Face to Face with a Tiger

by Bhupendra (Bob) Singh Auwa

I froze in my path...he may have attacked me and I may not have been here today writing this piece.

In May 1959 I joined the tea estates as an Assistant Manager with James Finlay & Co at their garden called Hattigor (Hatigarh in Hindi) in Assam. I with my servants flew from Calcutta in a World War II vintage Dakota being operated by some private party and landed at The Mangaldai Planters Club on their makeshift landing strip, old polo ground, where Williamson Magors, another British Tea Company, used to operate their private aircraft.

A truck was sent from the garden to pick up my luggage and my two servants (a bearer and a cook) and Mr Stevenson, the Assistant Manager, came to pick me up in his jeep.

This was my first look at a tea bush. He took me to his 'chung' bungalow, (most old tea bungalows  in Assam were built on stilts and hence called 'chung' bungalows) for tea, and I was asked to spend the night there and meet the Manager next morning. Little later that evening, Nosh Tankariwala from a neighbouring estate of the same company came over to meet me and said there had been a kill on his garden, probably by a leopard. So off we went, Stevenson with his rifle, Nosh and myself. However the animal never showed up on the kill.

Hattigor Tea Estate, one of the prestigious properties of James Finlay and Co. Ltd, was on the North Bank of the river Brahmaputra, just below the foothills of the mighty Himalayas about 100 kms from Guwahati, the nearest big town. It was a huge estate, in those days spread over about 800 hectares under tea. Between the garden and the hills there was an old Tangbari* and tall grass and hardly any habitation. Wild life was in abundance in Assam in those days; it was infested with tigers, leopards, wild elephants and many other big and small game. Morris Barker, a planter on this estate before me, had shot a few tigers and leopards there.

Bob supervising work at Powai T.E.

I was very keen on hunting but had no guns or rifles with me, as my gun license then was limited to Rajasthan. There was another planter, Pratap Singh, son of Lt. Gen. Nathu Singh Gumanpura, on a nearby estate. I borrowed his .12 bore gun for small game shooting and one fine early morning in the month of November went out for a shoot to the north of the garden, looking for small game like wild fowl and partridges. One chowkidar from the garden was to come with me but he got late, and without waiting for him, I left my bicycle on the side and walked into this area with tall grass. 

After a mile of walking I was rudely shaken up from my walk with a loud growl. There was a tiger not more than 50 yards from me in the tall grass and all I could see was his tail. I froze in my path and started walking backwards. As I came to know later the tiger had made a buffalo kill the previous day and had had his fill, otherwise he may have attacked me and I may not have been here today writing this piece.

In those days there was plenty of big game in Assam and in the Dooars area of West Bengal. It was much later that the Government of India banned hunting, initially big game hunting and later of course even small game hunting.

The only other time I sighted a tiger was in 1969, when my wife and myself were coming back from Mariani Planters Club late one night to Debrapar Tea Estate: this tigress was on the side of the road about to attack cows in a cow-shed of some Nepali chap out side Dessoi Tea Estate. In fact in Debrapar the tiger - or may be the same tigress - killed our cow in the cow shed one night. We saw tiger pug marks in the morning and it was later confirmed by the official of the Forest dept.

Of course there were many leopards seen in Assam those days on the road coming back from the club, in Numaligarh and in Bhukial Tea Estates. 

In fact when we were posted at Lattakoojan Tea Estate in 1980 - 86, one evening going to Dhunseri Club, a black panther jumped out of the tea bushes over the fence and crossed the road. In the car light his black coat was shining and you could see yellow spots. 

Black panthers are black due to mutation, and they are not a different breed of animals. In fact at this very estate about 20 years earlier, in the 1960's, Pushpendra Ghanerao returning one night from somewhere found the black panther sitting on the roadside. He went to his bungalow,  took out his rifle came back and shot the animal. It was in those days when shooting was still allowed.

*The Tangbari I have referred to above was a bari or a forest of Tang trees, from which I was told oil was extracted, and this was long before I joined tea. They were trees which bore red cherry like fruits, but by my time all the trees had been cut for timber and there was nothing but tall grass growing there. Since then tea has been planted in this area.

Meet the writer: 

Bhupendra (Bob) Singh 

After graduating from Mayo College, Ajmer, I joined tea in May 1959, with James Finlay & Co., Ltd. at their Hattigor T E in Assam. The company changed hands and became Tata Finlays and then later Tata Tea Ltd. Having served in many gardens in Assam as Assistant Manager and later as Manager since 1974, was lastly transferred to Dam Dim T E in Dooars in 1991. In my last year with Tata Tea, I was posted to Delhi to look after their rice exports to the Middle-East.

A keen student of history, fond of outdoor games and shooting, we enjoyed our days in Tea with my wife Teeka and two daughters Harsha and Raksha, who still remember their good days in the gardens.

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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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