It is a beautiful rest house in the middle of nowhere. Standing high on concrete stilts, the white-walled, tile-roofed building looks alluring on a hilltop. Two huge balconies were just waiting for us to slump. The breath-catching scene made us forget our journey fatigue.
Through the thick trunks of sal trees, a large lake glimmered a few metres down. It is the creation of Maini canal and Kasalang river, both joining somewhere around the bend. We lie on the sofa and watch the tranquil waters of the lake through the fluttering leaves. A few fishing boats slowly row across the lake lazily, they only add to the desolate look of the lake. The ripple of the water, the reflection of the sun and the lonely cormorant darting into the water turn the high noon lonelier. The silence is broken by the slow thud of a diesel engine. A trawler carrying few men and women slowly vanishes behind a bend. We watch all this and feel lazy ourselves.
The Mainimukh forest guesthouse is one of the oldest in the forest department and so Khorsu asks the caretaker to bring the comment book. It is an old volume, thick and brownish. The leather binding has decayed quite a bit. Khosru turns the jacket, and aging, wrinkled, torn pages kept together with adhesive tape appear. The oldest comment dating back to 1940 is illegible. We keep turning the pages and stop at a date: November 2, 1954.
"Saw Bacha mian's cinchona plantation in the eastern boundary. Saw also the forest's Makna elephant on the bank of Kassalong," it reads. Below it is the signature of YS Ahmed.
In another place, he had written on January 27, 1955: "The place is attractive as ever. The man-eating leopard of Pablakhali disappointed the ambassador of USA."
We feel nostalgic. About 50 years ago, leopards roamed this place, the US envoy must have come here to hunt a few big cats. Today the animals have disappeared.
Again on September 11, 1958, Ahmad had written: "Very pleasant stay but no elephant in Kheda yet." On January 29, 1959, he wrote: "17 elephants caught at Bagaichari stockade."
We remember some black-and-white pictures of wild elephants being trapped in a stockade on the dining room walls. This stockade has been dismantled a long time ago as elephants are of no commercial use now. But when YS Ahmad visited this place, it was a big time business.
**********
After a short nap, we wake up to find that the light has turned placid. An orange hue clings to everything around -- the trees, the lake, the hills. We feel rested and want to scout around, to follow YS Ahmad's trail.
There is an engine-boat tied to the bungalow Ghat. Soon, we are cruising on the lake. The afternoon sun dances slowly on the tranquil blue water. We are all alone on this huge lake frilled by hills and forests. The boat passes by small islands and slows down to enter the creeks. We are now puttering through the narrow creeks; the sun shines on us through tall Sal trees. The shore of the lake has been cleanly sawed into steps to grow rice, some bamboo houses come into view. The green patches look like carpets.
Rangipara arrives half an hour later. It is a lakeside forest range surrounded by hills. There waits news for us -- the wild elephants were sighted in the range forests in the morning. We instantly say we would go to the spot to have a glimpse of the animals. The foresters look hesitant, they even try to dissuade us from taking the risk.
"It is dangerous," says one official. "They are disturbed animals. They can go into raging fits any time."
But who would miss the chance of seeing wild elephants? No sir, whatever the risks are, we want to try our luck, we tell the foresters and start off.
We walk through 10-20 feet high undergrowths on the slope of a hill for half an hour. All around us are sawed-off stumps of trees -- work of the lumber thieves. Once a thick forest, it stands depleted today.
"Elephants are a real problem for us now," says a forest official. "They are in a real bad condition. Their habitation has been depleted, and they are running short of food. Often they enter the villages at night, destroy houses, attack people and eat up paddy."
This is why the locals and the elephants are in confrontation. The villagers stay awake at night in fear of elephant attacks, and when the animals enter their villages, they attack them with sticks, spears and torches.
We come to a new plantation on the slope of a hill and walk right across the hump to the other side. A small lake surrounded by hills lies there. On the other side is a dense forest that streaks of yellow and brown of the late winter. The lofty trees and the still water of the lake give a very unreal look to the scene, as if they are waiting in apprehension for something to happen. Not a branch moves there, not a bird sings. It could all be the page of a landscape book, but for the butterflies. Hundreds of yellow, blue and white specs are fluttering around us.
"They were there in the morning," says a forester, pointing to the forest. "Don't make any noise. They might still be there."
We wait patiently for fifteen minutes. Still there is no sign of life.
"The elephants are gone," the forester finally announces. "Let's go."
We curse our luck. Meeting a wild elephant in a densely populated country such as Bangladesh is something unique and we have missed the chance. Thoroughly disgusted, we cross back the plantation and hit a dirt road and there we meet an old man.
"Have you seen the Mama (uncle)?" asks the forester.
