Turned Tail for a Tiger

Alan Lane

Whilst on a cold weather visit to service the engine at Jaboka TE, (Sonari Tea Company – Gillanders Arbuthnot agency) at Sonari district, in 1966, I was staying with the Assistant Manager, Mr Singh, a Rajput with a handlebar moustache and an eye that had been damaged in an accident at some time. He had been educated at Mayo College in Ajmer, and spoke English in a very pukka accent. He always wore leather riding boots for kamjari, not the usual Bata canvas/rubber boots that most planters wore then.

Mr Singh - I cannot remember his first name - told me that a tiger had killed a cow in the forest nearby and would I like to go over and see it.

The Assistant’s bungalow at Jaboka was a two storey brick built building that was accessed from the factory by a drop down into a nullah, which had had steps cut into the bank, both down and up to the rear of the bungalow. This nullah emptied out into a bheel, beyond which was a forest of deciduous trees.

We walked to the forest, across the bheel - accompanied by many garden labourers - which was dry due to the cold weather period. On arriving at the dead cow’s body, I noted that the neck had been broken and there were two deep holes in the throat where the tiger’s fangs had suffocated the cow.

Mr Singh had a bright idea that we should construct a machan in the tree overlooking the cow, and take some photos of the tiger on the kill. I was not that keen on this suggestion, but as the labourers had already started to construct the machan, I went along with this idea, although with considerable concern as the machan was only about eight feet up the tree.

The labourers finished the machan and Mr Singh went up first. I followed him up, but was quickly pushed back down again as Mr Singh was covered in red ants!! There was no way that I was going up there!

So, with ants in Mr Singh’s pants, and my exuberance at this interjection by Mother Nature, we turned tail, and left the tiger to its meal!

The following night, just after we had gone to our respective beds, the Chowkidhar started to shout, “Bagh* aiya sahib, bagh aiya!!"

We got up out of our beds to look over the verandah, switched on the torch, and sure enough there was a tigress, with two near full grown cubs, at the entrance to the bungalow gates. They looked at us nonchalantly, marked the gate post, and calmly went off into the tea bushes.

Now then, was this the tigress that had killed the cow? If so (and she would have had the two cubs with her!), I shudder to think what might have been the outcome had Mr Singh and I stayed in that very low at height machan! 

Author’s footnote: *The garden labour refers to all big cats as ‘bagh’, and don’t seem to call a tiger ‘sher’. Shame really as I loved Rudyard Kipling’s story “Jungle Book” and ‘Sher Khan’!!

Editor's note: 
kamjari - field work in the tea garden
nullah - a small ravine
bheel - pond
machan - a platform built in a tree, originally used in hunting, and now for watching wildlife in reserves.

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My name is Gowri Mohanakrishnan and I'm a tea planter's wife. I started this blog because one of the things that I wouldn't want us to lose in a fast changing world is the tea story - a story always told with great seriousness, no matter how funny - always true (always), maybe a tall tale, long, or short, impossible, scary, funny or exciting but never dull.
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Meet the writer:

Alan Lane, a 'cha ka baba', was born in Bombay. His contribution to Indian Chai Stories goes beyond the written word: he keeps a large number of people all over the world connected with their roots in India. In his own words, 'My wife and I still have lots of connections with India and we are, as you may well say, ‘Indophiles’.' Alan and Jackie Lane live in the UK; they left India a little over fifty years ago. Read the story of this cha ka baba's return to the tea gardens of Assam as a Crossley engineer here: Indian Chai Histories.  You will find more stories by Alan here.