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But for the life of me, I cannot seem to reconcile myself to this life here. I have only just arrived from Bengal, having spent my entire life in Calcutta, and the solitude of this forest land feels as though it is pressing down on my chest like a stone.

Some afternoons I go out for a walk, wandering quite far. Near the kachari, one can still hear the sound of people’s voices, but go a little further, and the office buildings vanish behind long stands of tamarisk and kans grass, and it feels then as if I am all alone in the world. Then, as far as one walks, dense rows of forest stretch into the distance on both sides of a wide plain—nothing but forest and thickets: gajari trees, babla, wild thorny bamboo, clumps of cane. Across the tops of the trees and bushes, the setting sun has scattered its vermilion powder. The evening air carries the sweet scent of wildflowers and fragrant grasses; every thicket is clamorous with the twittering of birds, Himalayan parakeets among them. A panorama of open, far-stretching, grass-covered plains and a congress of green woodlands.

At such times, it would sometimes occur to me that the face of nature I was witnessing here was unlike any I had ever seen elsewhere. As far as the eye could see, it all seemed to be mine; I was the sole human being here, and no one would come to break my solitude. I would let my mind and my imagination stretch out freely under the open sky, in the silent evening, all the way to the far line of the horizon.

About a krosh from the kachari there is a low-lying area where a few small mountain springs gurgle gently by. On their banks grow forests of aquatic lilies—what in the gardens of Calcutta are called Spider Lilies. I had never seen wild Spider Lilies before, nor did I know that they could look so beautiful blooming on the pebble-strewn banks of a secluded stream, or that they could spread such a soft, delicate fragrance upon the air. How many times I have gone to that spot to sit in silence and savour the sky, the evening, and the solitude.

Sometimes I go riding. At first, I was not a very good rider, but I gradually learned, and learned well. And once I had, I realized there is no other joy in life quite like it. To one who has never galloped at will across a horizon-spanning forest plain under such a lonely sky, the sheer pleasure of it is impossible to explain! The survey parties are working ten or fifteen miles from the kachari, so nowadays I often have a cup of tea, saddle up, and do not return until evening. Some days, on the way back, the stars have already risen above the jungle canopy, and Jupiter is blazing brightly; on moonlit nights, the fragrance of wildflowers mingles with the moonlight, the cry of the jackal announces the watches of the night, and the jungle crickets begin their chorus.

A great deal of effort is being expended on the work that brought me here. Of course, settling so many thousands of bighas of land is no simple matter. And there is another thing I have learned since my arrival: this land was lost to the river thirty years ago, and only re-emerged twenty years since. But the zamindar does not wish to grant possession of these lands to the old tenants, the ones who moved elsewhere after their ancestral lands were eroded by the Ganga. Lured by the prospect of a hefty premium and increased rents, he wants to settle the land with new tenants instead. And so the homeless, shelterless, desperately poor old tenants, who have been deprived of their rightful claims, are getting no land despite their repeated pleas and tears.

Many of them had come to see me as well. It is painful to see their condition, but the zamindar’s orders are that no land is to be given to any old tenant. The reason is that if they were to get a foothold, they could legally claim their old rights. The zamindar’s might prevails; for twenty years now, the tenants have been landless and homeless, working as day labourers in country after country. Some do a little farming, many have died, and their children are minors or helpless—they will be swept away like straw in a current against a powerful zamindar.

Meanwhile, from where are new tenants to be gathered? The people who come from the nearby districts of Munger, Purnia, Bhagalpur, and Chhapra draw back when they hear the price. A few are taking small plots. But at this sluggish pace, it will take twenty or twenty-five years to settle ten thousand bighas of jungle land.

We have a sub-divisional kachari in a large, densely forested estate, nineteen miles from here. The place is called Labtulia, but the jungle there is just as it is here. The only reason for keeping an office there is that every year, the jungle is leased to cowherds for grazing their cattle and buffaloes. Apart from this, there are about two or three hundred bighas of wild jujube forest, which people lease to cultivate lac insects. To collect this revenue, there is a patwari on a ten-rupee salary and his small kachari.

The time for leasing the jujube forest was approaching, so one day I set out for Labtulia on horseback. Between my kachari and Labtulia lies a ridge of red earth about seven or eight miles long, known as Phulkia Baihar, and it is filled with all manner of trees, plants, and jungle thickets. In places, the forest is so dense that the branches brush against the horse’s flanks. Where Phulkia Baihar descends to meet the level plain, a small hill-stream called the Chanan flows murmuring over a bed of stones. The water is quite deep during the monsoon, but there is not so much in winter.

This was my first visit to Labtulia. The kachari was a tiny thatched hut, its floor level with the ground outside, its very walls made of bundles of dry kans grass and tamarisk branches. I arrived there a little before sunset—the cold was nothing like what it was at my own station, and I was on the verge of freezing even before dusk fell.

