A Forester Remembers

All Forest and PWD Rest Houses have Visitor Books, that are mines of information and provide great reading material on a rainy day or, glass in hand, relaxing before a log fire in the evening. Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh used to ask for the visitors book the first evening he reached any Rest House and woe betide the DFO or XEN who could not produce it. I remember going through the Visitors Book of one remote FRH in Darjeeling Forest Division of West Bengal, where in a Forest Officer had recorded in September, 1935 - " Spent four days confined to the Rest House. It has been raining incessantly. I have not been able to step out for a minute." Thirty years later, his son, also a Forest Officer, had recorded, in July, 1965 - "Dad, it is still raining!" As a Probationer, I had visited a remote FRH in Kotgarh Forest Division, and remember seeing a few lines of poetry penned in Rudyard Kipling's own hand. Years later, when I was posted...

The Indian Military Academy (IMA) is adjacent to the FRI, within whose campus the erstwhile Indian Forest College (IFC) was located. The IMA cadets (formally addressed as Gentleman Cadets or GCs) used to be taken on route marches and morning runs through the FRI, while we IFS Probationers underwent Weapon Training , Swimming and Equitation, all of which were compulsary, at the IMA. I had a friend from school undergoing Army training in the IMA ... he and I would often meet up for lunch or dinner, mostly on Sundays, when we were allowed to go to the city. Once I did not see him for a month. Worried that he might be ill, or otherwise indisposed, I cycled over to his squadron in the IMA one Sunday morning. It turned out that he, along with his entire squadron, had been relegated to his room for four weeks for indiscipline. It turned out that his batch of GCs were doing drill on the IMA grounds, while our senior batch IFS probationers were being led on horseback through the tea estates b...

Contributed by Dr. Bakhshish Singh: While we were camping at Deoban (Chakrata Forest Division) as forestry trainees during June 1956, each House (group of 6 trainees) was asked to fell a given Oak tree, cut it into billets and prepare a Kiln for Charcoal making. The members of each House were required to take turns (in batches of two members at a time) to watch and monitor (day & night for 5-6 days) the slow anaerobic burning in their respective kilns. On one of those nights I, alongwith another member of my House ( from Punjab), was on duty to keep a watch over burning in our Kiln. Sometime around 1 AM or so we heard loud & shrill cries coming from the kiln of another House across a low ridge. Both of us, holding torches and Khukhries in our hands rushed to that kiln and on reaching there found that both trainees guarding that kiln were lying down flat on the ground in almost a senseless condition. we shook them up and enquired as to what made them to shout aloud and be so ...

Another story gleaned from forestry records in FRI, Dehra Dun ... During the 1930s or thereabouts, the Doon valley abounded with robbers and dacoits, who would rob people on their way to Hardwar or Badrinath. Since they mostly had their hideouts in the forests, they rarely, if ever, bothered officers and staff of the Forest Department. Once, when the Conservator of Forests was camping at Lacchiwala, his horse got stolen at night. There was much consternation in the camp the next morning. The Divisional Forest Officer, alarmed that such a thing could occur in his Division, directed the Range Officer to make all efforts to retrieve the CFs horse at the earliest. The intrepid Ranger immediately sent a message to the leader of the robber gang known to be operating in the locality, demanding that the horse be returned forthwith. In a couple of days a person turned up at the Range Office, leading a fine young stallion. The only problem was that, whereas the Conservator's horse ...

Our instructors never tired of telling us that the Tiger was the "Gentleman of the Jungle". It would never attack a human without extreme provocation. To reinforce the statement, they would narrate the story of a Forest Ranger cycling on a forest path in Lacchiwala Forest Range in Dehra Dun. As he came round a bend, he collided with an animal and fell to the ground. When he dazedly looked up, he saw a tiger standing a few yards away. It was obvious he had crashed his cycle into the beast. When the tiger saw the Ranger raise his head, it growled .... and the poor fellow froze where he was. After a couple of minutes, the tiger moved into the bushes along the roadside. The Range Officer got up and, as he picked up his bike, he saw the tiger looking at him from behind a bush. This time he froze for 10 minutes. Only after ten minutes had elapsed, he made a dash for the Forest Rest House about a mile away, racing as if the tiger was after him .... which it wasn't. He reported ...

There are many sweet & sour memories of my first visit to Chakrata hills as a forestry student in 1956; and many times thereafter (as Soil Conservation Officer at the Soil Cons. Institute, Dehradun during early 1960s; and as Director Landuse Survey & Watershed Management, Dehradun during 1980s). My first camping with the forest trainees was as usual at Deoban in June 1956. Sardar Jaswant Singh and Chaudhary Ram Prakash, our instructors, were camping in one of the suites of Deoban Forest Rest House whereas Commissioner Kanpur (U.P.) and his family were occupying the other suite. On one of those mornings all the trainees and the instructors were walking uphill to Beas Shikhar (hill top), when two kids of the Commissioner and his Orderly went past us, walking hurriedly. After some time when we also reached the hill top, we found that the Orderly was lying dead there. We the trainees had been instructed by our instructors to be careful not to rush walking uphill. The poor Orde...

The Chakrata tour was not only meant to be an introduction to the forests, and a foresters life, it was also referred to as a toughening tour. Our instructors, Messrs. Saharia and Mahrishi drove us hard, and themselves harder still ... as if they had a point to prove ... that they were still fit .... fitter than us newbies. They would frequently stop along the trail and indulge in some 'botanisation', as they called it. At one point, I remember, in the middle of the pine (chil) forest Mr. Mahrishi stopped below a broad leafed tree and asked us to identify it. We dug into our shallow knowledge of Forest Botany but, try as we might, we could not come up with the right answer. Some called it a walnut, while others came up with Neem and Jacaranda. We finally gave up. It turned out to be a Mango tree, of all things .... Now who expected a solitary mango tree to be growing in a pine forest at 6000 feet? It was later revealed that our instructors had also failed to identify the str...