Jungu, the Baiga Princess Page 5
‘You remember those bad men we saw near the nullah?’
she asked. He nodded. ‘Your uncle’s jeep had been there before.’
‘My uncle’s jeep? How do you know?’ he asked confused.
‘There’s a cut in one of the rear tyres. I had seen that mark in the wet mud there. But I was too frightened then to understand,’ she said gravely. There was a flash of fire in her eyes.
‘You? Scared?…’ he started.
‘No, not for myself,’ she said quickly, ‘but for you. If they had seen you they would have kidnapped you – or worse!’
A chill shot through his body at the thought. ‘But what has my uncle’s jeep got to do with them?’ he persisted.
She turned to look at him, and he saw she looked quite grown up in that moment.
‘Someone in your uncle’s camp goes to meet them. We are going to find out. Come, but remember the path we are taking. That’s important!’
With that they stole through the forest, she leading the way and Sunil reconciling himself to following her every signal while trying to remember the route, as she had instructed him to. She stopped many times, ever watchful, and studied the ground carefully, before deciding on a path. They went through the densest undergrowth but he did not hesitate even for a second for he knew that it would be safe wherever she led him.
Finally, they got to the nullah where she had met the bad men. She bent to study the mud in the pale moonlight that filtered through from above and nodded.
‘That jeep has come here again tonight. See! The track in the wet mud is still fresh,’ she pointed out in a whisper. ‘We have to be really careful. People don’t walk through here, not even us Baigas, for tigers like to keep cool here and don’t want to be disturbed. Come.’
Sunil had no wish to disturb sleepy tigers either, then or ever, but Jungu was already well on her way, bent almost double, so he simply followed. They soon clambered up out of the nullah and forced their way through the brush. Soon, the trees had thinned out into a clearing and Jungu quickly pushed him down into the grass. Th en, both of them on their hands and knees crept forward slowly till Sunil was peering down from behind a rock at an old deserted Gond village.
The roofs were all long gone but there was smoke and light coming from a campfire and they both heard drunken laughter. Jungu beckoned to him silently and they circled round behind the rocks to get a better view. Suddenly, they caught a terrible stench and in moments they were able to tell why. A tiger had been killed and hung
up between two crisscrossed poles, blood still dripping from its open jaws. There were skins of all sorts stretched out around it – deer skins in plenty, a leopard skin with the head still attached, a butchered nilgai, the flesh of which was being cooked by the rascals. They could see the jeep parked under a distant tree.
Jungu put her lips close to his ear till he tingled with the sensation. ‘You must go back and get your uncle. Veyne! Go quickly now!’
Sunil understood what he needed to do. He hesitated for a moment about leaving her alone and then said to himself she was the mistress of the jungle and a priestess and no harm could come to her. He wriggled off quietly at first and then after he had put a distance between himself and the poachers’ camp, he set off at a dogged run, skirting the nullah where tigers liked to cool off and keeping to the ground where he could see what he was stepping on. It was close to 3:30 early in the morning when he sighted the dark long dak bungalow with all its lights out. He ran ahead noisily and banged on Uncle Vish’s bedroom door.
Panting, and in between gulps of water, he told Uncle Vish, Mr. Dubey and Matt the Prof what he and Jungu had done and what they had seen. A policeman had come to Uncle Vish’s bedroom by then and after a short low conversation, Mr. Dubey turned back looking very serious.
‘I am afraid, Sir, the boy is telling at least part of the truth. The jeep is missing. No doubt the rascal who drove off thought he would get back before we are up. My orderly has gone to get Motu who undoubtedly knows something. We will find out soon enough.’
In a few minutes Motu appeared, with a long woollen cap pulled over his head and shivering inside a dirty shawl, more from fear than the cold. Mr. Dubey planted himself in front of the cook and fired a few straight questions.
Motu looked around miserably. ‘What can I do, Sahib? I am just a cook, not even from this terrible place, but from Khandwa. I get to see my mother once a year, for just two weeks! What can I do?’ he wailed.
