A Forester Remembers

It was while in Taklech that I learnt the important lesson of retaining one’s presence of mind during a crisis, and not falling prey to panic. Mr. Patyal, my boss, was on tour to the forests in my jurisdiction, and took me along with him to check the markings that the ACF, Mr. N K Negi, and I had been carrying out for the past one month. By marking, I mean the selection of trees that needed to be felled to reduce congestion in the forest, thereby allowing the remaining trees  to put on faster growth. We had climbed some 10 km from Taklech, high into the Deodar forests, where the trees were being marked. About a dozen forest guards were carving numbers at the bases of the trees, as we walked about the forest. We had lunch in the forest itself and then, after a cup of tea, started back for Taklech. It was bitterly cold as Mr. Patyal and I started our downhill trek, slightly ahead of the rest of the group, who had stayed back to collect their equipment and pack their records. Som...

Taklech, as I have already said, was a small village with some 20 odd houses, a solitary grocery shop, and a Middle school. On days when I was not on tour, I would go down to the village and play volleyball with the two teachers and a few village boys. One day I invited the two teachers and the Principal of the school, one Mr. Pathania, to share a meal with me the coming Sunday, at the Forest Rest House. On the appointed day, I asked the FRH chowkidar, who was also the cook, to prepare a meal for four and sat in the verandah, waiting for my guests to turn up. When they did not turn up till 4 pm, I went down to their lodgings to see what was wrong. I found them preparing their evening meal, with Mr. Pathania stoking the fire, and one of the others kneading the dough. When I asked why they had not turned up for lunch, they confessed that they thought I had been having fun at their expense. They really did not believe that a senior officer, even one under training, would ...

An essential part of the training at the Indian Forest College was equitation (horse riding, for the uninitiated), which was conducted at the adjoining Indian Military Academy. The horses were tall, hefty creatures, none of them below sixteen hands (5 feet) at the withers. The equitation instructors were even taller and heftier... so it seemed. Our first introduction to the horses was to hold them by the bit and kiss them on the nose. "You need to know," the Major told us, "the horse is not an animal that bites from one end and kicks from the other!" My horse decided to give me a slobbery lick on my nose before I could kiss his! Anyway, once we got over our trepidation, we were soon mounted and ready to ride! If instructions were to be believed, one was supposed to dig one’s heels into the mount’s sides to get it to trot. The only problem was that the moment the Havildar began to give the command “Trrrottttt …” the damned animals would start moving, whethe...

As part of field training, I was required to learn and perform duties as Forest Guard (the lowest rung in the Forest Department), as Forester and as Forest Ranger. For the initial training, I was deputed to Taklech, a small village about 15km from the nearest pucca road. The place had a Forest Rest House dating back to 1885, and it was there that I deposited myself for the duration of my training. Although I was technically performing all the duties and tasks of a Forest Guar d, the staff knew who I was and the Service I belonged to, and treated me with somewhat more respect than a Guard would normally command. As I went about my Beat, inspecting forests, detecting forest offences, and issuing Damage Reports, I was accompanied by the regular Forest Guard, Shiv Ram. He not only shared with me his knowledge and skills in the field of forestry, but also the local culture and traditions of the villages and habitations in his jurisdiction. This was all new and strange for ...

It came as a complete surprise to me when I was allocated to the HP cadre of the Service. My only experience of the mountains hitherto had been annual summer vacations to my grandparents' home in Kandaghat, a village some 35 km short of Shimla, on the Kalka Shimla Road. We made occasional visits to Simla (as it was then known) during our stay there .... and that was my only acquaintance with the hills. And now I was expected to spend the rest of my life in the Himalayas! Not a prospect I really looked forward to .... Things seemed to be looking up when, during the last week of my training in Dehra Dun, I received a personal letter from the Chief Conservator of Forests, HP, welcoming me to the State and informing me that I was posted to Kotgarh for my initial field training. There was no Google Maps then, so I had no option but to go to the Forestry HQ in Shimla to find out where Kotgarh was, and how to get there. Following directions, one fine day in July, I ...

On the subject of Rest Houses and Visitor Books ... Folks may know that when hunting of tigers was legal, it was compulsory and customary to record the size of the tiger shot .... for the record. There were two ways to measure the length of a tiger - one was to lay the animal on the ground, hammer a wooden peg into the ground at the tip of the nose, and hammer another peg at the base of the tail. The distance between the pegs was referred to as the length of the tiger 'between the pegs'. Another way was to place one end of the tape measure at the tip of the nose, run the tape along the length of the animal over its head, along its back and up to the base of the tail. This was referred to as measuring the tiger 'over the curves'. For the record, the largest tiger ever shot by Corbett was the 'Bachelor of Powalgarh' who measured 10 feet between the pegs and 10 feet 7 inches over the curves. Now this story was narrated to me by a forest officer from UP. In the ...