by Satyajit Ray
Once out of the cave, Tulsi Babu lost no time in setting off in quest of the herb. Prodyot Babu was happy to keep his friend company; he had hunted big game at one time—conservation had put an end to that, but the lure of the jungle persisted.
The holy man’s directions proved accurate. Half an hour’s walk brought them to a ravine which they crossed and in three minutes they found the shrub seven steps to the south of a neem tree scorched by lightning. It was a waist-high plant with round green leaves, each with a pink dot in the centre.
‘What kind of a place is this?’ asked Prodyot Babu, looking around.
‘Why, what’s wrong with it?’
‘But for the neem, there isn’t a single tree here that I can recognize. And see how damp it is. Quite unlike the places we’ve passed through.’
It was moist underfoot, but Tulsi Babu saw nothing strange in that. Why, in Calcutta itself, the temperature varied between one neighbourhood and another. Tollygunge in the south was much cooler than Shyambazar in the north. What was so strange about one part of a forest being different from another? It was nothing but a quirk of nature.
Tulsi Babu had just put the bag down on the ground and stooped towards the shrub when a sharp query from Prodyot Babu interrupted him. ‘What on earth is that?’
Tulsi Babu had seen the thing too, but had not been bothered by it. ‘Must be some sort of an egg,’ he said.
Prodyot Babu thought it was a piece of egg-shaped rock, but on getting closer he realized that it was a genuine egg: yellow, with brown stripes flecked with blue. What creature could such a large egg belong to? A python?
Meanwhile, Tulsi Babu had already plucked some leafy branches off the shrub and put them in his bag. He wanted to take some more but something happened at that moment which made him stop.
The egg chose that very moment to hatch. Prodyot Babu jumped back at the sound of the cracking shell, but then gathered courage and took a few steps towards it.
The head was already out of the shell. It was not a snake, nor a crocodile or a turtle, but a bird.
Soon the whole body was out. The bird stood on its spindly legs and looked around. It was quite large; about the size of a hen. Prodyot Babu was very fond of birds and kept a mynah and a bulbul as pets; but he had never seen a chick as large as this. It had a big beak and long legs. Its purple plumes were unique, as was its alert behaviour so soon after birth.
Tulsi Babu, however, was not in the least interested in the chick. He had been intent on stuffing his bag with as many leaves from the plant as he could fit in.
Prodyot Babu looked around and commented, ‘Very surprising; there seems to be no sign of its parents, at least not in the vicinity.’
‘I think that’s enough surprises for a day,’ said Tulsi Babu, hoisting his bag on his shoulder. ‘It’s almost four. We must be out of the forest before it gets dark.’
Somewhat reluctantly, Prodyot Babu turned away from the chick and started walking with his friend. It would take at least half an hour to reach the waiting taxi.
A patter of feet made Prodyot Babu stop and turn round. The chick was looking straight at him.
Then it padded across and stopped in front of Tulsi Babu and, opening its unusually large beak, gripped the edge of Tulsi Babu’s dhoti.
Prodyot Babu was so surprised that he didn’t know what to say, until he saw Tulsi Babu pick up the chick and shove it into his bag. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he cried in consternation. ‘You put that unknown bird in your bag?’
‘I’ve always wanted to keep a pet,’ said Tulsi Babu, resuming his walk. ‘Even mongrels are kept as pets. What’s wrong with a nameless chick?’
Prodyot Babu saw the bird sticking its neck out of the swinging bag and glancing around with wide eyes.
Tulsi Babu lived in a flat on the second floor of a building in Masjidbari Street. He was a bachelor and besides him, there was only his servant Natabar and his cook Joykesto. There was another flat on the same floor, occupied by Tarit Sanyal, who was the proprietor of the Nabarun Press. Mr Sanyal was a short-tempered man made even more so by repeated power failures in the city which seriously affected the working of his press.
Two months had passed since Tulsi Babu’s return from Dandakaranya. He had put the chick in a cage which he had specially ordered immediately upon his return. The cage was kept in a corner of the inner veranda. He had found a name for the chick: Big Bill; soon the Big was dropped and now it was just Bill.
