On the leper’s head trail
It was late one night when I chanced upon a Medium blog by Karthik. The first couple of lines captivated me to no extent — “A swing of the door of the bookshelf at home revealed a thirty-year-old treasure of my father’s. The nuggets comprised seven books of the most amazing shikar stories written by an Indian of British origin retelling in his own words, ‘the hunting escapades’ he had undertaken in the then dense jungles of South India”. I knew exactly what he was talking about. Kenneth Anderson’s seven hunting books occupy the ‘prime’ area in my bookshelf. They are the first books accessible once one opens the door and the reason for their easy accessibility is the simple fact that I reach out to them frequently. On average, my ‘beat’ covers all 7 books at least once a year. And so it was with mounting excitement that I read the blog well into the night.
The blog by Karthik was about the hunting of the The man-eater of Crescent mountains which was one of those rare expeditions where both Kenneth and his son Don were involved. The blog is a moving piece on how a father-son duo in modern-age, go on an adventure to re-live the scenes/experience the places / interact with the people about whom the original father-son duo wrote several decades ago.
The original story by Kenneth was always special to me. For one, it was probably (in my view) one of the last man-eaters hunted by Kenneth about which he wrote of. For another — it was also one of the few documented incidents in which Don bags a man-eating tiger. Though I had not viewed Don very favourably in the past, my perception of him did soften considerably after reading Mathew Joshua’s — The last white hunter. In all probability, Don was a better hunter than the great Kenneth himself, but he just didn’t have the inclination or the patience to write about it. Also unlike Kenneth who in his later years would hunt only man-eaters — something that needs truck-loads of patience (man-eaters are far, far more wary), Don had no such compunctions.
I thought of analysing this special story of Kenneth’s and providing a third-person perspective to the strange sequence of events that happened on that fateful night at Maddak lake. It all starts when Kenneth receives a “much-soiled envelope enclosing a letter written in Kanarese”. Though Kenneth could converse in Kannada, he couldn’t read it. He takes the letter and walks to the police station “adjoining his house”. Kenneth had moved to Whitefield in the later years of his life. I doubt if there were police stations at every nook and corner in Whitefield which was a remote area in those days. In all likelihood, the police station he was talking of was the one adjoining his previous house named Prospect house next to Cubbon Park. The house is long gone, though the police station is still there. Joshua documents that Kenneth moved to Whitefield in the early ’60s. We, therefore, get an upper-bound limit to the year of this story. (All thru’ this blog, we pay heed to incidents that help us fix a timeline to this Crescent mountain man-eater story).
The head-constable reads the letter and tells Kenneth the letter was from Mudliargiriappa — the Patel of Hogarehalli village. Kenneth seems to know him very well. For one — Kenneth had purchased some land from him long back. For another — as it turns out, the Patel was also a fan of big-game hunting and naturally may have held Kenneth in awe. The Patel summons him urgently to visit his village and shoot a man-eater. Kenneth shows the letter to Don and asks him to go ahead and have a go at the tiger. Don, who usually would have loved to go alone on a hunting expedition such as this, uncharacteristically invites Kenneth as well. Though the father-son duo have many forest outings together, shooting a man-eater is serious business, and both father as well as son normally would have preferred to do the job individually. Don is usually portrayed as brash and un-attached, but it is quite likely that he thinks an adventure in the jungle would do Kenneth some good. It is possible (given some interesting incidents that happen later) that Kenneth had almost given up big-game hunting by then.
