“Some pet,” I mumbled, surreptitiously examining the fence. “Do you really think you’ll ever be able to trust her?”
“Without question. It takes time, but tigers are extremely intelligent and loyal. It was the loyalty of my friend’s tiger that first put this idea into my head. But let me tell you how I met Ramu. I was traveling in Assam and had stopped over with an old friend of mine from the service—Naresh Bannerji. He has a place similar to this one. A bit more elaborate, I would say.” He looked around. “Larger, in any case. It was evening—just dusk, to be precise. Several of us were seated outside around a table in back enjoying an after-dinner scotch.”
At this point Colonel Singh left off with the narration and looked around again as though he had misplaced something.
“Oh yes! I have entirely forgotten. We ourselves have some drinks waiting for us. What do you say we continue this conversation in the other room, by the fire?” We filed back through the kitchen and were soon comfortably ranged before the flames. Penny and I sat together on the couch, the colonel reclined in one of the other chairs. “Now then, where was I?”
“In back of your friend’s bungalow, somewhere in rural Bengal . . .”
“Right. Thank you, Mr. Harrington. So there we were, much as the three of us are now, quite relaxed. Enjoying the liquor and conversation. I can’t quite recall everyone who was present.” He stared at the fire as though it might jog his memory, then shook his head. “Blast it anyway! What difference does it make who was there? The point is that one or the other of us had just commented on the local political situation. Something about a council in the village that adjoined the park boundaries. Anyway, Bannerji suddenly put a finger to his lips and hushed the conversation. He gestured for us to sit still, then began to gaze intently into the underbrush as though something were out there. As I say, it was dusk at the time. Not yet dark, but certainly none of us could have seen very far into the jungle.
“After a moment or two our host leaned back into his chair. It’s nothing, he assured us, nothing at all. But of course we knew better. After some prodding Bannerji finally admitted to having heard a ‘crunching about’ in the bush. This was a bit disturbing, particularly because there had recently been a nasty incident involving a tiger—we had just been discussing it at dinner. A villager had been killed while walking home one evening along a well-trodden path. One of us recalled having seen an article in the local paper. According to Bannerji the cat had been sighted only the day before not far from where we sat. He apologized for having alarmed us and insisted that we forget all about it.” The colonel hesitated, then raised one hand and lightly massaged his chin. “Now, most of us there that night had lived in the bush long enough that something like this was not unheard of. And we also knew that once a tiger tastes human flesh, it must be destroyed.”
I interrupted him. “So it’s true, what they say?”
“Absolutely. A man-eating tiger will kill again and again until it is stopped. They lose all fear of humans. That is not true for a leopard.”
I filed this piece of information away for future reference.
He shook his head. “Tigers have a mind of their own. They rarely take to that sort of behavior, but it does happen. Now and again.”
Penny leaned forward a little. “Why is that, Colonel?” Her legs were crossed, fingers twined lightly around the glass she had balanced on one knee. “Why would a tiger suddenly decide to attack humans?”
“Usually because they can no longer hunt their normal prey. As often as not the animal is old and weak. It may be injured. A few years back I had to bring down a man-eater right here at Corbett. Her left forepaw was punctured with a nasty sliver; it was badly infected. She must have been half mad with the pain.” He nodded in the direction of a photo on the wall behind the bar. “That’s the only one you will ever see with me and a dead cat in the same picture. I’m not a hunter. Never have been. This country used to be crawling with tigers, but they have been hunted to near extinction.” He pulled at his beard and gazed up at the tiger skin that hung stretched over the mantle, slightly darkened by years of heat and smoke. The tiger’s glass eyes stared back. Its teeth, yellowed with age, gleamed softly in the flickering light of the fire.