The dull eyes of the man in a black sweater over a white panjabi suddenly brighten up.
"Yes. I know where Mama is. You have to walk a bit. It is hiding in the bush. I will take your there," the man says excitedly. Mama, as is explained to us later, is the local expression for an elephant.
In the slanting light of the late afternoon, we walk along the dirt road. On our sides are 20-feet tall bushes, dry and lifeless. They have shed their leaves in the winter and stand in a thick wiry mesh. The afternoon sun hangs beyond the dried branches, like a big ball of suspended fire. We walk through the crispy cold afternoon, full of anticipation. None of us talks. Our cameras ready. But the road seems like an eternity and our legs ache with all the walking.
The old man abruptly stops. He listens for something and then says in a hushed voice: "Mama is there."
We look to the thick bush about 200 yards away and prick our ears to catch any sound. Our hearts pound fast. After five minutes comes the first noise; something is crushing through bush, something huge is walking on dried leaves. Then comes a loud crack of something snapping sharply, like a gunshot. The elephants are snapping bamboo trees.
The foresters suddenly get animated; they grab my hand and start pulling me vigorously. "Come away," one of them scream in panic. "It's not safe here anymore. The elephants may charge. Run for life."
My heart starts thumping wildly and my mouth goes dry. My head becomes empty. I cannot think straight. But no, I tell myself trying to control the adrenalin flow, I should not miss this opportunity. I step into the bush. Very slowly I start walking through the undergrowth. The tall thickets almost engulf me from all sides. They graze my face. I can hear the elephants crushing branches. With every step, I stop and look around, fearing that I might stumble upon one blindly. And that would be the end of everything. I try my best not to make noises on the twigs and leaves.
Now I am within 50 yards of the bush behind which the elephants are. I strain my eyes and yet fail to see anything in the darkness of the tangles. Only the bush shakes violently and the munching noises come. I cannot proceed any further, because there is a depression in the ground that is covered with impenetrable undergrowth. Suddenly the munching noise stops. A strange stillness descends around me. I wait and pray for the elephants to appear.
But nothing happens for a while. And then comes a deep purr from the bush-- deep, loud and frightening -- that almost make my jump out my skin. The mother elephant has picked up my smell and knows that somebody is watching her. It is disturbed and angry.
I wait tensely, ready to run at the first sight of the elephant. But nothing happens, not a single sound comes from the bush. Somebody is calling my name. My nerve gives up, I cannot stand the tension any more and so come back to the dirt road to find the foresters with a herdsman. They look excited.
"The elephant is going that way," the herdsman points further down the road.
We sprint in a jiffy. It is cumbersome to run on a dirt road, specially if it is covered with soft sand and lots of foliage. The heavy camera and the brushing twigs make it all the more difficult. The herdsman however has no difficulties to negotiate the path, he is used to this kind of tracks. All this while we are looking on our left into the thick jungle to catch a glimpse of the elephants. We can see the bushes shaking; the elephants are walking in parallel to us.
Suddenly, they emerge out of the forest; a mother elephant and her cub. On a narrow strip of clearing they stop for a moment, the mother's head turned our way. The cub fidgeting nervously behind her. An unknown fear washed over me; if she decides to charge what will we do? Where should we run for shelter? For a few seconds we stand frozen. The mother elephant must also be thinking the same way: should I charge or ignore them? She looks hesitant. Then she turns away, thudding into the deep bush with the cub trotting behind. I futilely click my camera, knowing very well in this fading light the grey animal would be invisible against the dark background.
********************
We stand there feeling strangely empty. Suddenly all the tension and apprehension are gone. The whole episode now seems unreal. We slowly start walking through the darkness. No one speaks. We are all submerged in our own thoughts. I think about the elephant and her cub who looked so cornered and frightened. How long will they exist in this fight against humans?
We enter a village and pass by lantern-lit huts draped in semi darkness. Smokes of firewood drift into our nostrils. Somehow, this hill setup tells the sad story of the confrontation between humans and the largest land mammal. It is a losing battle for both -- the elephants will vanish in a few years, dying from starvation, and the hill's crumbling ecology will no longer sustain the human pressure. We, the humans, are playing a zero sum game here.
We board the boat and coast back to our bungalow. A huge full moon hangs low on the horizon and reflects that magical light on our face. We see our long shadows dance on the water, melting with those of the forest. The night shimmers, this whole forest shimmers in the moonlight. Owls hoot from the jungle and the nightjar's broken chup-chup-chup call makes us feel cold and lonely.
**************
Deep in the night, I suddenly wake up, I don't know why. I walk to the balcony and sit on the sofa. An oddly quiet night. Even the nightjars have stopped calling. Only the moon shines with full glory and the lake looks like a huge white sheet of ice, eerily empty.
