Bagheera, By Any Other Name: My Black Panther

Originall published on Desicritics

Kipling’s Jungle Book was my first introduction to secret India. How I fantasized as a child about Bhalu, Sher Khan and the Black Panther, the palang or as it was called in the novel, Bagheera. When the movie first came out, I was out for ninety minutes in another secret world, trying to put my imagined version of the stories together with what I had read. Somehow, it was Bagheera the Indian leopard that caught my fancy more than all the others. It slinked and slithered, it disappeared into the jungle at night like a phantom; its grating call sent shivers down my spine.

Yesterday, I was reading stories of Jim Corbett, the legendary man-eating tiger killer. I found it strange that at the exact time I was writing the initial draft of this article that Jason Bellows, on April 29th. 2008 was engaged in writing something just as interesting about the same topic, A Large-Hearted Gentleman, a wonderful account of Jim Corbett and how he killed man-eating tigers. That gentleman lived between 1874 and 1955 and his stories were even more avidly read by me than those of Kipling and by many of us who owned guns and were addicted to shikar. (the hunt)

There is a zoo in Lahore where we went as a family to see the animals mentioned by Kipling. As a child I was saddened by it, and many decades later, as an adult I was appalled. I found the Indian Leopard cage and stared into the eyes of a creature that had been in its tiny cement and steel barred box for a decade, its fur dull, its muscles flaccid from lack of use. I stood a long time and stared into its eyes, the only part of it that seemed alive as it lay on a cement slab. I had read that if you stare into the eyes of a leopard or tiger, it will be unable to maintain your gaze and look away. I stared now waiting for it to look away. It stared at me, it too, it too having read about this phenomenon and did not look away, waiting for me to tire. I spoke. “Hello leopard. What secret thoughts are you thinking? Do you remember your home in the jungle of the Nepal terrai?” Now it looked away and yawned, showing its long yellowed canines. It rolled over and dismissed me. It had been born in the zoo and had no idea about what I was referring to. Its language skills were limited to the taunts the Lahore kids threw at it.

The road from the Woodstock Hostie, as the senior boys’ hostel was called, to the chukkar near the top of the hill in Mussoorie, was a fair hike of about half an hour. The short cuts through the jungle were narrow paths that wound around the hillside. These were often used by the charcoal carriers and other paharis, our name for the hill people who lived in secluded villages on this part of the Himalayan foothills. These were the paths I took on my thrice weekly excursions to visit at the house of my girlfriend and future wife, who, it seemed, lived as far away from my hostie as was possible and still be part of our ex-patriot community. The trip there was in the daylight which was for me a naturalist’s paradise. Along the trails in the rainy season, the leeches, feeling the vibration of my footsteps would stand up like tiny antennae and wave about waiting for a foot to land nearby onto which they could cling. On the bushes there were always insects; rhinoceros beetles, stags with their fearsome pinschers and June Bugs with iridescent green backs. As I walked I would collect one or another of these and move along. These paths were a favorite place for lungurs, the agile and often aggressive hairy monkeys that swung on their long arms and stared down at me from the branches of trees covered with hanging moss. If I was very lucky I might see Chikor Partridge scurry away or a slinking Kaleej Pheasant.

The trip back, usually at night when it was pitch dark was another world experience. My flashlight picked up the shiny eyes of many creatures as I strode along, or often loping on the downward slopes. Usually the batteries in my torch were fairly new, or at least sufficiently charged to produce an orange glow. I used the torch sparingly because it cost money to buy batteries. I walked along briskly in the semi-darkness, the waxing moon giving some light to make out the road. Something moved in the path in front of me and I stopped in my tracks, my heart pounding. The light of my torch reflected back from two eyes of a leopard standing in the path facing me. Behind it, down on the edge of the kud was something black. I stood stock still and I held the light steady for what seemed to me like an eternity. It turned its head away from the glare, then once again stared at me and made a coughing, snarling noise like a saw cutting into hard timber. My hand shook, my knees felt like putty and I had a hard time holding my bowels. It was not fear, rather terror that came over me, alone on a jungle trail with a leopard twenty feet away, at night, with no gun. I blinked my eyes and when I looked again it was gone. I shone the light around and there was no reflection, no sound, only a slight odor of feline urine.

I did not go forward. I backed up slowly for fifty feet and then walked uphill for half a mile and took a major dirt road that led to the Teri road, a rather long way to get home, but hopefully safer than a path where leopards roamed. I was almost home. I could see the light of the boarding halls below me and I relaxed. At that moment a pack of jackals, not more than twenty feet from me near the road began to howl. Somehow this gave speed to my feet as I raced the rest of the way back. This has been a secret until now and one I have kept for many, many decades. Imagine, admitting to my girlfriend about my terror. Imagine telling about a girl friend. Imagine how surprised the leopard was too, who was at the time with his dark-haired girlfriend.

The wife of one of the British officers was walking her small dog on the chukkar not far from where I had met my leopard and stared into its eyes. She told her story rather properly and matter-of-factly. “I was walking the dog and a leopard came out of the bushes at the side of the road and in one motion, snatched Bonnie, holding her by the neck and pulled her away from me into the bushes. Neither the dog nor the leopard made a sound. One moment it was there, the next it was gone!” When asked if she had been terrified she replied, “No, not at all. I was furious that it just took Bonnie like that in broad daylight. I did not have time to be frightened. It was a horribly beautiful animal, I must say, black as coal.”