“Bannerji’s queer behavior left its mark on us. Despite his assurances, we were intensely aware of the jungle all around us. It was a few minutes before the conversation picked up again. We had just begun to relax when suddenly my old friend sat bolt upright in his chair and stuck the same finger to his lips.” Singh mimicked the gesture. “This time we immediately fell silent and began studying the leaves for the slightest sign of movement. Sure enough, we could see them trembling way down at one end of the garden. No sooner did we spot those leaves shaking than there was a low growl. The sound we heard that night did not come from any three-month-old cub. There was a big cat stalking out there, just beyond the range of our vision. Every one of us knew it. We were on the edge of our seats, one eye on the jungle, one on the back door to the house. No one wanted to be the first to go. It was Bannerji that suggested we better move, and it was he who stood up before the rest of us. Just at that moment we heard a limb snap and—seconds later—there was a terrific roar. A big male tiger broke through the brush and headed straight across the clearing. Straight for Bannerji. It was a good thirty meters and the animal was loping over the grass—between us and the house by then, blocking any chance of escape.”
He looked over at Penny, whose eyes were huge. “Have you seen a tiger move like that? Have you seen how gracefully they run when they know they have plenty of time?” She shook her head.
“Well, young lady, you have missed something remarkable.” Under the moustache Singh’s lips peeled back in a devilish grin. “We had a professor of zoology there with us from Shantiniketan. I remember him now, because when the tiger appeared he started in yelling as if he’d cracked. Sat there bellowing Hari Ram! Hari Ram! The cat ignored him. Never took its eyes off Bannerji. Went right for him. Within seconds it made the table, lunged over and struck the ground just in front of where my friend was standing with his glass still clutched in his hand. There was no question in my mind: that tiger was going to take him down.” The colonel cocked one arm back and slashed through the air. He pushed his lips together and shrugged. “It wasn’t just me. All of us were certain Bannerji’s time had come.”
“So,” I interjected, “what happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened, Mr. Harrington. The tiger raised up and put those big paws right on the bloody joker’s shoulders. That is what happened. One paw on each side of the busturd’s neck, and the animal commenced licking at his face. Stood right there on its hind legs with its big tongue all over Bannerji’s silly, grinning face. Tame as the proverbial kitten.”
Singh laughed out loud. “And that, Mr. Harrington, is how I met Ramu.”
“Wonderful,” I murmured, then thought to myself that if Singh had pulled a stunt like that on us tonight, I would have shit my pants so bad no tiger would ever want to come near me. The colonel was in stitches.
“I tell you Bannerji never spilled one drop of his scotch! That busturd!”
“Yes sir,” I acknowledged, “he is one serious busturd.” I suggested that his friend might have given someone a heart attack, but Singh kept right on rocking back and forth in his seat, slapping his knee and guffawing.
“Whenever I remember that evening I always picture the professor,” he said, struggling to regain his composure: “Hari Ram! Hari Ram!” The image threw him all over again into a paroxysm of mirth. “Bannerji, you busturd!” It was apparent that the dignified military man had another, rather perverse side to his character. “By god, I shall have some fun with that little girl in the other room!”
14
HIS STORY FINISHED, Singh poured another round for all of us and ambled back across the room with the three glasses suspended in a triangle between both hands. We sipped at our drinks and settled in again while he carried on, sp
inning out one tale after another, escorting us ever more deeply into his world. There was something about the man I could not grasp, something captivating, a kind of ingenuous engagement with life that was deeply appealing. It was enough, for the moment at least, simply to sit and listen. From what I could see, Penny felt the same way. She appeared to be totally at ease in his presence.
He told us of his efforts to save the remaining tigers in India, of his travels in Africa and Southeast Asia. There were more anecdotes of Bannerji and his friends in the game preserves around the subcontinent. We heard about everything from his childhood in Chandigarh to the gritty episodes of army life in a Sikh regiment stationed in northern Himachal Pradesh. The evening wore on, the bottle was eventually transported from the bar to the table in front of the fire, and talk wound around to his days with the Army Corps of Engineers, surveying high in the hinterlands of Ladakh in an area contested by the Chinese.