The very first day he had acquired the chick in Jagdalpur, Tulsi Babu had tried to feed it grain but the chick had refused. Tulsi Babu had guessed, and rightly, that it was probably a non-vegetarian, and ever since he had been feeding it moths, cockroaches and whatever other insects he could find. Of late the bird’s appetite seemed to have grown. It had started dragging its beak across the bars of the cage showing its immense dissatisfaction. Hence Tulsi Babu had been obliged to feed it meat. Natabar bought meat regularly from the market for its meals, which explained the bird’s rapid growth in size.
Tulsi Babu had been far-sighted enough to buy a cage which was several sizes too large for the bird. His instinct had told him that the bird belonged to a large species. The roof of the cage was two and a half feet from the ground. But soon he noticed that when Bill stood straight his head nearly touched the roof, even though he was only two months old; he would soon need a larger cage.
The cry of the bird was a terrible sound. It had made Mr Sanyal choke on his tea one morning while he stood on the veranda. Normally the two neighbours hardly spoke to each other; but that day, after he had got over his fit of coughing, Mr Sanyal demanded to know what kind of an animal Tulsi Babu kept in his cage that yelled like that. It was true that the cry was more beast-like than bird-like.
Tulsi Babu was getting dressed to go to work. He appeared at the bedroom door and said, ‘Not an animal, a bird. And whatever its cry, it certainly doesn’t keep one awake at night the way your cat does.’
Tulsi Babu’s retort put an end to the argument, but Mr Sanyal kept grumbling. It was a good thing the cage couldn’t be seen from his flat; one sight of the bird would have led to even more serious consequences.
Although its looks didn’t bother Tulsi Babu, they certainly worried Prodyot Babu. The two met rarely outside office hours, except once a week for a meal of kebabs and parathas at Mansur’s. Prodyot Babu had a large family and many responsibilities. But since the visit to Dandakaranya, Tulsi Babu’s pet was often on his mind. As a result he had started to drop in at Tulsi Babu’s from time to time in the evenings. The bird’s astonishing rate of growth and the change in its appearance were a constant source of amazement to Prodyot Babu. He was at a loss to see why Tulsi Babu should show no concern about it. Prodyot Babu had never imagined that the look in a bird’s eye could be so malevolent. The black pupils in the amber irises would fix him with such an unwavering look that he would feel most uneasy. The bird’s beak naturally grew in proportion with its body; shiny black in colour, it resembled an eagle’s beak but was much larger in relation to the rest of the body. It was clear, from its rudimentary wings and its long sturdy legs and sharp talons, that the bird couldn’t fly. Prodyot Babu had described the bird to many acquaintances, but no one had been able to identify it.
One Sunday Prodyot Babu came to Tulsi Babu with a camera borrowed from a nephew. There wasn’t enough light in the cage, so he had come armed with a flash gun. Photography had been a hobby with him once, and he was able to summon up enough courage to point the camera at the bird in the cage and press the shutter. The scream of protest from the bird as the flash went off sent Prodyot Babu reeling back a full yard, and it struck him that the bird’s cry should be recorded. Showing the photograph and playing back the cry might help in identifying the species. Something rankled in Prodyot Babu’s mind; he hadn’t yet mentioned it to his friend, but somewhere in a book or a magazine he had once seen a picture of a bird which greatly resembled this pet of Tulsi Babu’s. If he came across the pictu
re again, he would compare it with the photograph.
Later, when the two friends were having tea, Tulsi Babu came out with a new piece of information. Ever since Bill had arrived, crows and sparrows had stopped coming to the flat. This was a blessing because the sparrows would build nests in the most unlikely places, while the crows would make off with food from the kitchen. All that had stopped.
‘Is that so?’ asked Prodyot Babu, surprised as usual. ‘Well, you’ve been here all this time; have you seen any other birds?’
Prodyot Babu realized that he hadn’t. ‘But what about your two servants? Have they got used to Bill?’
‘The cook never goes near the cage, but Natabar feeds it meat with pincers. Even if he does have any objection, he hasn’t come out with it. And when the bird turns nasty, one sight of me calms it down. By the way, what was the idea behind taking the photograph?’
Prodyot Babu didn’t mention the real reason. He said, ‘When it’s no more, it’ll remind you of it.’
