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UP CLOSE
Bison in my garden
MINI KRISHNAN
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“He was huge and though I knew that bison attacked only when they were alarmed, I held my breath as I moved back and forth…”
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The purity of nature brings us very close to a sense of the sacred.
Photo: Mini Krishnan
MAJESTIC: The wild so near.
Twenty years ago we bought a patch of the planet below the reserve forest on Teneriffe Hill in Coonoor, some two kilometres from Sims Park, up along Kotagiri Road the oldest road in The Nilgiris (1811). We are perched on the slope of a much larger area that had once belonged to the stylish and romantic Raja of Pithapuram who planted all 30 acres of his hillside with roses — the origin of the property’s beautiful name, “Rosery”. The descendants of th
ose lovely old rose bushes still struggle upwards through the wild and charming undergrowths of those parts of the hill that haven’t been planted with tea.
No wall house
Our house soon became known as the one in a compound with no walls. Nor did we bother to landscape or flatten the lawn; it undulated like the rest of the natural land around us. A succession of gardeners has done their best and every summer we are greeted by surprise blooms we aren’t expecting to see. A few hardy trees have survived — two brave bottle-brush trees and a jacaranda that looks like it is standing on its toes through storms and winds.
About eight years ago we began seeing bison in the late afternoons. They were obviously on lunch forays from the forests where they lived. Neighbours lost their gardens as the bison munched their way through every bloom and bush. We watched them from a distance, respectfully. I recalled EP Gee’s account in his book Wildlife of India about how the Nilgiri Gaur got the name, “bison”. Eighty years ago, an Englishman out hunting asked his tracker about the magnificent creature he had spotted: massively muscled, gleaming chocolate-to-dark brown and in white stockings. “Bhainsa, sahib ?” queried the tracker, meaning buffalo in Hindi. The hunter thought the name of the animal was “bison” and thus, through a bilingual misunderstanding, the name stuck.
A few days ago, I was reading on the sit-out when I heard a rustling sound in the still of the late afternoon. Something like a boulder moved just beyond the edge of the garden and I ran up the slope as fast as I could, camera in hand. I got a few shots of the animal’s back. Watching me fumbling ineptly with the camera, Malar my cook offered to take a few photographs. She too failed to capture the stirring sight as the bison swung around and moved away from us. All it left us with was its rumbling blustery out-breath.
Stung, I made off down the mud road away from the house and saw an even larger bison a few feet below the road, on my left, tugging placidly at the greenery. He was huge and though I knew that bison attacked only when they were alarmed, I held my breath as I moved back and forth missing every single opportunity to shoot his face as he looked about proudly before reverting to his meal. I went a little further ahead and stepped up behind the old storehouse for sacks of plucked tea on the right side of the road, and ran straight into three bisons.
When one of them raised her head and looked directly at me, power and innocence poured from her eyes. I instantly felt tainted and worthless and knew why wild-lifers refuse to leave the subjects of their study, preferring instead to linger on in wild places, unwilling to come away. The purity of nature brings us very close to a sense of the sacred. I backed away very carefully, climbed down to the road again, and, casting a regretful glance at the largest of them still feeding below me to the right, began to walk home when a prolonged rustling sound made me look back. There he was, dwarfing the hill path as he stepped grandly up on to it. He paused, and as the majestic head turned to look at me, the rest of him held still as if for a portrait.
I clicked.
Email: minik@satyam.net.in
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