The Great Downpour

Chapter XII

Chapter XII

A wave of palpable shock ran through the crowd as the news of the death of their Principal spread through them like wild fire. The first emotion was soon replaced by sounds of denial and then, predictably, anger. Some of the students simply threw themselves at the dacoits, unmindful of the fact that they were armed with guns, sticks and knives.

Screams of “Kill them!” and “Aagh! I’ve been hit!” intermingled with cries of distress and pandemonium. The dacoit chief was so bewildered at the turn of events that he just stood there, paralysed, while his horse bolted. The sense of things slipping out of control made him scream in frustration. He pulled at his hair and sat down, holding his machine gun like a child’s toy. Bitterly and inexplicably, the tables had been turned and he was about to be humiliated by upstart collegians with no professional combat experience. He had no one but himself to blame for the way the expertly planned robbery had crumbled to this … this parody of errors.

As one after another of the dacoits threw in their towels, the attention of the 600-strong crowd turned to the dacoit chief and the sharpshooter, Nishaanbaaz. Initially, the students were wary of approaching an armed and dangerous man, but the dejected look in the Pahelwan’s eyes, combined with the way he was holding the gun brought home the truth that the dacoit chief had caved in. The boys and the male staff members attacked him and pushed him into the dust within moments. As blows rained on the dacoit chief, the students got more and more courageous.

“Finish him off! He’s killed the Princi!”

“Don’t spare him. Shoot him with the gun!”

“Don’t! We’ll all be guilty of murder!”

“Don’t kill him so easy … torture him!”

The diverse opinions and the confusion among the students were giving some dull reprieve to the victim, who was fast losing consciousness under the effect of the blows to his head.

Nishaanbaaz knew the futility of shooting or retaliation. However, he made one desperate attempt to try and scare the students by leveling the gun on his shoulder, aiming it at the sky and pulling the trigger; no sooner had his gun discharged when Chand and a few other students had jumped on him and started thrashing him. Against a strong group of six, what chance could an old man have? The Rajasthani was soon rendered unconscious and tied up.

During the next twenty or thirty minutes, all of the dacoits had been tied up and awaited justice. The Teacher also used this period of panic and chaos to intermingle with the crowd. IA wave of palpable shock ran through the crowd as the news of the death of their Principal spread through them like wild fire. The first emotion was soon replaced by sounds of denial and then, predictably, anger. Some of the students simply threw themselves at the dacoits, unmindful of the fact that they were armed with guns, sticks and knives.

Screams of “Kill them!” and “Aagh! I’ve been hit!” intermingled with cries of distress and pandemonium. The dacoit chief was so bewildered at the turn of events that he just stood there, paralysed, while his horse bolted. The sense of things slipping out of control made him scream in frustration. He pulled at his hair and sat down, holding his machine gun like a child’s toy. Bitterly and inexplicably, the tables had been turned and he was about to be humiliated by upstart collegians with no professional combat experience. He had no one but himself to blame for the way the expertly planned robbery had crumbled to this … this parody of errors.

As one after another of the dacoits threw in their towels, the attention of the 600-strong crowd turned to the dacoit chief and the sharpshooter, Nishaanbaaz. Initially, the students were wary of approaching an armed and dangerous man, but the dejected look in the Pahelwan’s eyes, combined with the way he was holding the gun brought home the truth that the dacoit chief had caved in. The boys and the male staff members attacked him and pushed him into the dust within moments. As blows rained on the dacoit chief, the students got more and more courageous.

“Finish him off! He’s killed the Princi!”

“Don’t spare him. Shoot him with the gun!”

“Don’t! We’ll all be guilty of murder!”

“Don’t kill him so easy … torture him!”

The diverse opinions and the confusion among the students were giving some dull reprieve to the victim, who was fast losing consciousness under the effect of the blows to his head.

Nishaanbaaz knew the futility of shooting or retaliation. However, he made one desperate attempt to try and scare the students by leveling the gun on his shoulder, aiming it at the sky and pulling the trigger; no sooner had his gun discharged when Chand and a few other students had jumped on him and started thrashing him. Against a strong group of six, what chance could an old man have? The Rajasthani was soon rendered unconscious and tied up.

During the next twenty or thirty minutes, all of the dacoits had been tied up and awaited justice. The Teacher also used this period of panic and chaos to intermingle with the crowd. I am responsible for the death of our Principal¸ thought the teacher.

Meanwhile, some of the senior staff members went up to the Principal’s body and lifting him physically, they shifted it to the shade of a nearby outhouse. The teacher also joined in this activity.

“We must arrange to shift him back to the city immediately. He needs to be buried sooner than later, otherwise his body will begin to decompose,” said Shoaib Khan, the Physics teacher.

“You are right. The sooner everyone is out of here, the better,” agreed Arun Chatterjee.

Just then, there was a big flash of lightning and a loud sound of thunder.

“Oh no … it’s going to rain!” said one of the staff.

They began to call out for assistance in locating the bus-drivers.

***

Four kilometers away, the tigress made another purring noise of pleasure as Rising Water mounted her again. Their love-making would be a slow, languid process, often taking up days; the tiger would mount her many times, each time penetrating and inseminating his partner. This time, he held her neck in his mouth tenderly, while he went about making love.