‘No one is asking you to do anything. Just tell us now all that you know. Now!’ Mr. Dubey was most compelling.
‘Big people do whatever they like, but I am a small man, what can I do? I should not even know what they are doing,’ he whimpered. Mr. Dubey impatiently caught him by the arm, dragged him outside and after commanding him in low firm tones, came back a few minutes later, looking even more determined. He said something to Uncle Vish and then said loudly, ‘I am afraid the fellow is a much greater rascal than I had thought.’
They quickly made preparations to leave. Sunil hobbled out on to the verandah, pulling on his sweater. Uncle Vish turned to Sunil with some concern. ‘What, young man, you must be quite tired after your night-time adventure, I think you should stay back and rest your leg.’
Sunil shook his head determinedly. He felt fine, he said, miraculously refreshed. Matt the Prof pressed his shoulder with great understanding and gave him a confidential wink. The party set off at a steady pace through the night, Sunil noticing that the two policemen now carried rifles at the ready. He wasn’t as careful going to the poachers’ hideout as Jungu had been when they first set out for he knew the rascals would all be at their camp, most probably drunk and dead to the world. When they got near the camp though, he signalled that they should go forward as silently as possible. Near the rocks, they circled around as before but this time there were much louder bursts of drunken laughter and raucous hoots and someone was pleading that they should be careful.
When he peeped over, Sunil’s heart almost stopped for he saw a dreadful sight. Jungu was in the grip of a large fat man whose back was turned to Sunil. In front was the man in dhoti he had seen two days before.
‘Remember, she is a witch, a Baiga witch,’ warned the dhoti-clad man. ‘No good will come to us from harming her! No good comes from even touching her!’
Every drunken poacher roared with laughter, the fat man most of all. ‘What can she do, she is dead meat!’ he roared. ‘Yes, perhaps, we will eat the little witch! They say that if you eat a witch she cannot harm you. Shall we eat her?’
They all roared approval while the dhoti-clad man danced in futile anguish.
‘Coming too close to the camp once too oft en was your mistake, witch,’ said the fat man gleefully twisting Jungu’s arm till she cried out sharply in pain.
‘And catching hold of her was your first and last mistake, Chamanlal Singh,’ said Mr. Dubey in a cold clear voice. ‘If one of you makes any move, I will shoot you all dead!’
The camp fell silent all of a sudden. Chamanlal Singh, the fat Forest Ranger, turned around slowly and faced Mr. Dubey whose drawn revolver was pointed unwaveringly at his head. Chamanlal dropped Jungu’s arm and slowly, and slowly raised both his hands above his head. All the other poachers got up unsteadily to their feet and also put up their hands. The two policemen then went forward at a word from Mr. Dubey to handcuff the men, and it was all over very soon.
Even as Uncle Vish, Mr. Dubey and Matt the Prof were going round gloomily inspecting the poachers’ camp, Sunil turned to Jungu and apologized.
‘Jungu, I should never have left you. I am sorry I came too late,’ he mumbled.
She looked him straight in the eye and smiled. ‘No, you came just in time. I knew you would.’
Uncle Vish has a Change of Heart
There was a lot to do in the next two days. Mr. Dubey himself wrote out the First Information Report in long hand, and sent the poa
chers down to Raipur to be remanded into police custody. Some of them fell at his feet and begged that they were poor men who had been forced to become poachers, but he was unmoved. Only Chamanlal Singh stood silently by, as if he was not involved with them at all.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Chamanlal,’ said Uncle Vish grimly.
‘I was only doing my duty, Sir,’ said Chamanlal differentially. ‘You mistook my intentions.’
‘What! Are you pretending we did not catch you red-handed, you rascal?’ yelled Uncle Vish.
‘You should not use unparliamentary language with a government servant, Sir,’ said Chamanlal coolly. ‘The Union of Non-Gazetted Officers could take a serious view of it if I complained. As it is, you interfered when I was effecting an arrest.’
Mr. Dubey smiled but Uncle Vish was beside himself with fury. ‘You won’t get away with that line of lies in court, I guarantee you!’ he shouted.