Off they go to meet their friend Mudliargiriappa, the very next day. The weather is hot and they sit outside on a rope cot. Over endless cups of tea, the Patel tells about the tiger beginning its depredations by killing a Lambani woman named Puttamma. Further kills followed in rapid succession — a man here, a woman there — across the eastern slope of the Crescent mountains. Then there was the eerie incident of the poacher who was sitting on a tree in Maddak’s lakeshore, hoping to bag a sambar or spotted-deer. Instead, he had to contend with the man-eater. Why the poacher never shot the man-eater was a matter of considerable speculation. He could climb no higher for the tree was short. There was no recourse for him other than to shoot the tiger in order to defend himself, but this he apparently never did. Perhaps the gun malfunctioned or maybe he just dozed off and didn’t see the tiger — there could be several reasons but most villagers chose to believe that the man-eater was invincible and fire-arms couldn’t hurt it. After this, some calm followed, but the tiger came back after a few weeks and took a Lingayat boy. It was when it took one of the Patel’s own workers, that the Patel hurriedly wrote to Kenneth imploring him to come.
The Patel offers Kenneth a place to stay, but Kenneth and Don prefer to stay in the open at their camping site. It is at this point that Kenneth recalls the story of why he has been purchasing camp-sites at various locations — a story that must be well known to all his admirers so I will refrain from going into it. Suffice to say that Kenneth had built up a vast real-estate empire and would have been a very rich man even in those times. Anyway, they manage to convince the Patel who is horrified to hear that they are going to sleep in the open in an area where a man-eater has been operating and whose depredations they had been discussing all this while.
We will now take a short detour to narrow down the dates for this expedition. The upper-bound is already set to the early ’60s possibly 1962 or 1963. Of course, this is not much of an inference since The man-eater of Crescent mountains was released in the book This is the jungle in 1964. So maybe at most, we knocked off a year or 2. How about the lower bound? I personally believe that the events in the story would have occurred between the years 1960–62. The first clue for the same comes from Kenneth’s request to Don to go and shoot the man-eater. Though Don started shooting at a very young age, Kenneth would not have sent him alone after man-eaters unless he was at least 18 years of age for man-eaters are far far more risky. Given that Don was born in 1934, this story would then have a lower-bound of the year 1952. This may seem obvious, but I still explicitly give this lower-bound because some blogs mistakenly attribute this story to the year 1947.
The same book This is the jungle had another story about Don named “The Lonely panther of Kappa Gudda hill”. If we assume for a moment that both the stories happened around the same time-line, then this increases the lower-bound year of the crescent mountain incident to somewhere after 1957 (though Kenneth does not always write stories chronologically). In the Kappa Gudda hill story, Kenneth talks about how “a town named Closepet was renamed to Ramnagaram in recent years”. The District Census handbook — Ramanagara in the 2011 India census says that the then Chief Minister of Karnataka, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, did the honours. If so this must have happened in 1952–56, more likely in the latter half of the CM’s tenure. Since the re-naming had happened a few years before Kenneth wrote the story, this increases our lower-bound to 1957 or so. Another piece of evidence presents itself when we read about the speculation of how the tiger (of crescent mountains) was disturbed by the construction of the dam across the Bhadra river. The dam was designed in 1947 and commissioned in 1965. With government machinery moving at a slow pace, the bulk of the land-moving work would have been carried out in the decade prior to the commissioning.
But my personal belief stems from another line of reasoning. When Kenneth asks Don to go after the tiger, the younger Don should ideally have jumped to the occasion and set off immediately. But he didn’t do that and invites Kenneth also to join him. It is likely that Don would have quenched a fair share of his hunting thirst by then….maybe a decade of shooting… or at least 5? We must also keep in mind that this was not the first time Don was visiting that place (Kenneth mentions this fact when he talks of the zinc house outside which the leper is mauled by the tiger). Thus it can be reasonably assumed that Don is a fairly established hunter in his own right by then and had visited Hogarehalli multiple times on his own in the past. Thus, we see that even a conservative speculation lead us to 1957 or 1958 as a lower-bound for this incident. We will leave it at that.
But let us now get back to our story. The Patel is visibly aghast when Kenneth and Don insist on sleeping in the open in an area infested by the man-eater. One reason Kenneth wanted to get away from the friendly old Patel was that he was bent upon plying them with food and coffee every few hours and his enthusiastic hospitality would ensure that Kenneth and Don don’t get time to strategize or plan their next steps. The other reason was simple. Kenneth displays a very strong sentimental attachment to his campsites.