“I was right in the middle of it when the real trouble began in October of 1962. It was my last action with the army before I retired.”
“So you were there,” I said.
“I was there all right.” He took a swallow from his drink. “Nehru went to England. Hell, he went all the way to America asking for military aid. It was a war.” He frowned. “The papers called it a ‘conflict,’ tried to pretend otherwise. But that’s the only word for it. War.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“What really happened?” I asked.
“We got our bloody arses kicked, that’s what happened. We should have seen it coming long before we did. The Chinese were already building a road up there in 1950. Four years before the ‘Panchashul,’ the so-called ‘five principles of peaceful coexistence.’” His voice was grave. “No one talks about it any more. It’s as though the whole thing never happened. But I can assure you, Mr. Harrington, we lost a lot of good men. Too many men died up there. It was a disaster.” He turned to Penny. “Do you have a map of India? I mean a British map—printed in England.” She nodded. “Where did you purchase it?”
“I’m not sure.” She thought for a moment. “In Delhi, I believe. Yes, I bought it at a shop near Connaught. Why?”
“Where was it printed? Was it imported from England?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well then, take a close look sometime at the area east of Leh, across the Karakorum mountains. If your map was imported you will see a road that runs right down through the middle of the Aksai Chin plateau. That’s where we were stationed. Kahin nahin say bahut dur. That’s what my men used to say: ‘A long way from nowhere.’ I was up there with a regiment of soldiers when the Chinese started shooting. We were part of a contingent sent on direct orders from Nehru after the Chinese drew up a treaty with Pakistan. Look closely and you will see that the border west of the Chinese road has been clumsily blotted out with white ink. There is an office somewhere in New Delhi where they paint over the border on every imported map before it’s released for sale.”
“But I don’t understand,” Penny said. “What’s the point in doctoring the maps?”
“The point is,” continued Colonel Singh, “that there are too many politicians in New Delhi living in a dream world. And nobody—not one of them—wants to wake up. We lost the war in Ladakh.” He swung the glass up to his lips and took another swallow, then chuckled to himself. “You’ve seen this sort of thing before. You just don’t recognize our Indian style; that is the problem. In the Soviet Union, when something like this happens, they use the finest technology available to systematically dispose of the evidence. Let’s suppose the problem is some regional politician who manages to step out of line one too many times—he must be, shall we say, removed from history. Under such circumstances, it obviously won’t do to have the man’s face appearing here and there in old photographs. A technical problem arises. What to do? Very simple. Photographs must be located and carefully corrected, so that the offending face is erased. If it is done with great care, no one will ever know. And that is precisely what you will see when you look at your map: the Indian equivalent of Soviet technology. Here in India, some peon is paid fifty rupees a month to squat in the corner with a glass of chai and his paan. We give him a stack of imported maps, a brush, and a can of white paint. That is sufficient.” He grinned and expelled a quick blast of air through his nostrils, more a cynical snort than a laugh. “It is damned pathetic. Our leaders are terrified of the Chinese, but their only response is to deface British maps, then sit down with our enemies and make pleasant conversation over a pot of tea, pretending the whole time that they didn’t murder our soldiers and steal our land!” He stared at the flames in sullen disgust.
I took advantage of his momentary silence to interject a question. “What’s so valuable about a desolate region like eastern Ladakh? Why should China want a piece of it?”
“Why indeed?” Singh asked rhetorically, as if loathe to pursue the matter any further.
Penny spoke up. “The whole area is fascinating, Stanley. Kashmir was a crossroads between China and India for at least a thousand years. There are Buddhist monasteries up there that very few people from outside the region have visited. It’s dry enough that things could be preserved virtually forever. God knows what you might find. Frescos, old tangkas, clothing, Kalachakra masks. Texts, Stanley. Ladakh was where many of the translations were made from Sanskrit into Tibetan and Chinese.”