Suddenly, there was a staccato noise from afar, a noise that the tiger knew well. It was the sound of shooting-sticks! The tiger bellowed with anger tinged with fear and quickly dismounted the tigress. The latter, who had not encountered the shooting-stick before in her life, did not comprehend the meaning of the sound, but the smell of danger and fear that emanated from the alpha male immediately made her panic. She urinated and marked her territory for safety while the tiger walked around her, reassuring and mollifying her so that she did not leave him.

The single burst of gunfire was followed by silence. The tiger wondered if the danger had passed when a gentle hum of human voices reached his alert ears. The sounds seemed to be coming from the same direction as the sounds of the shooting-sticks, and were probably caused by the shouting and noise-making of many humans.

The tiger snorted and made a warning noise, a growl mid-way in intensity between a full-throated one and a more tender purring noise. The female tiger looked to him for a cue, but was disappointed when the male continued to describe circles around her.

After what seemed like the briefest of waits, there were noises of footfalls in the immediate vicinity of the two tigers. Rising Water smelt the smell of a human within just 100 metres. This might just be the right sized offering for my mate, the male thought. He signaled to the female to wait in the underbrush and began to stalk his prey. There were two distinct smells in his nostrils, and he tried to determine whether their sources were together or some distance apart. Finally, he determined that while one smell seemed to be coming from his left and front, the other was from the front, but to the right of the first smell. He decided to pursue the first of the two smells. As he emerged from the grass and behind an outcropping of rocks, he saw, very clearly, a single uniformed male about 25 metres away. The man was clearly a novice, since he had not heard the tiger at all, and was presently looking in the direction opposite to where there were rocks and tall grass. The tiger knew that this man was to be his prey. He sat on his haunches and slowly crept ahead. When he was within 10 metres of his potential prey, he growled softly. He did so to encourage the man to turn around and to watch him make his moves, so that the man got afraid and tried to escape. The higher the adrenaline in the man’s blood pumped, the greater would be the flow of blood to his muscles and the better and juicier would his flesh be.

The man turned around almost instantly, and predictably, his face fell and his expression turned from a disinterested one to a scared one. He dropped his rifle and shouted, “Sir! He is here!” as loudly as he could.

Now while the tiger did see him as a potential victim, he might have left the man alone if the man had not disturbed his senses by panicking and screaming. However, by doing so, he had dug his own grave. Before he could run 50 steps, the tiger had jumped on him. Rising Water and the man struggled as they both fell to the ground in a tangle. The tiger’s main aim was to go for his victim’s jugular vein, the large vein in the neck and his wind-pipe, which he would cut off completely by grabbing it between his jaws.

The tiger grabbed the man by the neck and kept his jaws clamped while the man’s life ran out. Once the tiger was sure that the man had died, he started to drag his body back into the grass. Before he had gone 10 metres, the second man had made his appearance. This man seemed more comfortable with the sight of a full-sized adult tiger. His attire and his stance gave away his confidence. He saw the tiger with the dead man in his jaws and raised his rifle to shoot at him. Rising Water dropped his prey and leapt back into the grass as swiftly as his legs could carry him. A bullet whizzed past his left leg as he ran back behind the rocks and into the lap of safety. The tigress raised her head and asked a question. The tiger communicated the need to leave this spot fast. The two of them started going away from the trouble spot.

***

The man, Inspector Dubey, was not one to leave the opportunity of scaring and driving away not one but two tigers, and he went back to where he had parked the jeep and started the vehicle. He turned the jeep in the direction of the deeper part of the jungle. In his mind, he could still visualize the dead body of Hawaldar Brijesh Bharti. I will not leave them today. They are both dead meat for me. Angrily, he drove the jeep deeper and deeper, but he could not see the tigers. He had, of course, heard the gunshots as clearly as had the tigers, but he was sure those were poachers and he hoped Jankilal Shastri would do something about that matter. His job had been to hunt for those two horny tigers and flush them out of the area. However, after seeing his own man dead, he resolved in his mind to finish them both if possible, as in the back of his mind, he knew that one of these two tigers was the lone man-eater of Pench.

With his jeep within sight of the tigers, he suddenly heard another burst of gunfire, this time distinctly from the direction of the main gate of the Park. That is strange, he thought to himself. Why should there be gunshots from the area where the College students have come for their picnic? My superior, the C.F.O. should be aware of the first round of gunfire and should have already acted upon it. So why the gunfire again?

Inspector Dubey decided that the tigers could wait, but not the danger of something happening to one of the college visitors. Maybe, he thought, Shastri needed him now. He turned his jeep back in the direction from where he had come and began to drive it back to the Reserve Office.

***

The fleeing tigers could not believe that the chase was over so soon! They slowed down immediately and debated about whether to go back to the site of the kill and retrieve the body of the man. Greed, and the yearning for offering a gift to the female won out in the end, and the two tigers retraced their steps to the spot where the dead man’s body lay. The tiger picked up the body and began to drag it back to the cover of tall elephant grass.

They must have dragged it a further 30-40 metres when the skies opened up and it started to rain heavily.