Where deer sprinkle gems

Where deer sprinkle gems

A soft afternoon glimmered on Nijhum Dwip as we silently rowed down a canal. We all sat in silence, our eyes and ears intent on hearing every rustle of the nature. It's a surreal situation, our boats had to go under thickets hunched over the canal, all we could hear were birds chirping and the thickets brushing against the boat. On both sides of the canal are forests of kewra. Our eyes and ears strained. The sky seen through the bush looked too blue to be true.

The boatman suddenly let go of the oar and the boat stopped, he silently pointed his finger towards the forest. For sometime, we could not see her, then we could make out the figure of the doe -- alert and agile -- its tail shaking in excitement and ears pricked to pick any noise. I looked straight into the doe's eyes and held her there. She seemed amused, I tried to assure her that we meant no harm, but the message did not get across. She softly beat her hoofs on the ground, turned around and then darted into the forest as our cameras clicked.

We got down from the boat, there might be a bigger herd somewhere here. It was difficult to walk through the breathing roots, they pricked like needles making the going difficult. To make it worse, the undergrowth posed a formidable challenge. As we went deeper into the forest, we were sucked into a different world where everything seemed to have turned into stones. We arrived at an opening surrounded by huge trees. A complete stillness had been prevailing here, even the cool winter afternoon wind did not stir anything, it only gently blew over us in a stream. We found deer droppings on the ground -- some of them still fresh. The earth had been dented with hundreds of hoof marks. This must be a good grazing ground for them. We entered deeper into the woods and then caught a glance of the herd, about 50 of them, partly visible from a curtain of gewa trees. Suddenly they became animated and vanished into the trees, we could only hear their beating hoofs. Then the silence descended again.

As we turned back, a bright yellow flashed past our eyes -- a pair of hoopoe birds. They landed behind a bush, we approached cautiously with our camera held ready. Slowly we peeked over the bush and found them picking food on the ground. As our camera clicked and the motor rolled, they became aware of us and instantly spread their crest in a show of anger. Then they flew off.

We came back to the boat, satisfied; and the journey began. Canals after canals we left behind, it all looked so similar to the Sundarbans, the same kewra and gewa trees, the same breathing roots, the same kind of canals and the beacon of the deer herds. Of course, the tiger was missing.

Soon, the canals ended and we came upon the sea. We were left breathless by the beauty of the place, on one side of the sea was the forest -- tall trees frilling the shore that had sharply angled away like the end of a hairpin. On the other side was the open sea, a few fishing trawlers bobbing on the gentle wave. The slanting sun spread a golden ray on the sea gulls cackling in low flights.

We moored and went ashore. We walked slowly through the forest for about half an hour to come to the edge of the woodland. In front of us awaited an amazing scene. A huge green field as smooth as a carpet rolled out ahead of us, I have never seen a field as large and green as this one before. On one side of the field was the sea where thousands of gulls were happily fishing. A beautiful stream, golden in its reflection of the sun, had divided the field in half, snaking onto the sea. By the stream were two trees standing tall, adding more loneliness to this lonely field. It all looked like a huge slab of malachite through which ran stream of diamond. At the end of the field started the forest again, and the sight here almost stopped our heart. What were those things there, brown and blurry in the distance? Khosru was the first to lift the binoculars to his eyes and whistled softly.

"Deer," he murmured. "Thousands of them."

We all took turns on the binocular. It was another amazing sight the deer were out there, some standing idly, some grazing grass, two huge stags having a fight locking antlers by the stream, some were stretching on the grass, and yet some were strolling by the sea. They were just a brown sea of deer, of huge bucks, does and their cubs. The cubs were happily sucking milk from their mothers.

We tried to count them, using the mathematics of average -- there were at least 3,000 here.

"This is probably the largest herd of spotted deer any country has," Khorsu whispered in bewilderment. We remembered what the forester said in the morning -- this tiny island has a deer population of about 10,000, and more amazingly, the entire population spawned from four pairs of deer released by the forest department here in 1974.

We slowly proceeded towards the herd, stepping from tree to tree, from leaves to leaves, from shadows to shadows, so that the animals could not notice our presence. Half an hour later, we were within a few hundred yards of them, we could get their scent, even see their tails wagging and ears twitching. Then they picked our scent and a large buck cocked its ears, its eyes searching in the woods for the trace of humans. Soon, the deer started springing up on their feet and a huge herd started running, we could hear their hoofs. The panic spread and the rest of the herd also darted for the forest, in waves. Soon they disappeared, leaving us in a daze.

Now, we stepped out onto the field and walked to the edge of the stream. The soft grass felt springy, we felt a kind of unexplained exhilaration. On that malachite field, we found a bright yellow feather of a hoopoe burning like amber in the last rays of the sun. I picked it up, felt its smoothness, the warmth it once carried, and then I blew it off in the wind. As we walked around the field, we found more interesting relics -- two antlers shed by a stag -- the stags shed them in late summer; a broken skull of a deer that became too old and died here in the long past days; some half-buried bones -- old and worn. These things, small and enigmatic, created a mystic spell as the sun turned like a dim fireball and then slipped over the sea. We walked back to the boat in the ethereal pseudo light, our hearts heavy with an unknown sadness.

When the night came, Nijhum Dwip became a hermit -- dark, solemn and silent. Only the stars above shed a soft glow on this mystic island. The poor fishermen had gone to sleep early, they cannot afford to burn kerosene. By the starlight we walked through the village. Suddenly we stopped. In the dimly visible dirt road, hundreds of something burnt bright. Then they sped away and we heard sounds of hoofs -- deer. Now we understood why we saw fishing nets hung around vegetable fields in the morning -- to ward off marauding deer herds. And here on this lonely village path, the deer were running. And we stood there watching the miracle happening in front of us. A fading memory came fresh to my mind -- the memory of reading a Russian book in my childhood, I have forgotten both the names of the book and its author. In the story, a magical deer visited the house of a little girl every night, it trotted on the roof laden with snow. Every time the girl came out to catch the deer, it would fly away, sprinkling gems from every beat of its hoofs.

Tonight I could imagine the same thing here -- the deer herd visiting the huts, somehow metamorphosing this impoverished village into a magical Siberian neighbourhood.

The rest of the night, I could hear the deer sprinkling gems.

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Story: Inam Ahmed
Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain

Special thanks to the forest department

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