongoose, there are lizards, of all sizes and shapes. From the quaint chameleons that changes colour according to where it happens to be, twitching its periscope eyes 360 degrees, each independently, to the huge monitor lizards.
I remember once, I must have been 8 or 9 years old, a monitor wandered into our courtyard which faced the kitchen and the dining room. Rayamallu, the cook, walked out of the kitchen, spotted it, and let out a yell. It was huge, the head flat and narrow, its forked tongue flicking evilly in and out, eyes beady, like sinister black stones stuck in its head. My mom, my brother and I ran out to see what the commotion was. Rayamallu yelled for us to go back in, and gave chase to the lizard for some crazy reason. The lizard panicked and streaked towards us, its body undulating, lifted high on all four legs – it was swift as lightning. We panicked and ran back into the dining room. The lizard made straight for my mother, the slowest, lagging behind. There was screaming, yelling, yelping. My un-athletic mom leapt up on the dining table with great agility, un-motherly-like leaving us, her kids, to fend for ourselves. We managed to jump on the dining chairs, which seemed dangerously close to the ground and to the lizard.
The lizard streaked in, stopped short, and took stock of the situation. Spotted my mother screaming and doing a panic hopping dance on the table, and reared up on its hind legs, mouth gaping, displaying rows of sharp teeth, and that deadly flickering tongue, looking massive and terrifying – like a monster from prehistory. Just then Rayamallu charged in and almost tripped over the lizard’s thick, lashing tail. Feeling ambushed from behind, the lizard turned swiftly on Rayamallu. Causing Rayamallu to turn tail and run back from where he had just come. The last we saw of the lizard was it giving chase to a fleeing Rayamallu. It was about ten minutes later that a panting Rayamallu came back and told us the lizard had disappeared into the undergrowth outside the garden.
We sat around, our hearts still thumping hard, as Rayamallu regaled us with tales of the monitor lizard. They were very powerful and strong we were told. They have this peculiarity that once their jaws lock around something, your limb, for instance, or the branch of a tree, even a mechanical crane wouldn’t be able to pull them loose. The Marattha Kings, like Shivaji, who fought many battles against the Moghul army, used them to scale the ramparts of forts built into the craggy Deccan mountains.
While much of the lore surrounding the monitor is probably exaggerated, the monitor lizard is a dwindling species, hunted by the villagers for its meat – deliciously delicately flavoured, according to Rayamallu – and also its habitat, the scrub forest, being systematically destroyed by increasing urbanisation. And so are the snake and the mongoose and other creatures.
The bear, for example. While I never saw one in our bungalow area, our watchman had a tale to tell us. But first I must tell you about the layout of the bungalow area. There were about ten or eleven bungalows that stood in a large circle along a narrow circular tarmac path, which enclosed a grassy area that contained a few trees and was used as a golf field by the golfing enthusiasts amongst my father’s colleagues, our neighbours. The path had streetlights that just about provided some light in the night. Each bungalow was provided with a watchman by the company, the Singareni Coal Mines.
Anyway, like our watchman told us, one dark night, at quite a late hour, he was feeling sleepy and so decided to take a little stroll on the path, just outside the gate. As he stepped out and wanted to light a bidi, he discovered he had no matches. It was then he suddenly saw somebody walking a little distance away in the shadows. Thinking it was the neighbouring bungalow’s watchman, wanting a match, he called out to him, and got no response. He called even louder and started walking towards the shadowy person, still got no response. In fact, the person started walking away faster. Getting suspicious, our watchman started blowing his whistle, to alert the neighbour’s watchman, and began running towards, what he was now convinced was a thief. Hearing all the commotion, the neighbour’s watchman too stepped out on the path, took one look at the speeding shadowy person, and yelling ‘bhaalu, bhaalu’ ran back in. Our watchman stopped in his tracks and watched in silence as the shadowy bear disappeared into the dark.
Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh is one of the areas where Singareni Coal Mines are located. Adilabad district also had a fair number of tigers in its jungles. While most of the time they lived deep in the jungle, sometimes they would stray into human populated areas. Singareni Collieries had started making tarmac roads, but there were many areas that had just kaccha roads, especially the ones that went through deep jungle to access remote mines, and also provided a route to other areas of the tiny town of Bellampalli, more a village, really, but was getting progressively urbanized by the coal mines. The miners that came from nearby villages needed safe roads to travel to and from the mines to their homes. Plus the officers needed safe roads too.
