Life on the fringe of a pine forest
Desh Bir
After the age of four, the next station named Kangoo where I was destined to grow and learn about life, formal education and my surroundings was a town-village located on the fringe of a pine forest. There were a dozen shops and an equal number of houses, three school buildings, a dispensary, a panchayat ghar and a rosin store situated along half a mile stretch of road. In short, towering pine trees, pine cones, pine wood as timber and fuel, scent of pine pollens and dry pine needles pervaded the place inescapably.
We came to live in a rented house, traditionally occupied by all preceding Headmasters, only a hundred yards from the High School which was father’s workplace. That chunk of forest, starting right from the backyard of the High school sprawled in an area of nearly twenty square miles and was dotted with sparsely populated villages of 10-12 houses each.
As gathered from stories, we had come to associate the forest with wild life and here we were completely surrounded by it. It took me about a year to dispel my scare of jungle and that was because I found all others of my age feeling normal.
The howl of jackals in the evenings was a normal sound. So were the peacock screams almost day in and day out. An occasional bark from the barking deer would startle us. Yet we got used to it. Those were not days of protected wild life. Local hunters would shoot hare, boars, porcupines, partridges, jungle fowl and even barking deer for meat. Once they brought a pangolin for a feast and its very look evoked a kind of strange feeling.
We were told that the forest was home to leopards. It was also said that leopards kill dogs, sheep, goats and wild animals for food. All said, they were dreadful kings of that forest. I used to be mortally afraid, all the time fearing that I might face such a gory animal any day. Yet, that never happened. Rather, we children got a chance five or six times to really see a dead leopard when local hunters would retaliate by shooting the one that victimized the sheep , goats and dogs of the villages around.
That was not an age of electric supply. Therefore, the summer nights left us with no option but to lay charpoy-beds in the open in the front yard of the house sans any boundary wall. Lanterns or table lamps were the only feeble means of light at night. Imagine on such nights hearing the grunts of a leopard at a distance of half a mile. While parents showed no visible signs of fear, I would tremble to my core.
Yet, there was the unspoken assurance that there were parents who would let no harm comes to me and siblings. So, we children would lie on the central charpoys while parents would occupy the last ones on either extreme. We felt sure that they were our unfailing guards whom the leopard would never dare harm. With such consoling thoughts and trembling guts did we go to bed on bad summer nights?
(The author is a Retired Principal Govt. College, Hoshiarpur (Punjab).
