Jim Corbett’s The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag is not just a story about the hunter and the prey but also an ode to the people of Gharwali. A engaging, hair-raising thriller written in an accessible manner.
While wandering the streets of Lucknow, I saw a second-hand bookstall. Tired of reading non-fiction, I wanted a ‘light’ read and my eyes fell onto Jim Corbett’s The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag. Immediately, I bought the book and started reading. And it was riveting from the start.
Before reading the book, I had never thought leopards as man-eaters — which is true to some extent. As Jim Corbett mentions,
“Leopards do not become man-eaters for the same reasons that tigers do…[Leopards] are scavengers to the extent that they will…eat any dead thing they find in the jungle.”
So what explains the proclivity of our main antagonist to become a man-eater in the book? Jim Corbett believes epidemic influenza that swept through the country in 1918 was one of the reasons. The leopard — which found food scarce earlier — got a rich supply and acquired a taste for human flesh. When normal conditions were re-established, the leopard started killing humans. And thus, the man-eater of Rudraprayag was born.
The leopard started its man-eating mission from 1918 until 1926. The official record claimed the leopard killed 125 people. But, Jim Corbett believed the number was higher. Irrespective, the leopard was a source of fear and suffering for the people of Gharwal during those eight years.
Jim Corbett made it his mission to track and kill the man-eater. He employed a variety of methods including setting up a gin trap, baiting with the live goat and even poisoning the bait with cyanide. Yet, the leopard escaped all the traps set by Jim Corbett, either through sheer luck or foresight.
There were instances when Jim Corbett escaped from the leopard — the hunter almost got hunted. Once, Jim Corbett and his two friends were stranded in the jungle at night with the leopard around the corner. Fortunately, they had boxfull of matches and lit each match for every step before reaching the nearest village. Without the light, they would have been sitting ducks.
Written engagingly, Jim Corbett creates the atmosphere of fear that Gharwalis might have endured. The book is filled with anecdotes and facts about the region, people, and animals. It gives insight into Jim Corbett’s meticulous planning as well as his views about the people and India in general. And Jim Corbett reserves the highest praise for them,
“A typical son of Garhwal, of that simple and hardy hill-folk…whose sons only those few who live among them are privileged to know. It is these big-hearted sons of the soil, no matter what their caste or creed, who will one day weld the contending factions into a composite whole, and make of India a great nation.”
No wonder the national park in Uttarakhand was renamed Jim Corbett National Park. The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag is not just a story about the hunter and prey but also an ode to the resilience and fortitude of the local hill folks.
