Senan thought about his last trek on the hilly terrain beyond the farmhouse at night until each event evolved gradually from his mind, one by one, chronologically. It all began a few weeks ago when the Dhani arrived last time from Mangalore. Being unfamiliar with the wild ambiance, Senan scarcely used to trek through the woods at night until then.
The intercrops of tapioca and plantain plants had been grown on the higher flats of the areca nut plantation, and pineapple plants on the rubber plantation. Some wild animals had spoiled, fallen, and uprooted many of them, turning the earth on its side at the roots. The unaffected plants had lost their shoots. Frequently, Senan used to observe a few wild rabbits hanging out there at night, as well as some monkeys during the day. But they were incapable of causing such a heavy loss to the crops. When the Dhani asked about it, Senan said he had found only rabbits.
'And you did nothing?' the Dhani turned to Senan for not adequately tending to the crops. The Dhani's thick, dark, long mustaches trembled, as did his brows.
'You could've shot them. Your responsibility is to protect the crops, not the animals. So, you're here with this rifle,' the Dhani said.
In a violent turn, the Dhani seized Senan's rifle and put it back into his hand with a thrust. For a split second, Senan was terrified but stayed calm on his face. Then, he hung the heavily loaded, double-barrelled rifle on his shoulder and released a sigh of relief.
'It's incredible! You want them to feed on the crops and ruin me?' the Dhani was displeased with Senan's interest in them. They had been ascending the hilly terrain together to assess the loss.
They carefully placed each pace on the bed of dried fallen leaves and small twigs, partially decayed and blended with the earth. Far away, they could see the massive loss in the area close to the enormous Burma Ironwood trees.
'There might be wild boars also. More chances go with porcupines. Many times, I've seen them here at night,' the Dhani said.
Whenever Senan is either fond of or scared of an animal, he can't kill it. In both cases, he turns into a vulnerable creature of emotions. He hid it all from the Dhani while following him obediently with the rifle hanging from his right shoulder.
He had been carrying a rifle for the first time since he reached the deep woods. The government had been offering every five-acre landowner one double-barrelled rifle, along with hundreds of bullets, to face the threat from wild animals.
'Have you ever seen a porcupine?' the Dhani asked.
'Through the window, whenever I hear it grunting,' Senan said hesitantly, unwilling to reveal his fear.
'Don't dare to approach it,' the Dhani warned him, looking back at his face. Senan nodded his head slightly.
Porcupines sneak out of the boundaries of the government-owned forest area at night. Besides that, Pakirappa had shown Senan their burrows close to the KG Estate's boundary.
To limit their access to the land, the Dhani had asked Senan to keep the lights on outside the farmhouse till late at night. But both knew that the animals would cross the boundaries of the forest miles away from the farmhouse and sneak into the plantation. Instead of speaking up and clarifying, Senan agreed to it.
Otherwise, the Dhani would blame him for petty issues. Listening to it being unresponsive is intolerable for Senan since his brain transmits electrifying signals all around his skull until the Dhani either leaves or puts an end to it.
The Dhani asked Senan to shoot at least the rabbits if he failed in the case of other animals. He reminded Senan that hunting the animals had been a highly demanding skill to thrive there.
The wild rabbits were dull white with a brown tint. Mostly, they do not enter the premises of the farmhouse, and peep from a distance. Only four or five of them pass through the courtyard. Their innocent looks prompted Senan to withdraw the rifle pointed at them, and he stood enjoying their activities. Being hidden in the hedges or wild plants, they used to spy on him. Mostly, the undergrowth plants go overgrown within months since they belong to wild and unbeatable forest species, offering room for wild animals to hide and escape predators.
Senan dragged the rabbits to hostility, as the Dhani demanded. He made up his mind to kill and bury them instead of offering them to neighboring tummies.
Leaving behind all the fears, he frequented the areca nut plantation, which stretched to the boundary, beyond the deep Burma Ironwoods, on five acres. With his rifle, headlamp, and long torch, followed by the dog, he trekked along the hilly terrain's rough, steep, and narrow paths and somehow managed to get there. He struggled through the woods, sometimes slipping on the snow-wet fallen leaves, smelling the wilderness and greenness of the lush woods and plants to their core. He had not yet encountered any porcupine, wild boar, or rabbit. As soon as the light from Senan's headlamp caught their attention, they all either hid or fled at the speed of light.
