B A G H D U M A

It is an incident that I had experienced at Koraput during the year 1975-76 while I was a student of DAV college during the principalship of Captain P. K. Satapathy. Now I can never be assured about our Captain Sir's whereabouts nor his living status. During that golden period mutual bond of our friendship among our classmates was so strong enough cordially that we can never expect the same amid this modern atmosphere now. If we long for,it may be a fool's paradise at the present juncture.

However, one of the my bosom classmates, who belonged to a tribal community of Ramgiri region, had told me this factual story of his village. He heard this story from his father. Once a tiger had turned a maneater and killed about twenty native persons recklessly while they plied to the nearby jungle to collect the fire woods. So all his villagers were very much afraid of that maneater tiger. So the headman and two others went to Raigada to search an expert hunter. At last they found out a hunter who accompanied them to the village.

Next morning they tied a buffalo with a tree inside the jungle and waited on a nearby tree top in a Mancha ( a raised platform ) built for the special purpose. But the tiger did not respond. The hunter came to village desperately and waited for a week. One day he heard a fresh news that a newly married woman was killed in the morning. Hence immediately he and some drummers of the village rushed to the spot. The drumming sound disturbed the tiger while eating the dead body and it escaped from the sight. Then in the mean time the villagers made a Mancha on the tree at about 200 hundred metres from the dead body and waited for the tiger's arrival.

It was 4 pm. The chirping of jungle fowls and screaming and jumping of monkeys on the tree warned the hunter about the closest presence of the man-eater. The hunter and his two companions sat standstill on the Mancha. The tiger slowly came to the corpse and started eating. That was a perfect opportunity and the tiger was shot dead. After a few minutes the hunter came down and tested the tiger by touching whether it was dead. The tiger was really dead. The hunter informed the fire wood collectors by whistling and carried the dead body of the tiger and the half-eaten dead body of the victim to the village for doing the needful.

But since that day a terror began swaying over the village. The terror was the paranormal activities of the discontented spirits of the persons, at night, killed by the maneater tiger. As per my friend's description the spirits were knocking at the doors of their houses and were standing before the villagers while they were being out for easing themselves at night. So the children and women began to fear by the activities of the ghosts which are calked " Baghduma " ( that means the discontented spirits of the persons killed by a tiger ), a word which was commonly used by the then tribal folks of Koraput. The tribal people had a deep rooted belief that some the souls of the human victims( Baghduma) of a maneating tiger were always accompanying with the tiger wherever it roamed. After two days a Tantrik ( paranormal expert ) was called in by the village headman and the terror of villagers owing to Baghdumas were finished. This was a very interesting story told to me by my classmate friend which make me laugh often at present whenever I remember my departed classmate.

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