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Sundarbans III
The rest of the National geographic crew – Sue (the big boss), Becky and Andy (the cameraman) landed in Calcutta by midnight. On the 1st of April we went to get shots of a male tiger in the Calcutta zoo. This tiger had killed a girl in a village that was just on the outskirts of the forest. A few days after killing the girl he again landed in the village. But that time the Forest Department officials were prepared. They had set up a trap in the village and they did manage to trap the tiger. After they trapped the tiger, they realized that a few months ago this same tiger had been trapped, after he had killed a person, in a nearby village. They had at that time released him deep in the heart of Sundarbans. They decided not to do so again and sent him to the zoo, where he was lodged in a cage that was out of bounds for the general public. When we went to film him in the cage, he was extremely agitated and tried to charge at us a number of times. We would have been in serious trouble if there were no bars between us. Andy did get some great shots.
The rest of the day we drove around the streets of Calcutta taking random shots of the city. My old friend Sanjoy Ghosh (or “Chotu Bong” – a slang for Short Bengali) drove us around in his car. He was a big hit wit the entire team. In the evening when we were sitting in the hotel, we realized that there were not enough Bengali speakers in the team – in fact there was just one – and since most people in Sundarbans understand only Bengali language, we would have to take along some more people who cold speak Bengali. As a result, another friend of mine – Joydeep Kundu – got in the boat the next day. We also had a Doctor on board who was carrying every possible kind of anti-venom.
We left for Sundarbans the next morning and had a blast for the next 10 days. We were booked in a lodge in Sajnekhalli, where we would spend the nights. The film was essentially recreations of there different “tiger attacks” – one on a girl in a village, the other on a man who was part of a group of “honey collectors” and the third was a fisherman (the only one to survive the attack). Most of the filming happened very close to where we were staying but for some shots we had to go a fair distance on the boats. We had two boats – a “launch” and a smaller boat that is locally known as a “bhotbhoti” because the engine makes a racket that sounds like bhot ..bhot ..bhot. The bhotbhoti is a smaller boat and it can go in some pretty narrow creeks, where the launch cannot make it.
The weather in Sundarbans is very hot and extremely humid in April and so we used to shoot from just before sunrise to about 8 in the morning and then from about 3 in the afternoon till sunset. Joydeep and I used the time in between to do a lot of birding – a great way to spend time in Sundarbans. We saw very little terrestrial wildlife – some Spotted Deer and a few Wild Boars – but we did see a lot of marine wildlife, including Dolphins, Sharks, Sea Turtles, and a large variety of Crabs. The bird life was really amazing. Wherever we went shooting we had a large group of curious onlookers following us, like these kids on a cycle rickshaw (the dominant mode of transport in Sundarbans).
Sundarbans II
Sundarbans – the largest Project Tiger Reserve in India – is a tidal estuary where the only modes of travel are small to medium sized slow boats. It is truly a boat country. On the 25th of March, we went to the office of the Field Director of Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, which is in a small port town called Port Canning; about three hours drive from the outskirts of Calcutta. That was my first interaction ever with any Forest Department Officer of West Bengal cadre.
We met quiet a few forest officers who were in charge of Sundarbans and the feeling I got was that most of them were clueless and were living in a make believe world. For instance, one very senior officer gave us a long lecture on the “fact” that writers and filmmakers were defaming the tigers of Sundarbans by spreading “rumors” that a lot of them were potential man-eaters. When I asked him if this was not true then why do forest guards take such elaborate protection measures whenever they have to get off their boats to go to the shores, inside the park? When ever the guards have to do that they load their guns (with the safety catches off), wear “tiger proof” armored jackets and helmets, put a tall nylon safety net around the entire area that they have to work in etc etc. This officer informed us that these were “routine” safety measures that are adopted in every tiger reserve in India. That was not true. In all the tiger reserves in India, the forest guards almost never carry guns; forget the rest of the paraphernalia. He later showed us a lot of statistics to “prove” that very few people had been attacked by tiger in Sundarbans during the last 10 years. Apparently the forest department had stopped recording tiger attacks on humans for the last 10 years and so “there were hardly any attacks on humans,” officially for the last 10 years. With such officers around, the future of Sundarbans did not appear to be very bright.