The hills on the other side look so close. I imagine a herd of YS Ahmad's elephants coming down the slopes.
I can see the mother elephant and her cub among them.
Through the thick trunks of sal trees, a large lake glimmered a few metres down. It is the creation of Maini canal and Kasalang river, both joining somewhere around the bend. We lie on the sofa and watch the tranquil waters of the lake through the fluttering leaves. A few fishing boats slowly row across the lake lazily, they only add to the desolate look of the lake. The ripple of the water, the reflection of the sun and the lonely cormorant darting into the water turn the high noon lonelier. The silence is broken by the slow thud of a diesel engine. A trawler carrying few men and women slowly vanishes behind a bend. We watch all this and feel lazy ourselves.
The Mainimukh forest guesthouse is one of the oldest in the forest department and so Khorsu asks the caretaker to bring the comment book. It is an old volume, thick and brownish. The leather binding has decayed quite a bit. Khosru turns the jacket, and aging, wrinkled, torn pages kept together with adhesive tape appear. The oldest comment dating back to 1940 is illegible. We keep turning the pages and stop at a date: November 2, 1954.
"Saw Bacha mian's cinchona plantation in the eastern boundary. Saw also the forest's Makna elephant on the bank of Kassalong," it reads. Below it is the signature of YS Ahmed.
In another place, he had written on January 27, 1955: "The place is attractive as ever. The man-eating leopard of Pablakhali disappointed the ambassador of USA."
We feel nostalgic. About 50 years ago, leopards roamed this place, the US envoy must have come here to hunt a few big cats. Today the animals have disappeared.
Again on September 11, 1958, Ahmad had written: "Very pleasant stay but no elephant in Kheda yet." On January 29, 1959, he wrote: "17 elephants caught at Bagaichari stockade."
We remember some black-and-white pictures of wild elephants being trapped in a stockade on the dining room walls. This stockade has been dismantled a long time ago as elephants are of no commercial use now. But when YS Ahmad visited this place, it was a big time business.
**********
After a short nap, we wake up to find that the light has turned placid. An orange hue clings to everything around -- the trees, the lake, the hills. We feel rested and want to scout around, to follow YS Ahmad's trail.
There is an engine-boat tied to the bungalow Ghat. Soon, we are cruising on the lake. The afternoon sun dances slowly on the tranquil blue water. We are all alone on this huge lake frilled by hills and forests. The boat passes by small islands and slows down to enter the creeks. We are now puttering through the narrow creeks; the sun shines on us through tall Sal trees. The shore of the lake has been cleanly sawed into steps to grow rice, some bamboo houses come into view. The green patches look like carpets.
Rangipara arrives half an hour later. It is a lakeside forest range surrounded by hills. There waits news for us -- the wild elephants were sighted in the range forests in the morning. We instantly say we would go to the spot to have a glimpse of the animals. The foresters look hesitant, they even try to dissuade us from taking the risk.
"It is dangerous," says one official. "They are disturbed animals. They can go into raging fits any time."
But who would miss the chance of seeing wild elephants? No sir, whatever the risks are, we want to try our luck, we tell the foresters and start off.
We walk through 10-20 feet high undergrowths on the slope of a hill for half an hour. All around us are sawed-off stumps of trees -- work of the lumber thieves. Once a thick forest, it stands depleted today.
"Elephants are a real problem for us now," says a forest official. "They are in a real bad condition. Their habitation has been depleted, and they are running short of food. Often they enter the villages at night, destroy houses, attack people and eat up paddy."
This is why the locals and the elephants are in confrontation. The villagers stay awake at night in fear of elephant attacks, and when the animals enter their villages, they attack them with sticks, spears and torches.
We come to a new plantation on the slope of a hill and walk right across the hump to the other side. A small lake surrounded by hills lies there. On the other side is a dense forest that streaks of yellow and brown of the late winter. The lofty trees and the still water of the lake give a very unreal look to the scene, as if they are waiting in apprehension for something to happen. Not a branch moves there, not a bird sings. It could all be the page of a landscape book, but for the butterflies. Hundreds of yellow, blue and white specs are fluttering around us.
"They were there in the morning," says a forester, pointing to the forest. "Don't make any noise. They might still be there."
We wait patiently for fifteen minutes. Still there is no sign of life.
"The elephants are gone," the forester finally announces. "Let's go."
We curse our luck. Meeting a wild elephant in a densely populated country such as Bangladesh is something unique and we have missed the chance. Thoroughly disgusted, we cross back the plantation and hit a dirt road and there we meet an old man.
"Have you seen the Mama (uncle)?" asks the forester.
The dull eyes of the man in a black sweater over a white panjabi suddenly brighten up.