It is night time and Kenneth and Don pitch a small tent on their camp-site. They have an early dinner and for want of something better to do, decide to motor a little way in their car, park it a suitable place and then walk 10 miles to Maddak lake. The plan was to sleep for an hour or 2 at Maddak lake and then trek all the way back to their car by early morning covering a distance of 20 miles. At least this was the plan they made, though as it turns out the tiger had other plans. Kenneth writes in his last book that he used to walk scores of miles even in his old age so this kind of a plan should come as no surprise to us.
We now witness a curious incident that happens and this provides us a tiny inkling that all may not be well with Kenneth. As the father-son duo is walking in the forest, they hear a tiger call. Though they are still not yet deep in the man-eating tiger’s haunts, they decide to take a chance and call up on the tiger (by making a responding mating call). Perhaps this might be the man-eating tiger, who knows! So they get behind the bole of trees each around 40 feet apart and then Kenneth makes the tiger call. They wait for a while but nothing happens. Kenneth says he could not hear even a twig crack. Had the tiger not heard them? Calling again would be risky as the tiger could be pretty close by (given the pace and distance at which they judged it was walking when they first heard it). He decides to stay put. Don is about 40 feet away behind another tree. Suddenly Don’s torch beam cuts thru’ the moon-light directed at a spot right behind Kenneth. Kenneth quickly turns to see what it was. Standing behind a bush, at a distance of around 40 feet was a tiger.
You can imagine their position to be similar to a right angle triangle with Kenneth at one point, the tiger at 40 feet directly behind Kenneth, and the Don at 40 feet to the right of Kenneth. Needless to say, Kenneth was nearer to the tiger than Don. They had badly misjudged the tiger’s position when they called. They thought the tiger had been walking behind them and were expecting it from that direction. Turns out the tiger had been ahead and actually decided to turn back to investigate the origin of the call. But worse still Kenneth is perplexed how he had not heard a thing. It was pretty lucky that Don discovered the tiger before it could come closer to Kenneth.
Kenneth too flashes his torch at the tiger. The question was now whether it was the man-eating tiger or not. Neither of them (yes, not even Don) wanted to shoot the tiger if he was not a man-eater. There must have been some telepathic exchange between father and son for both of them switch off their torches at the same time. The tiger is still there though it hasn’t seen either one of them. It seemed to be intent on discovering the source of the mating call. Then Kenneth decides to step out of the tree and show himself. If it was the man-eater the reaction would be different than if the tiger were a normal one. The effect on the tiger after seeing Kenneth was dramatic — With a loud woof-woof, he turns tail and flees into the jungle. Clearly, this was no man-eater!
Didn’t you hear him Dad? I was worried he was getting close and then decided to flash the torch. Kenneth says he has not heard a thing. Don says that he clearly heard a leaf rustle and the tiger brushing against a bush. You are growing old dad, he says mockingly! Kenneth speculates on whether some current of air had caused the sound to be carried away from him but finally resigns to the fact that he may be getting old and his hearing may not be what it used to be. But he says that no way he is going to give up on his jungle rambles.
Towards the latter years of his life, the other great hunter — Jim Corbett — too had a hearing problem, though in his case it was not due to old age. In an incident that has still not been fully explained, his eardrum burst when someone fired a high-powered rifle from an elephant back without warning… Corbett was sitting right next to that person when the incident occurred. The burst eardrum caused an abscess to form on his face below his left eye which over time became as large as a ball. The situation got progressively worse over time. The hearing in his left ear was completely gone and sight in the left eye was almost completely impaired due to the swelling. Every step he took sent jarring waves of pain in his head. He couldn’t bend as it caused vertigo. Though he doesn't explicitly mention it, I suppose turning his neck too would have entailed a significant amount of pain and effort. It was in this condition that he hunted down the cunning Talla Des man-eater and at least on one occasion during those difficult times, he literally contemplated walking willingly into the jaws of death. When the pain was at its peak and he couldn’t sleep at all, he set out ‘hunting’ for the man-eating tiger one night in unknown territory asking his men to return back to Nainital without him if he was not back by the next day. Thankfully, the abscess burst that very night itself after a severe attack of vertigo while following the tiger’s tracks. Most of the fluid came out of his nostril and with it came the immediate cessation of pain that had haunted him for quite a while. We digressed quite a bit but suffice to say that both Kenneth and Corbett were iron-willed Indians (originally Scottish and Irish respectively) with extraordinary willpower and sheer guts that are needed while hunting man-eaters.
