For the tourists flocking to the Sundarbans, spotting a tiger can be the ultimate thrill. But for the villagers living on the edges of the forests, such sightings are an everyday reality — and a stark reminder of a perennial danger.

It can mean death. Or it can mean a close shave. But if you come back to tell the tale, it means you have to return to the forest again. To risk your life to meet the challenges of livelihood.

Tigers killed two Sundarbans fishermen last week. Sambhu Sardar, 32, was mauled in the Chamta forest while collecting crabs with two neighbours on November 17.

Four days later, a tiger dragged Tapas Halder, 52, away in the Sunderkati forest. His body was found the next day, November 22, deep inside the forest after searchers burst crackers to scare away the tiger, which seemed to have been lurking nearby.

The Telegraph spoke to several villagers about their life in the shadow of the tiger. Here are the accounts of two among them.

l Anadi Halder, 60, of Deulbari Debipur, Kultali, South 24-Parganas

Anadi Halder

I have been going to the forests to collect honey and catch crabs for more than 40 years. I have seen three men killed by tigers.

My first encounter with a tiger came on a summer afternoon about 30 years ago. Tired from felling trees (a legal activity at the time), we had sat down under a tree to smoke bidis and then begun walking in a single file towards
our boat.

Vishma Debnath was at the back of the line. The tiger arrived silently and pounced on him. We screamed and threw sticks at the animal, and it let go of him and fled. But Debnath didn’t survive.

Five years later, we again entered the Jharkhali forest to collect honey. On the river, we met two men who said their companion had been taken away by a tiger. We went back with them to the spot and made a lot of din, scaring the tiger off. We recovered the man’s disfigured body.

That same year, I lost my friend Raghuram Sardar, a brave man who often went alone into the forests. That day, we had gone deep inside a forest to catch crabs. A tiger appeared from nowhere and dragged Raghuram away.

It was a particularly ferocious animal. It refused to leave the body and was roaring and trying to attack us. It kept lunging at the four of us.

We hit the bushes with our sticks to make a noise, and beat patches of mud so it would splatter and get into the animal’s eyes. Eventually, we gave up and returned to our boat without Raghuram’s body.

Last week, I too was in the Sunderkati forest to catch crabs. We set the baited nets on the banks of the creek on Friday afternoon (the same day the tiger killed Tapas Halder in the same forest).

When we returned to draw the nets on Saturday morning, we saw the fresh pugmarks of three tigers. They had torn portions of the nets with their claws.

There were four of us. Usually, all of us separately draw the nets with the crabs trapped in them. But on Saturday, we did it together, with one of us keeping an eye on the forest with a stick in hand. It took us two hours to finish a job that usually takes half an hour.

Despite such frightening experiences, I have to go back to the forest again and again. My family of four depends on me.

I have a one-bigha plot of land but it does not yield enough paddy. I earn barely ₹30,000 a year from the land, but the forest gives me around ₹20,000 a month. I make two trips every month.

We now take basic precautions, like traveling in a large group, with one member always watching the forest.

l Balaram Jana, 22, of Nagendranagar, Moipith, South 24-Parganas

Balaram Jana

On a chilly December night five years ago, our small boat was anchored in the Matla river. We had set the nets to catch crabs and were waiting for the morning low tide to drag them in.

My father was with me in the boat. He had just finished cooking. It was around 7pm.

“Give me the torch, I can see some dark object moving towards us,” my father told me. In the torchlight, we could see the huge head of a tiger. It was swimming towards our boat silently.

Our boat was 150 feet from the bank but the tiger was now barely 50 feet away. We began screaming and flashed the torchlight in the tiger’s eyes. It made an about-turn and swam back to the forest. I was
shaking.

My father rowed the boat to the other side of the river, where there was another group of fishermen. We spent the night there and returned home the next morning, without even thinking of going back to the opposite bank to collect the nets.

I was so terrified that I stopped going to the forests and instead migrated to Bengaluru to work in a hotel.

But my parents continued to go into the forests. One day, I heard that a fishing trawler had hit my parents’ boat at night, tossing them into the water. They swam to safety but became so traumatised that I had to return home.

Since the accident, I have been living in the village. Three years ago, I resumed my forest trips since there’s no other sustainable livelihood here.

Last year, I again saw a tiger. It was after Durga Puja. We were in a boat close to the forest near the Kalash Camp. I was with my uncle and a male cousin.

We saw a tiger sitting on a bank of the creek very close to us. We saw it again after 700 metres and realised that it was following us. We abandoned our plan to catch crabs and returned home.

Nowadays I don’t get off the boat any more. I wrap the net around a rod and put the bait in it, dropping it into the river. The catch is lower but with this method, my chances of survival are higher.

We go to the forests twice a month and earn around ₹15,000.