"Yes. I know where Mama is. You have to walk a bit. It is hiding in the bush. I will take your there," the man says excitedly. Mama, as is explained to us later, is the local expression for an elephant.
In the slanting light of the late afternoon, we walk along the dirt road. On our sides are 20-feet tall bushes, dry and lifeless. They have shed their leaves in the winter and stand in a thick wiry mesh. The afternoon sun hangs beyond the dried branches, like a big ball of suspended fire. We walk through the crispy cold afternoon, full of anticipation. None of us talks. Our cameras ready. But the road seems like an eternity and our legs ache with all the walking.
The old man abruptly stops. He listens for something and then says in a hushed voice: "Mama is there."
We look to the thick bush about 200 yards away and prick our ears to catch any sound. Our hearts pound fast. After five minutes comes the first noise; something is crushing through bush, something huge is walking on dried leaves. Then comes a loud crack of something snapping sharply, like a gunshot. The elephants are snapping bamboo trees.
The foresters suddenly get animated; they grab my hand and start pulling me vigorously. "Come away," one of them scream in panic. "It's not safe here anymore. The elephants may charge. Run for life."My heart starts thumping wildly and my mouth goes dry. My head becomes empty. I cannot think straight. But no, I tell myself trying to control the adrenalin flow, I should not miss this opportunity. I step into the bush. Very slowly I start walking through the undergrowth. The tall thickets almost engulf me from all sides. They graze my face. I can hear the elephants crushing branches. With every step, I stop and look around, fearing that I might stumble upon one blindly. And that would be the end of everything. I try my best not to make noises on the twigs and leaves.
Now I am within 50 yards of the bush behind which the elephants are. I strain my eyes and yet fail to see anything in the darkness of the tangles. Only the bush shakes violently and the munching noises come. I cannot proceed any further, because there is a depression in the ground that is covered with impenetrable undergrowth. Suddenly the munching noise stops. A strange stillness descends around me. I wait and pray for the elephants to appear.
But nothing happens for a while. And then comes a deep purr from the bush-- deep, loud and frightening -- that almost make my jump out my skin. The mother elephant has picked up my smell and knows that somebody is watching her. It is disturbed and angry.
I wait tensely, ready to run at the first sight of the elephant. But nothing happens, not a single sound comes from the bush. Somebody is calling my name. My nerve gives up, I cannot stand the tension any more and so come back to the dirt road to find the foresters with a herdsman. They look excited."The elephant is going that way," the herdsman points further down the road.
We sprint in a jiffy. It is cumbersome to run on a dirt road, specially if it is covered with soft sand and lots of foliage. The heavy camera and the brushing twigs make it all the more difficult. The herdsman however has no difficulties to negotiate the path, he is used to this kind of tracks. All this while we are looking on our left into the thick jungle to catch a glimpse of the elephants. We can see the bushes shaking; the elephants are walking in parallel to us.
Suddenly, they emerge out of the forest; a mother elephant and her cub. On a narrow strip of clearing they stop for a moment, the mother's head turned our way. The cub fidgeting nervously behind her. An unknown fear washed over me; if she decides to charge what will we do? Where should we run for shelter? For a few seconds we stand frozen. The mother elephant must also be thinking the same way: should I charge or ignore them? She looks hesitant. Then she turns away, thudding into the deep bush with the cub trotting behind. I futilely click my camera, knowing very well in this fading light the grey animal would be invisible against the dark background.
********************
We stand there feeling strangely empty. Suddenly all the tension and apprehension are gone. The whole episode now seems unreal. We slowly start walking through the darkness. No one speaks. We are all submerged in our own thoughts. I think about the elephant and her cub who looked so cornered and frightened. How long will they exist in this fight against humans?
We enter a village and pass by lantern-lit huts draped in semi darkness. Smokes of firewood drift into our nostrils. Somehow, this hill setup tells the sad story of the confrontation between humans and the largest land mammal. It is a losing battle for both -- the elephants will vanish in a few years, dying from starvation, and the hill's crumbling ecology will no longer sustain the human pressure. We, the humans, are playing a zero sum game here.
We board the boat and coast back to our bungalow. A huge full moon hangs low on the horizon and reflects that magical light on our face. We see our long shadows dance on the water, melting with those of the forest. The night shimmers, this whole forest shimmers in the moonlight. Owls hoot from the jungle and the nightjar's broken chup-chup-chup call makes us feel cold and lonely.
**************
Deep in the night, I suddenly wake up, I don't know why. I walk to the balcony and sit on the sofa. An oddly quiet night. Even the nightjars have stopped calling. Only the moon shines with full glory and the lake looks like a huge white sheet of ice, eerily empty.
The hills on the other side look so close. I imagine a herd of YS Ahmad's elephants coming down the slopes.
I can see the mother elephant and her cub among them.
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