Both father and son are now deep in Tiger territory with all senses on full alert. They reach the Maddak tank where Don pulls out a packet of biscuits from his pocket and they have a small snack. Possibly Don would have remembered to stuff it into his pocket at the camp — another incident that seems uncharacteristic of the younger Don. This incident as it turns out was critical to the sequence of events that followed over the next 24 hours — for without that small snack they may have been tempted to go back to their camp without bagging the tiger.
It is now 2 AM in the night and Don and Kenneth decide to get an hour of sleep. They feel that the top of the bund would be safe from the man-eater. They had hardly slept for an hour when they heard the loud wail of a human in distress mingled with the woofs of a tiger. Both father-son take their rifles and dash to the other side of the bund from where the sound had come. They knew that there was a small shed of zinc sheeting on the other side as both father and son had jointly/independently made multiple trips to this place in the past. Usually, the shed was locked but it looked like there was someone there tonight. They reach the shed to find it locked. This only meant that someone had been sleeping outside the shed — an act no one would attempt to do in an area where a man-eating tiger operated. Was it a bootlegger? or was it a mentally retarded man? These were the thoughts that might have raced in the minds of the father-son. They shout in unison trying to see if there was a response but there was none. The man-eater had been swift and was by now rapidly moving away from the spot. The man’s life was lost.
At that time, realization probably hits them both. In all likelihood, the tiger had been perhaps trying to climb across the bund and had chanced upon the man there and had taken him. Had the man not been there, then very likely the tiger would have continued upwards and one or both of them would have been killed that night. Though they look painstakingly around for clues to follow the tiger, it is too dark and they must wait for dawn. Reluctantly, they go back to the top of the bund and sleep in turns until morning. Next day, Kenneth says the tracking was extremely difficult. It was Don who first discovers a drop of blood. They follow in the general direction but were hampered because the tiger apparently had not released its hold on the man even one bit. Its fangs were deeply embedded in the holes they made while the tiger first grabbed the man preventing free blood flow. After some distance though it seems to have laid down the body and then picked it up again by gripping another part and from thereon the blood flow was copious. They follow the easy trail now. Progress was still slow for they were cautious knowing that it was very likely that the tiger might be sleeping next to the kill behind any bush or bamboo clump. The terrain is treacherous and at this point, Kenneth feels comforted by the fact that Don is around.
They approach a large boulder and Kenneth instinct now kicks in. He is sure that the tiger is behind this boulder. Just then his feet strike something and it turns out to be a man’s head. Though they look around, there were no bones or other remains. For some bizarre reason, the tiger seems to have bitten off the head and continued with his journey with the rest of the body. Kenneth is still sure that the tiger is behind the boulder a few feet away. The mystery is solved when Kenneth takes a closer look at the face — it was that of a man in an advanced stage of leprosy. Now indeed 2 mysteries were solved — 1) The poor soul was probably shunned by fellow villagers and being on the last few days of his life had sought refuge in the forest outside the zinc shed — man-eater or no man-eater, he probably was too far gone to care about all that. 2) The tiger being a fussy eater might have been turned off by the foul smell from the sores on the face and hence would have bitten off the head before proceeding to go a little further and settling down to feed. Kenneth & Don then carefully approach the boulder and discover that Kenneth’s instinct had been partially right. The tiger had indeed settled there for a meal though it had moved on after that. Lying around the sand were the pitiable remains of the leper — the small portions that were uneaten and which would undoubtedly be consumed by the tiger when he came back that night for a second feed. This was a good opportunity for them to wait and shoot the tiger when it returned but there were two major problems. A minor one was that they had to go without food for more than 24 hours. A bigger problem was that there was no tree or suitable place where they could hide and camouflage themselves.