Prodyot Babu had the photograph developed and printed the following day. He also had two enlargements made. One he gave to Tulsi Babu and the other he took to the ornithologist Ranajoy Shome. Only the other day an article by Mr Shome on the birds of Sikkim had appeared in the weekly magazine Desh.
But Mr Shome failed to identify the bird from the photograph. He asked where the bird could be seen, and Prodyot Babu answered with a barefaced lie. ‘A friend of mine had sent this photograph from Osaka. He wanted me to identify the bird for him.’
Tulsi Babu noted the date in his diary: February the fourteenth, 1980. Big Bill, who had been transferred from a three-and-a-half-foot cage to a four-and-a-half-foot one only last month, had been guilty of a misdeed the previous night.
Tulsi Babu had been awakened by a suspicious sound in the middle of the night—a series of hard, metallic twangs. But the sound had soon stopped and had been followed by total silence.
Still, the suspicion that something was up lingered in Tulsi Babu’s mind. He came out of the mosquito net. Moonlight fell on the floor through the grilled window. Tulsi Babu put on his slippers, took the electric torch from the table, and came out onto the veranda.
In the beam of the torch light he saw that the meshing on the cage had been ripped apart and a hole large enough for the bird to escape had been made. The cage was now empty.
Tulsi Babu’s torch revealed nothing on this side. At the opposite end, the veranda turned right towards Mr Sanyal’s flat.
Tulsi Babu reached the corner in a flash and swung his torch to the right.
It was just as he had feared.
Mr Sanyal’s cat was now a helpless captive in Bill’s beak. The shiny spots on the floor were obviously drops of blood. But the cat was still alive and thrashing its legs about.
Tulsi Babu cried out ‘Bill’ and the bird promptly dropped the cat from its beak.
Then it advanced with long strides, turned the corner, and went quietly back to its cage.
Even in this moment of crisis, Tulsi Babu couldn’t help heaving a sigh of relief.
A padlock hung on the door of Mr Sanyal’s room; he had left three days ago for a holiday, after the busy months of December and January when school books were printed in his press.
The best thing to do with the cat would be to toss it out of the window on to the street. Stray cats and dogs were run over every day on the streets of Calcutta; this would be just one more of them.
The rest of the night Tulsi Babu couldn’t sleep.
The next day he had to absent himself from work for an hour or so while he went to the railway booking office; he happened to know one of the booking clerks which made his task easier. Prodyot Babu had asked after the bird and Tulsi Babu had replied that it was fine. Then he had added after a brief reflection—‘I’m thinking of framing the photo you took of it.’
On the twenty-fourth of February, Tulsi Babu arrived in Jagdalpur for the second time. A packing case with Bill in it arrived in the luggage van on the same train. The case was provided with a hole for ventilation.
From Jagdalpur, Tulsi Babu set off with two coolies and the case in a car for the precise spot in the forest where he had found the bird.
At a certain milepost on the main road, Tulsi Babu got off the vehicle and, with the coolies carrying the packing case, set off for the scorched neem tree. It took him nearly an hour to reach the spot. The coolies put the case down. They had already been generously tipped and told that they would have to open the packing case. This was done, and Tulsi Babu was relieved to see that Bill was in fine fettle. The coolies, of course, bolted screaming at the sight of the bird, but that didn’t worry Tulsi Babu. His purpose had been served. Bill was looking at him with a fixed stare. Its head already touched the four-and-a-half-foot high roof of the cage.
‘Goodbye, Bill.’
The sooner the parting took place the better.
Tulsi Babu started on his journey back.
He hadn’t told anybody in the office about his trip, not even Prodyot Babu, who naturally asked where he had been when he appeared at his desk on Monday. Tulsi Babu replied briefly that he had been to a niece’s wedding in Naihati.
About a fortnight later, on a visit to Tulsi Babu’s place, Prodyot Babu was surprised to see the cage empty. He asked about the bird. ‘It’s gone,’ said Tulsi Babu.
Prodyot Babu naturally assumed that the bird was dead. He felt a twinge of remorse. He hadn’t meant it seriously when he had said that the photo would remind Tulsi Babu of his pet when it was no more; he had no idea the bird would die so soon. The photograph he had taken had been framed and was hanging on the wall of the bedroom. Tulsi Babu seemed out of sorts; altogether the atmosphere was gloomy. To relieve the gloom, Prodyot Babu made a suggestion. ‘We haven’t been to Mansur’s in a long while. What about going tonight for a meal of kebabs and parathas?’
