The old tiger still roars

25 kilometres from the Indo-Nepal border, framed against the Terai forests of Lakhimpur Kheri, stands a lonely house… and here they say, an old tiger still roars.

The house was empty. Rising flood waters of the Soheli had claimed these lands for long this season and while the waters had receded, the old tiger hadn’t returned yet to his Haven. On the verandah, next to stacks of mouldy books, throwing a silent challenge, rolled a solid iron barbell, loaded thick with weighted plates. I succumbed to the lure and gripped the cold steel bar and heaved. Nothing happened… I heaved again, and it moved a few reluctant inches before I gave in to gravity and let the barbell clang to the floors. “Sahab roz uthathe thhey, till about 8-10 yrs ago”, said a voice. It was the caretaker. That weight must’ve weighed many hundred pounds and ‘Sahab’ was supposedly 91 now. I wondered about the veracity of the legend. ‘Sahab’ wasn’t here though. He’d moved a few kilometers south, and we followed. I remembered what a local zamindar had said. “He isn’t very tall but used to be a very strong man. He once picked up the front axle of a tractor. Even today his arms are in better shape than yours or mine”. Then I saw him on the front porch of his house, a frail little man curled up on a high chair, a gentle smile welcoming us. He motioned for us to sit and the first thing I asked him was if he’d really picked up the tractor. “Just stories…”, boomed the man’s voice and then he shook my hand with an iron grip that suggested that these ‘stories’ must ring true… surely, the old tiger still roars.

‘Billy’ Arjan Singh is what they called him in the early days when he went about trying to be ‘The Corbett of Kheri’ as he put it, but today he prefers just plain Arjan Singh. Tracing his lineage to the royal family of Kapurthala and Anglo –Bengali Christians, ‘Billy’ loved the great outdoors. He wrestled, lifted weights and in keeping with his heritage, made friends with the hunting rifle rather early in life. He killed his first leopard at 12 and his first tiger at 14. In fact, he was quite a blood thirsty little butcher in those days, killing every possible animal within the range of his rifle. On one occasion he and his brother were returning from the forest in a car and saw a hyena loping across. They fired at the unhappy beast till they ran out of bullets. Then they tried to run the animal over and yet the suffering animal wouldn’t die. There are tales a plenty of his ‘callous brutality’ as he puts it in one of his books. And yet, the forest had claimed his soul and with each animal he killed, he felt a little emptier inside until the day he realised that he killed not for the joys of the hunt as much as he killed to quiet his own feelings of inadequacy. Since then, he has ruthlessly denounced his own weaknesses that had made him into a wanton killer. Today, as the crops stand in his fields, he tells his farm hands that the animals have first right to these crops and there would be enough for all. And sure enough, there is. There’s a sadness in those eyes when he talks of that same blood lust, greed and human insecurity that he once felt, which still turns men into poachers and forests to fallow land, but he hasn’t given up the fight… the old tiger still roars.....Continue