The details of the wait can be read in Kenneth’s book, but suffice to say that it was the worst experience for Don. Kenneth has had worse in the past but he too says he wouldn’t want to repeat this experience at any cost. The heat was probably the main problem. For the father-son duo would have drunk some water from the Maddak tank early in the morning before setting off in pursuit of the tiger. They had to wait till night for the return of the tiger making minimal movement. The period from early afternoon till 4 PM was the worst. They would have been badly dehydrated due to the heat and perspiration. There were no trees around and mainly boulders and sand. Anyway, the long wait was now coming to an end. The brain-fever bird cry is heard by Kenneth. It had been in the vicinity and had been crying occasionally since evening but this time there was a marked change in the timbre and pitch. Kenneth instantly knows the tiger is coming. The brain-fever bird and the langur watchman are never wrong and can be completely relied upon. “He is coming Dad” says Don. Quite needless, though. It is like telling a fireman that the fire alarm has turned ON. A hunter of Kenneth’s caliber, would definitely not have missed the signal given by the bird. Was Don worried that Kenneth would have missed it or was it just him muttering out of sheer excitement, preparing himself for the burst of adrenaline rush that would soon be required to follow?
Father and son are positioned behind the boulder on each side. Kenneth expects that the tiger would come from Don’s side because that was the side he left after having his fill in the morning. It is night now and the stars are visible. The moon has not yet risen. It is definitely the wrong time for the tiger to make its appearance for it was pitch black everywhere. At this point, Kenneth says that he has confidence in his son Don and his sense of hearing, and his sense of watchfulness. The comment comes across as a bit odd to me. Kenneth was among the greatest hunters of India. Why is he relying on Don’s sense of hearing and watchfulness? Could it be that he was well past his prime now — a conjecture we had made when we initially started out? Was his own sense of hearing and watchfulness on the wane? Or was it a temporary thought arising indirectly due to the tiger-call incident that happened the previous night when Kenneth couldn't hear the tiger right behind him? Or did he always regard Don that highly? We can only speculate on this interesting comment of Kenneth.
Anyway, it looks like Kenneth has under-estimated himself for at that very moment in the darkness he could make out that the silhouette of the tank was no longer straight but seemed bent at one particular point and as he watched, it seemed to be changing shape to a round circular form. The tiger had picked Kenneth’s side. Nudging Don hard, Kenneth raises the rifle and turns on the torch-light. Before he could fire, the tiger darts away behind the boulder. Kenneth hastily rises and moves around the rock to shoot but Don has forestalled him from the other side. Don shoots the tiger and hits him. Kenneth too fires away — his .405 Winchester roars as always! The tiger is dead now. But he knows that this tiger is Don’s!
Well done, Don he says. You got him nicely. Don doesn’t refute this statement and instead does some sort of a victory dance in the dead of the night. The two of them are delighted to bag the tiger after all the efforts that have been put into it. It is too dark now to skin the tiger. They don’t want to return to Hogarehalli without doing so because the vultures or hyenas would damage the tiger skin in the night. So they decide to sleep the second night at that place. Early morning, the father-son duo skin the tiger. What happens next gives a clue to the tremendous strength and will-power of Don — something that Mathew Joshua says remained till his very old age. It has been more than 36 hours since they had food, yet Don carries the tiger skin and head cheerfully back all the way to the vehicle which is parked at least 10 miles away. The weight in my view would be at least 30–40 KGs and this is no mean achievement. The folks at Hogarehalli are delighted and the Patel sets up a great feast later that night.