Chamanlal said calmly, ‘You will find I am not without very powerful friends.’
‘I don’t care which corrupt politician protects you. You will go to jail,’ said Uncle Vish curtly.
The policemen were leading the handcuff ed poachers out to their van when Chamanlal turned and smiled back at Uncle Vish. ‘The former Solicitor General has never failed in court.’ He waved them an airy goodbye before getting into the police van.
After some time, when Uncle Vish had recovered his composure, he called Matt the Prof to his side. ‘We have a lot of work to do in the next two days, Matt. We’ve got to redraw all the plans and re-work a new programme. I want you beside me all the way.’
The professor jumped up enthusiastically and both went away talking excitedly. Sunil was soon left to himself but all of a sudden he felt drained of all energy. He really didn’t want to do anything, not even go to the kitchen and cut vegetables for Motu. So he just went to the large sunlit drawing room of the dak bungalow, picked up his book and settled down in the comfy sofa that smelt of old times for a long read. He was still there when Motu put his head through the door and asked whether he could bring in his lunch on a tray.
Sunil realized how hungry he was as he tucked into the shahi pullao that Motu had surprisingly dished up for him. Motu sat on the floor while he ate and regaled him with stories, half of which he did not believe, about poachers and animals, sahibs and Baigas from the days of old. Th e traditional caramel custard pudding, which was always excellent however many times he ate it, ended the meal. Motu produced a flask of ginger lemonade with a flourish and departed. Sunil went back to his book, and as the shadows lengthened across the clearing outside the dak bungalow he closed the covers with a sigh of satisfaction. His head was full of stories he had read and stories he had heard from Motu. In fact, he wasn’t very clear which was which, but he was thankful at the end of the day that he wasn’t as silly as Mister Toad. He did wonder though whether Toad would have been a better toad had he met a girl like Jungu.
Uncle Vish and his party were late in arriving back for dinner that night and Sunil was getting quite cross thinking that Uncle Vish cared about nothing but his work. Dinner was mostly a silent affair with everyone being inordinately hungry and just saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ for the dishes that were passed around.
The next morning, Uncle Vish surprised everyone by saying he had a lot to discuss with the Baigas, and Sunil could come along if he wished. Sandwiches, a thermos of hot tea and a flask of cold lemonade were packed into the jeep and they bumped down the road to Jungu’s village. Jungu’s father and the headman of the village were waiting for them and soon the party of elders had moved off into the jungle, lost in deep discussion, leaving Sunil in Jungu’s company. She took him through the jungle on a visit of his own and pointed out many plants to him. He already knew the curative properties of thuha but that morning he learnt that chirota bajji purified the blood and also cleared the stomach of worms, that harra seeds relieved one of colds, while the sour red amta flowers were good for many things. She showed him a giant baobab tree and said a sherbet made of its white flowers would bring down fevers.
Then, they sat down under a shady tree and she shyly told him she had cooked a meal for him herself. She had made him a lovely crunchy kodo and kutki roti and there was lots of chiroti bajji to make it go down well.
‘This is pej. It’s very good to drink in the heat of the day,’ she said, bringing out a stoppered gourd from a sling bag she carried. ‘In fact we call a midday meal pej.’
He drank the thick tasty gruel and asked what it was made of and was told it was just salted ground maize and kodo.
‘On your next visit, you will drink mahuwa with my father,’ she said. ‘That tree is also a god and protects us.’
They wandered around after that, and she told him she always knew what the bad men did but there was no one to listen to the Baigas. They soon heard Uncle Vish calling out to them and ran back to the village.
That evening, dinner back at the dak bungalow was a rather jovial aff air with Uncle Vish being very relaxed and cracking jokes about politicians and foreign diplomats. He smiled oft en to himself as if he had a secret. Finally aft er dessert was eaten and as the dishes were being cleared away, Uncle Vish gave a sigh of satisfaction and smiled benignly at Sunil and Matt the Prof.