Senan used to find the porcupine quills near the hedges and their burrows under the dense Burma Ironwoods. They were cream-colored with dark brown bands, and their shape turned more pointed and sharper towards the tip.
When the Dhani returned from hunting, he brought porcupine quills. He offered some to Senan and warned him against approaching them since they might attack with quills. Many locals consume porcupine meat, but the Dhani hates it.
Pakirappa, his strange colleague from the natives and a laborer in the KG Estate for a long time, had already told Senan, 'Dhani was seriously injured while trying to remove the quills stuck on his hand near his wrist. No one believed he would survive being stabbed in the nerves. It caused him to bleed profusely.'
'The porcupine?'
'It succumbed to death due to the repeated blows from Dhani's friends. They were all chasing a wild bull to shoot it then. Meanwhile, Dhani tried to catch a porcupine with bare hands.'
'And the bull?'
'It escaped amid all these,' Pakirappa remarked.
While recollecting the pain and bleeding the Dhani suffered, a wild smirk ran across Pakirappa's face, escaping the wide gap between his dark, narrow lips.
Pakirappa continued, 'See, Chenna, don't you remember how the KG Estate's manager passed away? I think I've told you about it earlier.'
The story was too odd for Senan to believe it. Some reasoning and reasons made it incredible when Pakirappa said that last year, the manager of the 1500-acre KG Estate died in a porcupine attack. The manager used to go hunting alone on their estate at midnight. He stayed out late that night and had been missing since then. Calling out his name, the laborers searched for him for hours, which echoed in the forest. By noon, he was found bleeding to death nearly a mile away on the rocky, steep path leading to the farmhouse. It felt strange as none of them, not even the manager, had ever used that path.
The laborers tried hard to find at least a pulse of life in him. Calling out his name several times, they vainly tried to wake him up from the endless, deep sleep. He replied in a feeble voice. They immediately carried him to the road, going down in an emergency stretcher made of wood, sackcloth, and coir. Hauling him along, they struggled through the woods and across the river. They assumed the manager would have been attacked while attempting to capture the porcupines since he was fond of their meat for being juicy and soft.
'How beautiful are those quills! Incredibly, quills kill,' Senan told Pakirappa, taking all the aesthetic pleasure the quills offered to his eyes.
'Everything is beautiful till it bleeds you to death, just like honey and bees. It can save you or kill you,' Pakirappa remarked.
He looked around, as though he had been revealing an unpleasant secret, and continued, 'As everyone feared, he didn't survive it. You know, the quills have barbs at the tip. He would've attempted to extract it strongly. It increased the bleeding. Besides that, he lay there unfound for a long time.'
Senan had been concerned about the porcupines since he heard it all. Although he heard them grunting from the backyard at night, Senan never paid them attention. Pakirappa had also warned him about their burrows near the dense Burma Ironwoods, which prohibit sunlight from touching the earth where their roots run deep, leaving the place always dark.
The Dhani had asked Senan to petrol the farmland to the boundaries at night with intense light. Being afraid of the wild boars, porcupines, and a wild bull that used to prowl close to the farmhouse, Senan would depart early. One day, he heard a porcupine grunting and its footsteps following him. When he turned back with the headlight, he found nothing. The dog, following him, did not respond to their grunt. To his astonishment, he had already noticed the dog ignoring them. Perhaps it would have been afraid of a quill attack.
Last night, Senan went on a walk over the rugged terrain to check for the presence of wild animals. While his headlamp was blowing light across the rubber trees, suddenly, an enormous snake appeared before him over five feet away. It slowly raised its body and gently unzipped its hood. Meanwhile, Senan seized the rifle and targeted the snake. It had been staring at him with its split tongue emerging out at times. Senan's fingers trembled on the trigger since he was bewildered by its furious glare. He knew well that if he ever failed to shoot it on the hood, it would pounce on him. Being scared, he decided to refrain from firing.
Although he paced slowly and carefully backward, unfortunately, he suffered a slip, missing his target on the snake's hood, and the rifle was shot unknowingly in a different direction. He was startled to find that the snake vanished when it was misfired. Senan tumbled and slid down the steep mud wall, scraping his chest against it.
When he jumped out of bed in terror and turned on the light, he realized it was a dream. Yet, it traumatized him, leaving deep traces on his body as a real-life experience.
(to be continued...)