Picture this; a dark black sky, a sky as black as the darkest tar, all around you are tall trees the shortest of which is over 10 feet tall casting strange shadows on the ground. The undergrowth's visible just as a blur against the general darkness. This is topped with a touch of cold, yes it's misty and the temperature's hitting a number in single digits! And you're walking through this veritable darkness, three men. Shared among the trio is a torch and a shotgun with pepper shot, harmless if you've got a thick coat of fur!
Your quarry for the night is armed to the teeth, literally! The wild boar has terrible tusks, and a nasty temper to add to it. They're reknowned to have despatched tigers, so you can just about imagine...
And what are we having to do with the wild boar? Eh, i told you this before; we're going to drive them out of the estate. Us bang bang, them shoo shoo! Clear...?
You'd love to know who all were there for the hunt, well it was me, Ashwin and Dr.Javid. Dr.Javid had driven them out on occasions before, so he was cool, i had been scouting in forests even in the dark for years now, so i had to be fine, but Ashwin was the only one who could rightfully say he was afraid. Guess what? Ashwin learnt his first lesson in stalking that night. Despite this being his first night out on a scouting trip, he fared better than some people i knew with much more 'experience' in hunting...
Not a word was shared between us, as we silently made our way through the forest scanning carefully on both sides with the torch. If the wild boar were to appear, they'd appear as small red beads in the dark. The red colour being reflected off their eyes by the light! Oh yes, just in case you forgot, it was night time, much before 03:00 am, and according to the jungle clock, this was peak business hour! Wild bison, elephant and deer namely sambur and 'barking' deer graze about in the clearing occasionally coming down to drink at the water hole. Here their predator, the leopard or tiger lies in wait to make a meal of the unwary!
The estate was flanked by rich forest on both sides, so we were navigating through a kind of a forest 'highway'! Time passed, and there was not a sign of life on either side of this 'highway'! Maybe it was just too cold for them to move out, maybe...
We reached the clearing where the boar had dug up the field and we thoroughly scanned the place. At first, i got a pair of eyes peering back at the torchlight, but was lost soon enough. Two whitish orbs of light were reflected off the torch's beam. Maybe it could be a jackal, or a leopard, or something else, God alone knows. The hunt was off!!
The doctor told us of an incident where a woman visiting the estate like us was once 'wiped out' by a wild boar. Wipe out in this context means the wild boar simply pushed her off its path when it found her blocking its path in its attempt to flee! Not a deliberate attack, but the wipe out was performed with those deadly tusks, and she was raked by the boar, and was badly hurt. I was just imagining wild boar to be put up in a bush or a thicket ahead, and when we pass by it to rake me as well! Fantasy, my love, fantasy! The brain can do wonders when you're afraid, and that's precisely when you make a fatal mistake! Stay calm, and you'll probably survive without a scratch...
Ashwin all this while was perfectly okay except that he wanted me watch over his back, which was remarkably cool for a first timer in terms of courage! And so, after a good 20 minutes walk about, we came back home to our comfy bedspreads. Phew, enough for a day i guess!
After this was yet another day's worth of birding, a brief siesta at the Harley Falls, and some more lovely coffee and delicious chow!
If you're thinking this was a pure adrenaline, man thing kind of an adventure, you aren't totally wrong, but we did have something intelligent to do as well! The doctor was a pro-environment person just like us, and so over cups of coffee, we discussed as all environmentalists do; lament over the destruction of the forest, destruction of its inhabitants, how do we handle this burgeoning pressure on the environment, et cetera, et cetera...
On the eve of our last day at Sakleshpur, the doctor set up his telescope in the middle of the coffee plant, a place where the coffee is dried before being sent for roasting. Guess what, he had a really good knowledge of the astronomical bodies watching over us.
Did you know that there are just about a billion, billion stars in our galaxy, and that our galaxy's just one among God knows how many. The stars we see are nothing but images of theirs what they were millions of years ago, their light's millions of years old, and we don't know whether they're there or not. Out in this vastness, Earth's just a small pinhead, and we're living on this pinhead...
Creatures living on a pin head, and we think we're masters of the universe? Fuck off buster...
After a good while observing the Orion's belt, the Betelgeux, and the Milky Way not to mention other important galaxies and stars, the clock struck 11:00 pm. Time to get going so as to catch the 12:00 am express to Bangalore for me, and the 02:00 am train to Mangalore.
Adieu Sakleshpur, adieu doc, until we meet again.
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| The bungalow at Cullerhully Ayn Coffee Estate |
P.s: Obama never lost his fear and hatred for us, although Michelle became pretty pally with us! Obama was rather happy to see us go...
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