‘Matt, I have thought a lot about what you have said and it has more or less tallied with my own observations,’ he said, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. ‘The tribals must stay in the jungle, of course that goes without saying, for only they can supervise such a vast area and see that poachers don’t get in and make a hideout there. You may be surprised at this, Matt, but I am quite firm. It isn’t going to be easy going against settled government policy but it won’t be the first time I have bucked it and won!’
Matt the Prof opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again wisely.
‘What is more, I am going to insist that Tribal Welfare and the Environment Ministry should create a special subvention to provide monthly fees to tribal communities for the forest protection services they will render. I’ve been thinking… we could organize a training programme where Forest Guards and tribals can learn from each other. I want your help in this, if you can spare the time!’
‘All this is very new to me,’ said Matt the Prof quietly, ‘but you can count on me, Vish, anything I can do to help, of course under your guidance.’
‘That’s settled then,’ said Uncle Vish jumping up with a satisfied smile. ‘We will call a meeting tomorrow morning with all the Baigas and tell them what I propose. We will start with a pilot project involving these tribals here and then expand.’
Sunil went to bed chuckling. Now he knew why he had liked Matt the Prof right from the start. He had a schoolboy’s low cunning for getting a grown-up to change his mind.
The next morning was a very busy one. The Baigas had gathered in front of the dak bungalow for the important meeting. Uncle Vish’s party was to leave for Raipur and then for home as soon as the meeting was over, so Sunil spent most of the time in the kitchen with Motu, helping with everything, including washing the vegetables, for he had grown very fond of his new friend and it was quite a wrench to think that he would have to leave and maybe not see him for quite some time. However Motu did promise that he would come and visit him in Delhi in the summer and, maybe even stay on if his mother liked his cooking. Sunil assured him that she would love it, secretly determining to exert all his influence on his loving mum.
The Baiga meeting ended with loud cheers, and many of them came forward to garland Uncle Vish.
The Baiga mukhia, who had dressed ceremoniously for the occasion, came forward, and everyone fell silent.
‘I thank you, Sahib, and the Sarkar,’ he said loudly, ‘that you see now it will be for the good of everyone that we stay on our ancestral lands. The forest is our mother, and the animals, even the tigers, are brothers. We will guard the forest as we always have.’
He waved to all of them, assured them once again that they would be staying in their villages and in their forest and then turning to his staff , said it was time to leave. Mr. Dubey and Matt the Prof had already followed Uncle Vish into the black Toyota SUV they had used to come to the jungle when Sunil emerged last from the dak bungalow. He was carrying his bag in one hand and his magic blue silk coverlet, with the golden stars and the silver moon, in the other. He flung his bag in at the back and then turning, walked up to Jungu who was standing at the edge of the crowd of tribals all by herself.
‘Jungu, I want you to have this,’ he said, ceremoniously putting the silk coverlet around her shoulders like a shawl. ‘I know now that Miss Dhar gave it to me to give to you. It belongs to you, and if you have it, I know I shall come back soon – veyne! – for it, and I will become a brave Baiga!’
Jungu laughed out loud, and Sunil was going to make a hot retort, but Uncle Vish was tooting the horn impatiently and gesturing to him, so he had to run back to the car.
He sat in the last back seat with the luggage and could see Jungu standing with the silk coverlet draped round her short red lugra, well up above her knees as usual, and her hassia tucked in at the waist. He waved frantically and just as they turned the corner and she was lost in the cloud of dust, she smiled and waved back.
An Afterword
‘Most authors write a ‘Foreword’ to their books so that the reader can learn beforehand what the book is all about. But this was a story, and telling you about it would have spoiled it. So this is an ‘Afterword.’ What is an ‘Afterword’, then? It is a note at the end of a book from the author, about a few things that could not be put into the story. I thought I should tell you a little bit about the real life of little Baiga girls like Jungu, what they and their families have to go through, and how they are struggling desperately to survive in today’s world. And I very much hope that you will try and help the Baigas and other tribal people – also known as Adivasis – living in India.