“Compared with the emotion-odour of an animal, the other odours are quite negligible. And of all the emotion-odours the one that we can best recognise is that of fear. Fear marks its victims another way, also. A totally frightened animal either runs in a circle or cannot run at all. Bahadur, my son, remember that well. Whenever you feel you are running in a circle more than twice, be sure you are afraid. And the only way to loosen the grip of fear from yourself is to stand still and think of being calm. This frees you; it always breaks the strings that bind you.”
“I spoke in the above manner to my son, the day Ajit, the old elephant, now past a hundred, and I went on an excursion in the spring when Bahadur was on the threshold of his fourth year. It was a very unusual spring, coming very early and lingering long. The foothills of the Himalayas burst into colours, odours and sounds unheard of in a thousand years. Fragrance upon fragrance, bird-call upon bird-call, and colour upon colour spun and wove their choking abundance hour after hour. A little after sunset we were granted a respite from their myriad assaults upon our senses. The day-sounds were hushed by the waterfalls singing to the moon. The lilacs shook their fragrance upon our tusks and trunks. The moonlight put the colours to sleep. Clouds tip-toed from height to height on crystal feet, while the valleys and crags were filled with cchoes like humming birds.”
Now that Bahadur was older and stronger, he had to be instructed in the deeper things of life. I decided to tell him less of the facts and more about the emotions that animate them. And it was natural that I should teach him about fear, for it is the most universal thing in jungle-life.
That spring-morning we three – Ajit first, Bahadur second, and I last – set out for adventures. The monkeys from above shook many boughs and plucked many buds. Without eating it, they flung most of what they gathered below on the grass. There the barking deer were grazing by twos and threes, eating the gifts of the Hanumans. By their noises the monkeys informed their guests on the ground who was passing. But when we came along, instead of the tree-dwellers, the four-footed ones saw us. Since we had come upon them suddenly they were a bit frightened, so they set up barking “Khakkar, Khakkar,” in a rasping manner which brought the monkeys down a few feet below.
Now hanging by two hands to branches just above us, they examined our three backs. I snorted at them, which meant that all was well. Instantly they returned to their previous perch, cursing the deer as they went. Now these became quiet and continued to graze as before. For a while the jungle became still save for the hammering of the woodpecker on the trees.
They and another creature make peculiar noises in the Spring. Woodpeckers hit the timber with their bills to get at some insects in all seasons but one. During the mating time they do not hammer into the log for their dinner. They are so deeply in love that they forget food and hunger, and hit oftener in the Spring than at any other time. These poor fellows have no voice with which to make a love-song, so to please their mates they hammer on the hardest wood or stone instead.
Even at night if the moon shines brightly they hit their nests in their sleep, I am told. Be that as it may, is it not a strange way to make love? All this I explained to Bahadur, who had begun to observe everything.
As we left the woodpecker behind, we reached a lake full of lotus buds. There we heard a noise that rose above all the others. It was not the bees. At this time of the year there is no lake without a lotus, no lotus that does not drench the air with its fragrance, and no fragrance that does not call the bees, and no bees that do not hum. But the sound that held our attention was like grass rubbing against a tiger’s hide above us in the air.
It was most uncanny. Slowly the sound came down and passed beneath us over the water. Who do you think made that noise? It was the snipe playing for his mate. The wind in brushing some of his tail feathers made the sinister-sounding song. It amused Bahadur greatly. Once his curiosity about the odd sounds had been satisfied, he began to notice the common spring noises. We heard the Kokil, cuckoo, singing and trying to decide in which bird’s nest to deposit the eggs of the present season. The Bulbul, too, was singing when he was not too busy devouring insects.
At that moment we heard a high shriek of “Khakkar, Khakkar, Khakkar,” from a barking deer. It shocked Bahadur so that Ajit thought that we had better look into the trouble that the poor fellow was in. At first we expected to find nothing, for these deer are so peculiar that they sometimes bark without any cause, so we moved on without undue haste. But that did not last long, for in a few seconds a strong odour of fear struck our nostrils which made us hurry. We must find out the cause of that! Swiftly but silently we walked. The very grass on which we stepped stood up the moment we left it; so lightly were we treading! In the meantime the deer’s cry grew heart-rending. Fortunately we did not have far to go. There in an open space stood a brown deer, his eyes fixed on a spot in the grass, his spine bent concave with terror, and his mouth emitting gruesome howls. Our elephant eyes are not very sharp. Instead of looking carefully at the grass we moved nearer to him. In spite of the growing intensity of the odour of fear, we hoped to find nothing dangerous before the Khakkar.
Excerpted with permission from The Adventures of Sirdar: The Chief of the Herd, Dhan Gopal Mukherji, Talking Cub Books.
