STRIPE SEARCH
A tiger is stalking villages in Jhargram, West Bengal, and it’s all anyone can talk about. Amid conspiracy theories and debates on how best to catch it, a region with no previous sightings lives in excitement and fear
It’s been a month of firsts for Bangeshwar Mahato, 62: first tiger attack, first drone. On February 28, a tiger snatched one of his cows and wounded another. About a week later, when he was resting in front of his hut one afternoon, some people from his village ran past shouting and pointing upwards. He looked up to see a small machine in the sky. “It was a very small helicopter,” he whispers.
Mahato is a farmer from Amliya village on the edges of the Lalgarh forest, in Jhargram, West Bengal. His was one of eight cows (seven adults and a calf) to disappear over the last week of February.
“We thought it was hyenas,” says Mahato. “There are also leopards in the surrounding forests, but they don’t attack such big animals.”
After multiple complaints from villagers, the forest department set up camera traps. What they saw on March 3 was a first for them too — an adult Royal Bengal tiger was stalking across the frame.
“This forest spanning parts of Jhargram and West Midnapore has no record of tiger sightings in documented history, going back 50 years,” says state principal chief conservator of forests, Ravi Kant Sinha.
The clip sparked a frenzy in the villages and, as the forest departments scrambled to find and relocate the animal before there was more bloodshed, a worried state government sent in help via the Kolkata police, in the form of two drones (and cops to operate them).
For two days, the drones flew over the forest, but the vegetation was too thick for it to see through, so the hunt moved to the ground, where traps were laid.
Three weeks on, there are still 30 people, including veterinarians and a tranquilliser team, on standby in the Lalgarh forest area, in case the traps or camera traps help net their prey.
“The tiger is a cautious animal and it is always a challenge to capture one,” says Nilanjan Mallik, field director of the state’s Sunderban reserve, which is providing assistance on the ground.
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Worried villagers now have their eyes trained on the ground, shouts greeting every fresh sighting of pug marks.
Three traps have been laid in the spots where the marks were most concentrated. First, goats were tried as bait; their bleats
AN EXGOVT OFFICIAL IS FIGHTING TO PRESERVE DYING THEATRE FORMS IN BENGAL
Sitachuri is a local version of a part of the Ramyana. In Champabati, a fake sadhu kidnaps a woman and she is rescued.
Lalita Pala is a fictional account about how an idol of the Lodha Shabar community’s deity, called Nilmadhab, was stolen.
FROM MEMORY
De grew up hearing these stories and attending jatra performances in the village where his parents owned a paddy farm. “My mother would tell us folk tales before we slept,” he says. He eventually got a Masters in Bengali literature from Calcutta University and did a PhD thesis on the folk tales of Jangalmahal.
“When I got an opportunity to travel across the region for work in the 1980s, I started noting down details and discovering different versions in folk theatre with my wife,” he says.
Some of the theatre forms were disappearing even then.
By the time De retired, many of the folk theatre and dance forms that he had documented were no longer being performed. “I decided to preserve what I knew of them and started writing the books.” Jangalamahaler Lokjatra and Jangalmahaler Lokkatha were published in 2014 by Midnapore-based Sabyasachi publishers and Kolkata-based Monfakira publishers.
In the same year, De co-founded Jangal Mahal Udyog, an NGO to promote the folk culture of the region, with librarian Priyobroto Bera, anthropologist Pashupatiprasad Mahato, and retired bank official Surajit Sengupta, all from Jangalmahal. They organised their first event, the Jangal Mahal Utsav, in Kolkata that year.
“There were performances of Paik and of Jhumur, a collection of folk love songs,” says De.
Now, they want to take the forms back to their home. In February this year, they staged a smaller version of the festival in a school ground in Midnapore town, before a crowd of 2,000.
“The next step is to take it to the villages,” says Priyobrota Bera, secretary of the NGO.
Reviving these theatre forms is significant because this region has little formal history, De says. “These tales,” he adds, “show a community that had a rich and vibrant relationship with myths, religion, and each other.”