“She’s right,” said the colonel. “I’ve seen those monasteries. Underground rooms full of silk costumes and dusty idols, shelves stacked with old Tibetan books. However, with all respect to Miss Ainsworth,” he nodded at Penny, “I can assure both of you that the Chinese were not interested in the Aksai Chin because of its cultural history. No, I am afraid they are not looking for paintings or old masks. There is one very simple reason why they attacked us. The road. Examine the map. They now have an unbroken highway all the way down the eastern Soviet frontier, through Ladakh, and along the northern face of the Himalayas the length of Nepal. And why do you suppose they want a road like that? I do not trust them for a moment. If you doubt their intentions, then just look at what has been done to the Tibetan people, in their own country. In their own country. It is despicable. No, the Chinese are ruthless, absolutely ruthless.” He shook his head gloomily, then reached up and adjusted the black turban where it passed over one ear.
The big man pulled himself up from the cushion. He walked across the room and around behind the bar to within a few feet of the pictures on the wall. “Come here and let me show you something.” We went over to where he stood. “You see this?” He clicked a fingernail against the glass. The photo depicted two Sikh soldiers in tattered battle fatigues posing against a desolate background of endless rock and sky. They could have been standing on the surface of the moon, except that off in the distance, a range of snow-covered mountains cut a jagged line across the horizon. Both men were on crutches, their uniforms in tatters. “These are two of my soldiers who came back from a visit with the Chinese. They were captured, taken prisoner, and forced to parade through the Chinese camps with no boots in freezing cold weather. The purpose was simply to humiliate them in public. They had their turbans stripped off, their hair and beards cut with a pair of sheep shears. Only then were they set free to find their way back to us. As an ‘example,’ they had been told. ‘An example of what is done to barbarians.’” He looked at us sharply. “Who, I ask you, are the barbarians?”
His question hung in silence.
Singh’s eyes moved from one picture to another, from one memory to the next, finally settling on an object that lay in a narrow wooden cabinet to his left. He reached over and took the thing out. It was a small, delicately crafted prayer wheel. Above its wooden handle the miniature cylinder was fashioned out of what appeared to be bone, yellowed with time and use. Letters of some kind had been etched deeply into its surface, the margins of both top and bottom were studded with small pieces of coral and turquoise. One end of a thin copper chain was fix
ed above the florid script, a chunk of polished amber dangled from the other. A snap of the colonel’s wrist sent the amber twirling round and round in a golden blur; the little barrel spun on its axis. “A memento,” he said, handing it over to me.
I felt the worn handle as it rested against my palm, nestled in my fingers; a perfect fit. I gave it a few twirls and watched the amber pebble swing out, bob and fall inward, coasting to a stop. “It’s beautiful. It doesn’t seem to belong here, though. I mean, there’s something mysterious. As if it came from another world.”
“It did,” Singh replied laconically.
Penny reached over and lifted the prayer wheel out of my hand, gave it a few twirls herself, then gently ran her fingers over the surface of the wood and bone, inspecting the workmanship more closely. “I don’t know much about Tibetan things, but this looks very old; almost medieval. It’s had a lot of use. So small, yet so solid and heavy. It really does feel as if it were charged with some kind of supernatural power.” She handed the device over to Colonel Singh and he put it back in its place on the shelf, where it rested among the folds of a faded silk scarf.
I picked up the picture I had noticed earlier and examined the figures where they stood in front of the elephant. “Colonel, who is this woman? Isn’t she the same person I see in several other photos here?”
He looked over his shoulder, then turned reluctantly around and took the picture out of my hands. “My wife. She passed away unexpectedly, two years ago. In her sleep. The doctors said it was a heart attack.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“What can be done? She is gone. Bas.”
“How long were you married?” Penny asked.
“Thirty-two years.” He continued gazing at the picture then set it gently back down. “Thirty-two good years. I only wish we could have said goodbye.”
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