Midst the chatter of crickets and croaking of toads, the staccato call of the gecko was like a junglee tick tock of a “Big Ben” clocking the passage of time, in the wilds of Assam. Lattu would spin like a top, yelp and, rotating in concentric circles of delirium, squeal and chase his tail, till he collapsed dizzily beside Bishambar, our tribal night chowkidar from Jharkhand, who was forever high on ganja and needed the agile Lattu to keep an eye on our bungalow while leopards and tigers prowled the countryside.

As jackals howled in the distance and the gathering mist made the full moon glow like a phantom lighthouse in the sky, a night owl screeched as it swooped down on a fragile rabbit that was munching on the fresh dub grass that had grown along the footpath that led to a small bil (jheel) where migratory Mallards and Spotbills stayed awake surrounded by squawking Lapwings till the swaying hurricane lamps of arguing and happily inebriated villagers disappeared into the mosquito-infested bamboo groves beyond which they lived.

At dawn, with fantastic feathers glistening in the rays of a late-rising winter sun, red jungle fowl marched proudly out of the bamboobari and strolled into the paddy fields to pick up grain that had fallen during the harvesting as well as feast on squadrons of flies, battalions of insects and legions of worms. Up above, a sparrow hawk was circling for prey and turning its beak up at a mole that was squeaking and scurrying stupidly along the barren field while, nearby, a couple of jungle crows hopped around under a Simbul tree pecking on the carcass of a dead rabbit that was lying beside blossoms of cotton with prisms of dewdrops painting mini rainbows on them.

A flight of Pintails and Til landed gracefully in the bil and immediately got into the business of shoving their beaks into the mud in search of an early breakfast.

Meanwhile, Bishambar had woken from his slumber and set out the tray for my father’s palang cha (which he never had in bed but always in the verandah of the bungalow) and was now walking around whistling for Lattu for whom he had poured out (encouraged by my father) an unauthorised saucer of milk for which my mother gave him hell every single day. But Bishambar’s ganja-addled brain had a switch-off device that took no notice of remonstrations and drove my mother and everybody else that had to deal with his eccentricities, mad.

I could hear the call of green pigeons in the giant Pipal tree outside our gate. I knew that the smaller ones with pink legs, hopping from branch to branch gobbling fruit, were indigenous, the larger lighter-green birds with yellow legs waddled between them and had flown in from Burma and the quiet and lumbering giant bluish birds that were called Parghumas, the Imperial pigeon, sat stoically still, way up on top of the tree, frowning upon the antics of inferior sub-species. Interfering Barbets and Drongos and common Mynahs added to the din in search of creepy crawlies that they preferred.

In an hour they would all have disappeared and only the irritating Mynahs and hooting Barbets would be arguing about the difference between the Pipal’s fruit and the Banyan’s juicier version. For those of us who have stood under these trees, you can be sure that the Pipal fruit is better for their digestive systems because the mess they make under Banyans is beyond belief.

TWO COBRAS & AN ELEPHANT

Anyway, now the sun was up and had heated our iron gate that was on the path that led to my father’s office that was about 50 yards beyond the Pipal tree. For years, at the base of this giant tree, two black cobras had nested, bred and flourished. There was enough in terms of rats and frogs and moles and birds eggs for them to have no worries or cares in the reptile world. One of their routine luxuries on winter mornings was to slither on top of the iron gate and stretch right along the top to warm their bellies on the hot steel: they changed sides everyday so neither had exclusive rights over the rough edges they climbed through on the right side that proved excellent back-scratchers for wretched serpents who could never reach down where it itched.

When my father approached the gate each morning, our labrador and sheep dog would come to a halt and stare at him and wait for him to clap his hands to wake up the slumbering snakes. They pretended to stir but would lazily soak in the sun for as long as possible till our agile boxer vaulted over them and always shook the gate to the point where they would almost topple off the ledge. They would then slither off and let us pass. My father would return in two hours for breakfast. Amazingly, the two cobras would crawl back on top of the gate and take a nap till it was time for my father to come back. In an extraordinary understanding of time that probably came from a study of the position of the sun on the boughs of the Pipal overhead, they always disappeared before my father arrived on the scene, so we never had to repeat the ritual of clapping our hands to rouse them.

It was in times like these that I was once out picnicking by the riverbed with my air rifle beside me: I knew it would protect me from tigers and leopards simply because I was a fine shot and a pellet through their eye would enter the brain and kill them. Those were the days of dreams that almost always came true. As I sat back and munched on the sandwiches my mother had made for me and shared them with Saila, my trusted gun-bearer, I heard a strange hissing sound from behind a mound of earth, not more than 50 yards away. Excited, I felt it might be the sneeze of a big cat or the rummaging of a wild boar. I picked up my gun and asked Saila to go check what it was.

Saila was a veteran (I guess that is why my parents trusted me with him) and stealthily crept up to the mound to look around it. As a precaution, he coughed like a leopard and threw a stone to land just under the mound. In a monumental heave and with a trumpet that made the cotton fly off the tops of Simbul trees and shook the earth beneath our feet, a colossus of a wild elephant (what we had in our idleness thought was a big mound of earth) stood up and spun around. Travelling at over 100 mph, Saila flashed past me and disappeared into the horizon behind me. I stood staring at the mammoth with my adrenaline cooking up strange formulae with my spleen and respiratory systems and, in particular, my bladder. After an eternity during which my very existence on the planet hung in the balance, the Goliath retreated from the David whose air rifle was poised to end his Pachydermian glory, if he took one step towards me.

Every year, I return to those places in Assam to be reminded of the excitement I grew up with and the bounties of the natural world that helped me exist in a dream world of fantasies, fantastic animals and birds and plants. I could fantasise. I could imagine. I could survive on magical make-believe.

Believe me when I say that absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing at all, that I described above, exists today. In our attempt to conserve, or rather in our educated and self-centered pretence to protect, we have destroyed more than we shall ever be able to replace.

At least, I lived once when I was able to see and smell and touch the joys of a living planet that is now becoming moribund.

P.S. Lattu was lifted by a leopard on a New Year’s Eve night. Bishambar spent six nights wandering through the neighbouring jungles with a spear, in vain.