Rekindling of a Childhood Thrill !!

For some weeks I have been getting to know from dear friends and cousins intriguing stories and experiences of forests and jungles of the deep African greens.

African jungles have always held my imagination captive as my childhood years were strewn with bed-time stories of the mysteries of the forests and wilds of Africa. My father would narrate these stories in his full oratory skills, voice modulating with each story making the stories most interesting that could keep his little girl stay with him in the 'moshari' set up on the 'khatia' in the lawns of Tagore Town, all dark around, eucalyptus tree gently swaying in the summer breeze making the scenario just right to fit in my imaginations. I lay spell bound hearing these stories, gulping down every bit of it in my whole head. My mother, too, contributed in building up this attraction for jungles and its wild life with their adventures, from her endless collection of jungle stories that adorned her small library at home; but to this she added her real life experiences, as her childhood was in the jungles of Panna...the Panna of Madhya Pradesh about a century back...tigers snakes scorpions were common features in her stories.

Baba's stories were intriguing but Ma stories appealed more to the child in me as they were real life experiences. This fascination for the jungles took deep roots in me and the child in me remained as a child within a person who went advancing in years far from the world of the stories of lions and tigers and jungles. This child in me is there still, as I feel its childish presence each time by blood curdles in excitement when hearing such tales.

As Ma's real life stories appealed more to my mind then, I developed a fascination for the city of Panna....and I got a chance to visit the city at a very early age with my mother and my Mama(elder brother of Ma). For me that visit left a picture indelible through the years, the feel of all the stories that I had heard from Baba and Ma evolved to reality in my visit to the city.
Yes it was all jungles and dark, no electricity then too, a mysterious silence all around that deepened every evening as the sun set and like waves from distance the roars of tigers, hyenas came in from all sides. I remained rapt in fear and fascination to all this around me.

My Mama would take me roaming in the jungles in the early afternoons, with strict instructions from all elders in the house that he should bring me back before it was dusk, a restriction that added to the eerie feeling present in the air there.

I would see dark caves on mountain sides with water trickling from unknown sources of waterfalls, baboons screeching and swinging from trees looking at me as intruder in their world. I would clutch on to my Mama's finger and walk over the dried bed of leaves that rustled with each step of mine, making my fears rise with each crackling. Mama would help me walk carefully, lest I tread over some hole of those black scorpions or a deeper hole, the abode of the black cobra; that these reptiles were thickly thriving there, was easily possible as I could see dried skin of these reptiles hanging flimsily from branches or spread out as a narrow path all along in the bed of dried leaves, as perhaps the cobra shed its skin and moved away. It was all so real to see that I almost lost sense of breathing or hearing. The damp smell, the heavy scent of the damp greenery all around seemed to sap me up when a sudden clearing of all density showed a more fearful picture in front. It felt as if all had been cleared for some royal presence, some home, of may be, the ruler of the jungle, but no, the elites do not make themselves visible to the common eye, but that it was his haven was clearly made felt as in front, in a shallow big pit lay half eaten bodies of cows, wild goats in pools of fresh blood, the limbs half torn were strewn haphazardly all over....the gaping mouths of the bodies formed a pathetic sickening picture. It was broad day light, the sun had crossed for the afternoon bend, it was golden twilight, a fearful silence everywhere...I remained dumb, a sick nauseating choke was throttling me when Mama said this was last night's kill and the tiger would return tonight to complete his meal. This was no guided tour nor any planned kill from a machaan, it was just as the jungle sees it perhaps every night when the painful cries of the helpless prey goes tearing through the silence of the forests while the lord devours and satiates himself.

Mama took his turn for home, while I holding on to his finger and many a backward glance moved out with him.

I was a very small child then and Ma often remained amazed at my memory of that stay in Panna, how vividly the picture remained with me through all the years. Panna was for me a small patch of Africa.

Today a very dear and close to my heart companion gave me a line from TV news that Panna has only one tiger left in its thinning jungles...such a report at once brought out this story from a child's heart that lay dormant in me for so many years and I could live through it all over again. I thank my friend for re-kindling the thrill of those young years.