The senior officers were provided with cars (the ubiquitous Ambassadors) for urban use and jeeps or jongas for use in rough terrain. One night, returning home after a dinner at one of my parent’s friends’ house, we were crossing through a jungle path in our jeep. The path had a tangle of trees and brush on either side which were briefly lit as we drove past by the jeep’s headlights. Suddenly, in the distance ahead, by the path, we saw a pair of eyes glittering in the dark, catching some of the light from the headlights. We didn’t think much of it because cattle often wandered in those areas; we thought it was a cow. My Dad was driving pretty fast, as we jolted along and got nearer, suddenly the headlights picked up a sight I will never forget. Frozen in the light was a full grown tiger! My Dad braked instinctively and we came to a standstill. The tiger gave one look towards us (or the jeep) and with one swift orange and black striped flash leaped across the path and disappeared into the jungle. We were left marveling in silence. Dad shifted gears and we went home talking excitedly about what we had just witnessed.
In the summer, when we kids came home from our boarding schools in Hyderabad/Secunderabad, all of us in the bungalow area would go on night picnics, because the days were too hot. The picnic spot was usually inside the jungle, usually on the soft sand of a semi-dry river or stream bed. Because they are rain fed, the rivers and streams in Andhra Pradesh dry down to a trickle, swelling again with water with the onset of the monsoons. So, we would all set out, Moms, Dads and us kids in our jeeps and jongas and settle down on a river bed to enjoy the cool of the night lit by moonlight and stars, to sing songs playing anthakshari, of course, the aunties and uncles would chat and gossip, the women about the usual, servants, cooking, gossip about some neighbor who wasn’t present there, children, etc. The men would talk about the mines, what was happening on the promotions of each, gossip about some colleague who wasn’t present there, politics and so on. The bridge enthusiasts, which my parents were, would deal out their cards in the light of petromax lamps and call their bids, the rummy enthusiasts would sit a little distance away and get engrossed in their hand of cards, the servants would get busy making chuhlas using the dried sticks, which were plentiful there, and start cooking the picnic meal.
Sometimes, in these nightly picnics, the wild life enthusiasts in the group (including me, of course), would all climb into a jonga driven by some knowledgeable person who knew just where to find them. So, suddenly we would come to a patch of clearing and discover a bunch of spotted deer feeding in the dark. When the light of the vehicle hit them they would all look at us and stand motionless. They never ran away, just stood stock still, until we drove away, the sound of the revving engine finally making them react and flee. Or we would come across a solitary nilgai, as dark as the night, and foxes were plenty and they would sit by the narrow jungle path like tame dogs.
Many precious moments of my childhood and youth were spent watching and wondering and admiring the forest creatures that abounded. I was often scared, but there were times I could have played god with them, but kept my distance. For us in our little forest paradise teeming with snakes, lizards and other creatures, wonder and awe are what we always felt for the forest and its inhabitants, rather than regarding them as peculiar, frightening or exotic creatures. And at night, when I slept snugly in my cozy bed, enclosed in the night sounds of the jungle, the croak-croak-croak of the frogs in the streams and ponds, the constant kirrrrrrr sound of the cicadas in the dark, I would often be woken up by the sudden strange laughing call of the hyena piercing through the night, and I would listen in the dark to mysterious rustling sounds outside, wondering what creature was out there.
Though our worlds were juxtaposed, we tried not to encroach much into theirs. Though they accidentally did encroach sometimes into ours, but they always preferred to slither, crawl, or run away when discovered. Through all those years that we lived there, never have we ever been bitten. Of course we were on our guard, so there was little chance of being accidentally bitten. But accidents do happen, however careful one may be – yet not once. I do believe they were the ones that chose to leave us alone.
I live in protected urbanised surroundings now, away from the kind of nature that I grew up in, and have regrettably lost contact with it. But I am thankful and lucky that my growing years were spent close to the earth, the forest, and its myriad creatures. And all I need to go back there is to have a chat and get inspired to write about it and thus relive a time lost in my past.
-by Rita Putatunda
No comments:
Post a Comment