A VIP in the Jungle

A dramedy from the days before cell phones. First written with friends in the Ochre Sky community.

Photo by Oziel Gómez on Unsplash

Some of my most vivid childhood memories from Jamshedpur of the seventies and eighties are of wandering in the Sal dominated forests of Bihar and Orissa with my family and family friends. From the age of four to twelve, I visited again and again the breathtakingly beautiful wildlife sanctuaries of Saranda, Simlipal, Betla and Hazaribagh. We lived in rest-houses deep inside the forests. We had to carry everything from matchboxes to medicines to dry groceries and live chickens to survive in the midst of the wilderness.

On one such trip, as we approached Simlipal, packed into two Ambassador cars, a uniformed forest officer gave us a smart salute. This caused some mild excitement in the cars and woke up the dozers. What? Why? Who? Why the salute? This was not a normal welcome. But a salute is a salute - a couple of us saluted back, and we drove on. When we reached the forest rest-house we had booked, the mystery was quickly and rudely solved. Our reservation at the Chahala Forest Rest House, which in the good old days used to be a hunting lodge for the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj, had been cancelled to accommodate modern day royalty, the Governor of Orissa and his entourage, who were suddenly visiting. There was no place at the Eucalyptus Villa nearby, either. A message had been mailed, which was no doubt still on its slow and arduous journey to Jamshedpur. But here we were - with cameras and flashlights, Odomos and matchboxes, fresh fruits and jungle fowls.

My father was not one to give up so easily. He and his friend Mr B kept pestering the forest rangers till they finally said we could stay at Jenabil Forest Lodge, a log cabin which was almost a hundred kilometres away, deeper inside the forest. Worse, a bridge on the way had broken recently and been temporarily replaced by a row of logs. My father and his friend hopped back into their Ambassador cars that looked like they were more suited for a short Sunday drive to the club than crossing log bridges over rivers in the middle of jungles. The kind officers tried to lend us a Jeep, but their offer was declined with thanks and off we were again.

The shaky log bridge survived our onslaught, but as evening fell, the nip in the clean, fresh, forest air became definitely chilly. The forest was cold, dark and silent - the animals and birds must have been all sheltering in their homes. The forest kept getting denser and denser and colder and darker, but still there was no sign of a lodge. No little path that led to a hot meal and bed. No sign of any human habitation. Only the sound of the car tyres on a dusty road. The mood in the two cars shifted from excitement and anticipation to anxiety and panic. It was pitch dark now, the only light coming from the headlights of the cars, if you did not count the million stars above. Thankfully, one of the children needed to visit the loo and as she was doing her business by the side of the road, she heard a human being cough. Immediate happy shouting and yelling and calling out till some tribal women carrying firewood, no doubt sent by God, directed us to the lodge.

From the family album. I am fourth from right.

It was like Goldilocks finding the bears’ cottage. There was even a beautiful, large, teakwood dining table set up on the verandah. Soon, there was hot food and warm beds and the next morning, we woke up to the magical sight of a blanket of frost over everything. The next few days, wherever we went in the forest, we were saluted at, and welcomed. But we are just common visitors, we said. In that case, the officers said, behave yourselves, make haste and stay out of the Governor’s way. One day, after we had made a picnic stop for some tea brewed on a wood-fire, the Governor was upon us, and we were hurried away. In our haste, we left behind our young cook, M. When he was missed, the two cars speeding away (minus one cook!) braked hard. We waited in a huge cloud of dust – a kind of rust coloured dust that I have only seen in those parts, for M to make a flying leap into one of the cars, carrying an absolutely giant kettle of tea!