I was quite tired waiting up for them to arrive; but the chance to meet my friend Raja’s sister Dheera and her friend Rosie who were visiting him from Kolkata was enough enticement to stay awake and also just nurse the one drink I had mentally decided to have before they arrived. It was the month of December with the chill coming in and they wanted to come for a rabbit hunt with me just to experience the thrill of a hunt. Finally I heard his car horn at the gate and I went out to receive them. They were late as the two young women had waited to cook a chicken dish for us and it was around 11 pm when we were off in my jeep to a new tea section in the garden where I had previously shot some rabbits. We did see a couple of rabbits but the ladies wilted in the end and did not want to kill them so we just saw them running around in the glare of the lights for some time before returning to the bungalow. They had got their thrill and fun and I was also happy for them. None of us were keen to have dinner just then so I asked them if they wanted to come out for a night picnic to my personal favourite place about 10 kilometres away which I had discovered during the first month of my joining our garden and which I fondly called “Land’s End.”
This place was a very big meadow used for grazing the cattle of the nearby villages and it was adjacent to the spot where the Boroi River joined up with the Brahmaputra forming eddies making a lovely sound all year-round. It was a beautiful place with some big Peepul trees where the wind rustled though its leaves and offered me a cool shade to pitch my tent whenever I came there either for the night or the day. I visited this place more during hot summer days when I spent some Sundays writing poems or sketching pictures and listening to music on my small cassette player. During winters I came to this place at times for hunting the wild geese that came to feed in their thousands on the sweet pea and kesari dal cultivation on the riverine islands dotted all over the mighty Brahmaputra river. I had some friends in the local village nearby and used their country boats and their guidance as they knew the area well. I brought only a very few of my very close friends there and of course my family who also camped with me a few times on the sandbanks. I spent countless hours here beneath the big tree watching the river Brahmaputra in the different phases of the season and never got tired of hearing the sounds of the water during high floods and meandering winter currents. Here I truly got to appreciate how man is only a small speck in the macrocosm of life - a journey like the river touching different banks as we meet friends and make lovely memories.
Coming back to that night with my friend and the two young women we drove for about half an hour and arrived at “Land’s End” carrying our dinner with us and some drinks. The moon was up and the scene there was ethereal with the pale moonlight illuminating the white sand banks in the distance. The river sounds were softly playing in the background and my guests admired the place mesmerized by the stark beauty. Dheera and her friend had never been to a place like this though they were both well travelled and had been working in a Singapore bank straight after college. Soon with the drinks the conversation and laughter peaked and we ate our dinner leisurely all the while admiring nature at her best from close quarters. Suddenly we made out a group of people walking up to us with a lantern and two dogs that started barking when they came close to us. Raja was getting a bit alarmed but I recognized some of the intruders. They also knew me; they had come to see who had come there so late at night and I explained to them that we had come to see this place and enjoy a night picnic with some city dwellers. Everyone was relaxed as they sat down close by and I requested them to tell a few stories of the river and floods.
A young man in the group who had a large herd of buffalos for milk production told us how he had to send his animals to graze on the sandbanks which had very good grass for them and they fattened up for about two months. The sandbanks had large patches of rich alluvial soil where the grass grew in abundance and was rich in nutrients most beneficial for his buffalos to increase their milk production. But there was the danger of tigers that often swam across the river from the Kaziranga sanctuary in the distance on the other side of the river. Tigers were very good swimmers and at times they came to these sandbanks perhaps having hunted there before and this young man had to guard his buffalo herd. On one such occasion, he and his uncle were there when a tiger attacked at dusk and his uncle, while trying to fend off the beast with a big stick and a dao, was badly bitten in his hand. The buffalos were always kept in a corral like enclosure and a big buffalo could put up a fight. But that time the tiger attack had come earlier before the men lit the fire which was used to scare off all predators. They were lucky as the tiger was driven off and the young nephew was able to stem the blood flow with a tight cloth when hearing the commotion some other herders had come in force to help them. They were ferried back to the mainland and his uncle was able to receive timely medical help which saved his life.
However he had to carry the scars all his life. By the end of his story the two young women came up closer to me and asked if any tigers would come that night. I assured them that there was no danger and I was quite happy to boost up their morale. It was getting close to 4 am and becoming a bit chilly when the group left wishing us all the best and also lit a small fire to keep us warm. We thanked them for their company and I warmed up the last bit of coffee in the kettle and as it was a Sunday and a holiday we could wait and see the sunrise soon. Thus once more we sat silently, huddled in some blankets that I had hurriedly packed up from the house, and watched the eastern sky light up slowly around six at dawn as the crimson red sun rose dispelling the light mists in the sky with the birth of a new day. It was a magical setting with one of my favourite numbers by Ritchie Blackmoore of Rainbow called “July Morning” playing in the background. None of us wanted to leave that lovely place and the women thanked me profusely for this fantastic outing but it was actually I who was on song with Raja also genuinely happy at how the evening had played out.
Dheera and I kept in touch mainly through a few cards and letters as we had struck up a friendship and we met once again when she was back to spend a week with Raja in the summer; in fact we used to meet regularly after work either in his bungalow or my place and once in the weekly club day. That was the problem in Tea. One just could not build a relationship on a long distance basis and though Raja knew and after a few drinks we used to open up it was too late as she came back in the winter in December to attend the annual club night with her husband whom she met in Kolkata and got married due to family pressures. I realized then that this was why Raja had been avoiding me in the past few weeks as he did not want to break the news to me. I wished them both the very best but Dheera and I did not look at one another directly. I was definitely crestfallen and the next day I spent the whole day at Land’s End thinking about what could have been. The silence and earthy feeling that I always got from going to that place was like a healing balm to my soul and I learnt to get over her and move on.
The years rolled by and I heard that within a year of her marriage Dheera had separated from her husband and had remarried a few years later settling in Mumbai. In the meantime my little paradise on earth the Land’s End was eaten up by erosion and it is only a third of the meadow that I had known; the big Peepul tree was felled and a few small ones remain now. I had stopped going there since.