‘I’m afraid I have quite lost my taste for them.’ Prodyot Babu couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Lost your taste for kebabs? What’s the matter? Aren’t you well? Have you tried the herb the holy man prescribed?’
Tulsi Babu said that his blood pressure had come down to normal since he started having the juice of the chakraparna. What he didn’t bother to mention was that he had forgotten all about herbal medicines as long as Bill had been with him, and that he had gone back to them only a week ago.
‘By the way,’ remarked Prodyot Babu, ‘the mention of the herb reminds me—did you read in the papers today about the forest of Dandakaranya?’
‘What did the papers say?’
Tulsi Babu bought a daily newspaper all right, but rarely got beyond the first page. The paper was near at hand. Prodyot Babu pointed out the news to him. The headline said: ‘THE TERROR OF DANDAKARANYA’.
The news described a sudden and unexpected threat to the domestic animals and poultry in the village around the forests of Dandakaranya. Some unknown species of animal had started to devour them. No tigers were known to exist in that area, and proof had been found that something other than a feline species had been causing the havoc. Tigers usually drag their prey to their lairs; this particular beast didn’t. The shikaris engaged by the Madhya Pradesh government had searched for a week but failed to locate any beast capable of such carnage. As a result, panic had spread amongst the villagers. One particular villager claimed that he had seen a two-legged creature running away from his cowshed. He had gone to investigate, and found his buffalo lying dead with a sizeable portion of its lower abdomen eaten away.
Tulsi Babu read the news, folded the paper, and put it back on the table.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t find anything exceptional in the story?’ said Prodyot Babu.
Tulsi Babu shook his head. In other words, he didn’t. Three days later, a strange thing happened to Prodyot Babu.
His wife had just opened a tin of digestive biscuits at breakfast and was about to serve them to him with his tea when Prodyot Babu abruptly left the dining table and rushed out of the house.
&
nbsp; By the time he reached his friend Animesh’s flat in Ekdalia Road, he was trembling with excitement.
He snatched the newspaper away from his friend’s hands, threw it aside and said panting: ‘Where do you keep your copies of Reader’s Digest? Quick—it’s most important!’
Animesh shared with millions of others a taste for Reader’s Digest. He was greatly surprised by his friend’s behaviour but scarcely had the opportunity to show it. He went to a bookcase and dragged out some dozen issues of the magazine from the bottom shelf.
‘Which number are you looking for?’
Prodyot Babu took the whole bunch, flipped through the pages of a number of issues, and finally found what he was looking for.
‘Yes—this is the bird. No doubt about it.’
His fingers rested on a picture of a conjectural model of a bird kept in the Chicago Museum of Natural History. It showed an attendant cleaning the model with a brush.
‘Andalgalornis,’ said Prodyot Babu, reading out the name. The name meant terror-bird. The article with the picture described it as a huge prehistoric species, carnivorous, faster than a horse, and extremely ferocious.
The doubt which had crept into Prodyot Babu’s mind was proved right when in the office next morning Tulsi Babu came to him and said that he had to go to Dandakaranya once again, and that he would be delighted if Prodyot Babu would join him and bring his gun with him. There was too little time to obtain sleeping accommodation in the train, but that couldn’t be helped as the matter was very urgent.
Prodyot Babu agreed at once.
In the excitement of the pursuit, the two friends didn’t mind the discomfort of the journey. Prodyot Babu said nothing about the bird in the Reader’s Digest. He could do so later; there was plenty of time for that. Tulsi Babu had in the meantime told him everything. He had also mentioned that he didn’t really believe the gun would be needed; he had suggested taking it only as a precaution. Prodyot Babu, on the other hand, couldn’t share his friend’s optimism. He believed the gun was essential, and he was fully prepared for any eventuality. The morning paper had mentioned that the Madhya Pradesh government had announced a reward of 5,000 rupees to anyone who succeeded in killing or capturing the creature, which had been declared a man-eater ever since a woodcutter’s son had fallen victim to it.