On 26th March, we left for a familiarization trip into Sundarbans and during the next three days we met a number of people whose friends or family members had been mauled or killed by tigers. There are a number of villages in the periphery of Sundarbans that are called “Tiger Widow” villages, where tigers had killed a large proportion of the adult male population. Most of them were killed when they had illegally gone into the reserve area, for cutting wood or collecting other minor forest produce. Since what they were doing was illegal, their cronies never filed a complaint and so their deaths went unrecorded. By the time we got back from the trip, on the morning of 31st March, we had learnt a few things about Sundarbans:
1. There is no way that Sundarbans Tiger Reserve could boast a population of nearly 400 tigers (that they officially do). The figure should be closer to 125 or so. This is true for almost all the Tiger Reserves in India – where officially there are two and half times more tigers than the real number. Forest Officers love to exaggerate the numbers for a variety of reasons.
2. Sundarbans has loads of problems (again lie most other tiger reserves in India), that include wood cutting, population pressure, over fishing, “economic development” etc. The reserve is totally porous and it is almost impossible to patrol its periphery.
3. Tigers will survive in Sundarbans for a long time, just because a large part of it is extremely inhospitable to man.
We got back to our Hotel (Sonar Bangla – a fine place) on 31st and the air conditioning was a welcome relief after the hot and humid weather of Sundarbans.
Sundarbans I – The Hunter and the Hunted
When I was in Bharatpur, I got a call from a guy from Bangalore called Lesley, who wanted to know if I would be interested in working on a two week project on Tigers of Sundarbans, , with the National geographic Film and Television department. He was the India co-coordinator for this project and told me that if I was interested he would put me on the Producer in Washington. If I was interested??? This guy must have been crazy – Of course I was interested. It is not everyday that national geographic takes us out on an all expense paid trip to an exotic tiger habitat and pays us at the end of the day for our time (which most people like us have in plenty). So I told the guy that I “maybe interested.”
When I got back from Bharatpur I got a call from James Byrne from National Geographic, Washington. We discussed a lot of general things and he told me that the shoot starts from the 1st of March and would be over in two weeks. He also told me that he would be in Calcutta (the closest airport from Sundarbans on the 25th of March) and would then head to Sundarbans for a familiarization trip and would be glad if I could join him for the same. I reached Calcutta on the 24th night (a day before James was to reach) and met up with Lesley.
Over dinner, Lesley explained to me what the film was going to be all about. I knew a bit about it but not enough. The film was about man eating tigers of Sundarbans and was to cover three different stories – one about an attack on a girl child inside a village, another about an attack on a fisherman who was on his boat and the third about an attack inside the forest on a man who was part of a group of honey collectors. In all the three cases the tiger (different ones in each cases) had killed the people they had attacked but could not eat them, mainly because the other people around had managed to scare the tiger away.
Sundarbans – the world’s largest estuarine mangrove forest - is the largest habitat of Bengal tigers in the entire world. It gets its name from the “Sundari” mangrove tree, which is now a rarity in most parts of Sundarbans. It is situated in the southern tip of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Sundarbans is the delta of two of India’s mightiest rivers – the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. The entire place consists of a number of tiny islands and is cris-crossed by tributaries, distributaries, creeks and backwaters. The face of Sundarbans changes dramatically with the diurnal tides. Durinf the high tide about half the land is submerged and one can see floating forests” all around. While at low tide, large expanses of mud are visible all over. Sundarbans is home to large number of aquatic and terrestrial animals. As one goes closer to the sea, the salinity of the water increases and this has an important role to ply in the mix of the aquatic animals and plants that are to be seen.
The Indian part of the Sundarbans has been declared as National Park and is a Project Tiger Reserve. UNESCO has also declared the region as a “Biosphere Reserve.” The region is home to some of the poorest people in the world, who make their living out of farming, fishing, aquaculture and through the collection of minor forest produce (such as honey). It is one of the few regions in the world where there are no social tensions between the mix of Hindu and Muslim population that inhabit the area. In fact the muslim and hindu population share a large number of social, cultural and even religious traditions.