Thus ends the story of the Crescent forest. I feel it is Don’s story all the way thru. Kenneth would have been immensely proud of Don that day. It is also likely to be one of Kenneth’s last documented man-eater hunts. The father-son duo had an outing they would long remember. Just like Karthik and his father who followed Kenneth’s footprints half a century later. They ended up finding old Mudliargiriappa's wife — who along with her husband had been intent on plying all those dishes on Kenneth and Don when they first arrived to shoot the crescent tiger. They visit the Maddak tank and retrace Kenneth and Don’s steps — right from the zinc shed (which is now converted to a cement structure) to locate the place marked “Leper’s Body” in the map, the point where the scattered remains of the man-eater’s last victim was present. Do read the wonderful blog by Karthik if you have not already done so. Another equally wonderful blog on this tiger by Jeevan also exists here.
Dorai was a word typically used for an Englishman. In my view, the epithet sounds strange on Kenneth who was Indian all the way thru. When he was young, he was sent to England to become a barrister. He thoroughly detested that place, hung out with other Indian kids there, and came back after just 8 months. For his daughter June’s marriage, he made up his mind to wear a Dhoti. Nothing that his wife or son or relatives would say or do made him change his mind. Finally, it was bucketloads of tears from June that made him relent but he was not happy about it. His green eyes and fair countenance formed a strong contrast to his actions and mannerisms. When India got independence and most Englishmen left fearing their safety, Kenneth refused to leave saying this was his place and he would go nowhere else. In fact, against all advice, he went out on the streets of Bangalore to celebrate independence day on 15 Aug 1947.
No writer has written so eloquently about the forests of South India or their denizens before Kenneth. It would have been logical to rename a small patch of forestland after this great man but that has not been done so far. His body may lie in the Hosur road cemetery along with Don and Blossom Anderson, however, his soul would forever be amongst the forests of South India. The preamble to one of his books is particularly haunting and I reprint it here:
“The man sits with his back to a tree and the light from the campfire waxes and wanes, throwing him into sharp relief along with the tree-trunk against which he rests, to fade the next instant into obscurity and gloom. Leaning against the tree beside him is a .405 Winchester rifle of ancient vintage. Someone throws a fresh log on the flames and myriad sparks soar upwards, lighting the heavy boughs of the great tree that overshadows the camp. For an instant, the man’s countenance, too, is lit brightly and we see that he has a beard and moustache, and that firmly held in the corner of the mouth is an old briar that has long gone out. A battered ‘Gurkha’ hat, its brim curled up at the left side, slopes rakishly to the right upon his head. The man is speaking. He appears to be telling a tale and it is clear that he is so intent upon it, so absorbed, that he has forgotten his pipe and all else around him. The flames die down, and then flare up again, their momentary gleam revealing the absent look in the man’s eyes, as he lives again the incidents he describes. The past has become so real that he is oblivious of his audience, squatting around him on the ground beside the fire, listening to his words. The sparks fly upwards to merge, fade and disappear in a thick spiral of smoke that curls yet higher until it is lost in the gloom of the heavy foliage of trees that encircle the camp and accentuate the jungle night.
Except for the crackle of the flames and the drone of the man’s voice, the forest is lost in silence, and a heavy, oppressive, uncanny quiet that we feel cannot last much longer. And we are right. The roar of a tiger breaks suddenly through the blackness, to be answered by the scream of an excited elephant. ‘Aungh-ha! Ooongh! Aungh-ooongh!’ comes that awful sound as the tiger stalks boldly down the jungle aisles, while the distant trumpeting of the elephant ‘Tri-aa-a-ank! Tri-aa-aank!’ announces that the challenge has been met. But the man seems not to hear these sounds, so engrossed has he become in the story he is telling. He appears to be of the jungle himself, and we get the impression that he belongs there. This is home for him and here is the place he would want to die; the jungle is his birthplace, his haven and his resting place when the end comes.”