Two other dogs were taken near homes in the area that year. The men in many households now oiled up their guns, bought new batteries for their torches and vowed that if they saw the culprit that they would shoot the bugger on site. That only lasted until the rainy season, because guns rusted easily if they got soaking wet, and who in their right mind would wander about in a pouring rain anyway? The leopards moved down toward Dehra Dun where the rain was not so severe and there were ample numbers of village dogs to eat.

I have waited until now to insert a snippet of Jim Corbett’s tale. “He continued briskly along the sand, hoping to make it to the hilltop before the tigress finished her buffalo feast. As he squeezed past a large boulder which blocked most of the riverbed, something in his peripheral vision gave him pause: something orange and black, with predator’s eyes, poised behind the boulder ready to pounce. He… set the rifle butt against his hip, and managed to fire a singe shot. For a moment the tiger was unaffected, and stayed coiled on the verge of springing out. Then her muscles slacked and her head came down to rest on her forepaws. The bullet had entered the back of her neck, and plunged through to her heart. … the Chowgrath Tigress was indeed dead.” The tiger is more charismatic than the slinking leopard, and almost always takes the headlines, except in this case. I find Corbett’s prose a bit too dramatic. “Poised, ready to pounce.” Come on.

Charismatic mega-vertebrates such as the elephant, the Sumatran rhino, gaur and tigers have captured the attention of animal lovers in India. Leopards somehow have not had good press agents. They are seldom mentioned except when a goat, cow or dog is killed and then once again the men pick up their guns and make vows of vengeance. But the Indian Leopard is seldom seen now. Rapid human population expansion has forced the leopard to move away into more remote jungle areas. The Indian leopard may still number in the tens of thousands, however, with a human population of a billion and growing, the leopard may endure in its last stronghold in the Himalayas. The leopard, as opposed to the more fearsome and grand tiger, will, I believe continue to remain in its secret places for quiet some time. Children may see the leopard in a zoo, glance at its spotted fur, or if lucky into its eyes for a moment and then pass on to see the elephants or the Bengal Tiger with its sagging stomach.

Leopard fixation is incurable. It is caught at an early age when a young child is highly vulnerable to the environmental and psychological influences of the mysterious jungles of India. I speak from experience. Long before I met the leopard on the pathway I used to put my hand into its mouth. What? Yes. You see my father, a surgeon, had acquired a leopard skin with a mounted head, claws and all, in a moment of a rajah’s generosity. I think it was not really a rajah, rather a Wali, a ruler in Swat whose wife he had treated most circumspectly, examining her through a sheet with a hole in it with the husband in attendance. He prescribed, she took the medicine, got better and the Wali was most grateful. He had a leopard skin with the head mounted, glass eyes, and its mouth wide open. He gave it to my father, who had, without thinking, admired it. The skin was a lovely thing to look at. That leopard skin got a special spot in our living room. My mother did not like it, but we children did. When we did prayers, puja, or namaz, depending on our choice that day, on the carpet, I would stretch out my hand and stroke its head and put my hand in its gaping mouth and feel its long teeth. Incurable. It was my favorite place to read, to lie back with my head against the leopard’s stuffed head, stretched out on the soft spotted fur.

While I attended boarding school I heard many a tale about leopards. One was about a black leopard, or as it was then called, a black panther. These were the most feared and stories about them were very special. They are very hard to see at night as they slink about. One tale that was told in the dormitory as we lay in the dark on our beds was interesting that I feel I can now share.

The Black Panther had made its kill the night before. The goat was not totally consumed so the great white hunter, the intrepid sahib bahadur, decided to sit up for it in a natural machan, which was no more than a comfortable spot on a tree branch with the trunk against his back. He got his three-cell flash light ready, mounted on the side of the shot gun with adhesive tape. The first hour went by and nothing materialized, but, he later admitted, that he became rather apprehensive and a bit fearful sitting there alone. The full moon came out and bathed the area in a silvery light so wonderful he could see for hundreds of feet down the trail leading to the place where the dead goat was tied to a low tree. He was nodding and almost falling asleep when he saw a motion far, far down the path. His adrenaline kicked in and his heart beat wildly. There, about one hundred feet down the road, heading directly toward him was the Black Panther. It walked slowly, almost languorsly, its long tail held high, moving from side to side as it came down the road. The hunter slowly raised his gun, getting ready to fire when the black monster came within thirty yards. His mouth was dry and he fought back the urge to shoot, wanting the kala baghera to be close enough for an easy kill. He was almost ready to fire when it meowed and rolled in the dirt directly in front of him. He was so startled that he fired and crushed, dalit, obliterated, the black house cat only a few feet in front of him, literally blowing it away with the full force of the LG cartridge from his twelve bore shot gun. (USA: OO Buck twelve gauge) Oh, there were many other stories told about leopards, but none of them about the black panther.

The tiger is endangered in India, only a few thousand now remain in reserves. The leopard, however, is doing very well in its extensive range along the entire length of the Himalayas as well as in a variety of riverine, jungle locations. It is sometimes, but seldom observed in India’s wildlife reserves in Kanha, Kaziranga, Periya, Ranthambore and Sariska. It is highly adaptable, nocturnal and diurnal and usually moves away when disturbed as it is a secretive animal. It is a loner except during its mating season. Unlike the tiger, it seldom takes down huge herbivores like the sambar, nil guy or gaur, rather, preys on the spotted deer, kakar, monkeys, peafowl and a variety of smaller mammals. It is the ultimate stealth hunter, relying on its skill to approach its prey so closely that a more prolonged high speed chase is usually not needed, which is the case with the Cheetah. Interestingly, the leopard has a traditional Indian name from which the name Cheetah may have been derived, mistakenly. The leopard was called by another name, chita, in ‘ancient’ times, not the chita of suttee; that is quite another story.