The honey tigers

THE HONEY TIGERS

Recently during the puja break I had visited my hometown Kolkata after more than a decade. After the initial nostalgia was crushed by the the unimaginable crowd of enthusiasts I desperately wanted a break.

As an antidote I decided to visit two absolutely deserted destinations within a few hours distance from Kolkata, mandarmoni and the sundarbans

Mandarmoni thanks to the environment activists was totally deserted with pristine beaches

Sundarbans however has changed for the worse. Resorts have sprouted all over the villages and tourists come for a picnic playing loud music and insisting on elaborate meals.

My earlier visits had been rather luxurious where you stay aboard a steamer and it’s a gastronomic tour with Bengali delicacies and comfortable cabins. This time my daughter had booked a backpackers tour with homestay in a village and a small boat to explore the creeks and even a jungle walk, something unheard of in the area.

The village was like a painting of rural Bengal, breathtakingly pretty.

Electricity had arrived a couple of years ago but was still erratic. It is approachable only by boat This was the last village before the forest an our guide boatman and accompanying forest guard were all local.

It was a serene vacation floating around the immense delta among the mangroves all day and back to the village in the evening. Excellent food of locally caught fish of varieties I had not heard of. The walk was extremely difficult in the knee deep mud. Wildlife siting was rare and that was as expected for the area.

Next morning there was a disturbing news of one of the villagers out crab fishing in a creek towards the town rather than the forest was killed by a tiger. Although his comrades had driven the tiger away and rescued him he died before they could reach the nearest road head. Apparently this is part of life for the people of these islands.

T he forest guard narrating the incident gave us many insights into the closely linked lives of the villagers and the infamous man eaters of sundarbans. Some facts are known through books and films but some were quite extraordinary.

He said that the researchers know only the superficial stories of these impenetrable mangroves but the real tales are told by the honey gatherers who penetrate deep inside

We know that tigers can swim for miles and attack only from the rear and often take men off the boats. They can also leap twenty feet and boats in the creeks are easy prey. The lack of natural prey due to increased salinity and rising water levels has forced them into hunting the men.

As fishing and honey gathering are the only livelihoods available confrontations are inevitable. Ironically for an area which is mostly water, sweet water fit for drinking is scarce and animals and humans tend to congregate in the few sources of rainwater fed ponds that dot the human settlements.

The government tried to introduce masks to be worn on the back of the heads to fool the tigers but within a year they saw through it. Strategically placed nets masquerading as traps are now used to keep the tigers from entering the villages but the lure of the livestock and stray dogs and occasionally people tempts the tigers into encroaching on the home ground of their encroachers.

But the most unique story came from the honey gatherers. These brave souls search the forest from the boats and follow the bees to find the hive. Then leaving a boatman to guard they land in the mangrove forest and reach the hive to smoke out the bees and collect the honey. Apparently the tigers have figured this out and wait by hives as a hunter waits by a bait. Sometimes they prey on the distracted gatherer at the edge of the group and sometimes the lone boatman, always attacking from the right rear to incapacitate the arm that holds the axe or weapon.

Even more intriguing is that they have started eating the honey themselves. The technique is that the tiger rolls in the mud and lets it dry to create a mud shield against stings. Then they leap into the air to knock down part of the hive. As most of the bees swarm back to the remaining part of the hive, the tiger rushes to the river with the broken hive and puts it in the water. This drives out the remaining bees and the tigers enjoy a rare dessert in this saline marshland.

We were awestruck by the story of the ingenuity of the king of the jungle worshipped here by both Hindus and muslims as dakshin rai. In the current atmosphere of mutual suspicion even these remote areas are sadly infected and the imams forbid their flock from worshipping idols while the Hindus have started calling the Muslim deity ban biwi as ban devi thus endangering another unique culture of a Muslim goddess and a hindu God being worshipped in a temple together by both communities.