The sepoys lit a fire with branches from the forest. I sat on a camp chair by the flames, while the others sat in a circle around it.

The patwari had procured a rohu fish weighing about five seers. Now the question arose: who would cook it? I had not brought a cook with me, nor did I know how to cook myself. Seven or eight men were waiting at Labtulia to meet me; from among them, the patwari appointed a Maithil Brahmin named Kantu Mishra to do the cooking.

I said to the patwari, “Are these the men who will be bidding on the lease?”

“No, Huzoor,” the patwari replied. “They’ve come in the hopes of a meal. They heard you were coming and have been sitting here at the kachari for two days. That’s the custom with the people here. More will probably come tomorrow.”

I had never heard of such a thing. “What do you mean?” I said. “I didn’t invite them.”

“Huzoor, these people are very poor; they don’t get to eat rice. They live year-round on sattu made from gram or maize. For them, getting to eat rice is like a feast. You are coming, and they will get rice here—that’s the hope that brought them. Just you see how many more will come.”

The people of Bengal have become far too civilized in comparison to these folk, I thought. For some reason, I grew so fond of these simple, rice-hungry people that night! They sat around the fire, telling stories amongst themselves, and I listened. At first, they had been unwilling to sit by my fire, wanting to maintain a respectful distance from me—but I called them over. Sitting nearby, Kantu Mishra was cooking the fish over a fire of asan wood branches, and the smoke gave off a fragrance like burning resin. To step away from the fire was to feel as if snow were falling from the sky—it was that cold.

It was very late by the time we finished eating; everyone who was at the kachari ate. Afterwards, we sat in a circle around the fire again. It felt as if the very blood in my veins would freeze. The cold was probably so intense because the land was so open, or perhaps because the Himalayas were not very far.

There were seven or eight of us by the fire, with two small thatched huts before us. I would stay in one, and all the others in the second. Encircling us were the dark forest and plain; above us, a star-strewn, far-spreading dark sky. It felt utterly strange, as though I had been exiled from the familiar world and cast upon some planet in the great void, caught up in another, unknown and mysterious way of life.

Among the group, a man of about thirty or thirty-two had particularly caught my attention. His name was Ganori Tewari; he was dark-complexioned, of medium build, with long hair on his head and two long stripes of tilak on his forehead. In this cold, he had nothing on but a single thick shawl; by the custom of this region, he should have been wearing a mirzai, but he did not even have that. I had been watching him for a long time; he looked at everyone with a certain diffidence and did not contradict anything anyone said, though it was not as if he spoke little.

In reply to everything I said, he would only say, “Huzoor.”

When the people of this country accept what a respected and high-ranking person says, they just incline their heads slightly forward and say reverently, “Huzoor.”

I said to Ganori, “Where do you live, Tewari-ji?”

He looked at me as if this honour—my asking him a question directly—was entirely unexpected. “Bhimdas-tola, Huzoor,” he said.

Then he went on to describe the history of his life—not all at once, but in fragments, in response to my questions.

When Ganori Tewari was twelve years old, his father died. An elderly paternal aunt raised him, and when she too passed away about five years after his father, Ganori set out into the world to seek his fortune. But his world was circumscribed: in the east, the town of Purnia; in the west, the border of Bhagalpur district; to the south, this lonely, forested Phulkia Baihar; to the north, the Kosi river. Within these bounds he had wandered from village to village, knocking on the doors of householders, sometimes performing a puja, sometimes teaching in a village pathshala, and with great difficulty securing for himself sattu made from gram and rotis made from china grass seeds. For the last two months he had been without work; the pathshala in Parbata village had closed down. There were no settlements in the ten-thousand-bigha forest region of Phulkia Baihar, so he had been wandering among the camps of the buffalo herders who brought their animals to graze in the jungle, begging for food. Today, hearing the news of my arrival, he had come here with the others.

The reason he had come was even more remarkable.

“Why have so many people come here, Tewari-ji?”

“Huzoor, everyone was saying the Manager has come to the Phulkia kachari, and we’d get to eat rice there, so they came, and I came with them.”

“Don’t the people here get to eat rice?”

“Where would they get it, Huzoor? In Naugachhia, the Marwaris eat rice every day. I myself ate rice today after perhaps three months. Last Bhadra, on the sankranti day, there was an invitation to the house of Rasbihari Singh Rajput. He’s a rich man, he served rice. I haven’t had it since then.”

Of all the men who had come, not one had a warm garment for this terrible cold; they passed the night huddling by the fire. In the last watch, when the cold grows more intense and sleep becomes impossible because of it, they sit huddled close to the fire until dawn.

I do not know why, but I suddenly grew so fond of them! Their poverty, their simplicity, their capacity to struggle in the harsh battle of life—this dark forest land and this frost-bearing open sky had not let them walk the soft, flower-strewn path of luxury, but they had forged them into true men. I was astonished to think how vital was the capacity for joy in these men, who had walked nine miles from Bhimdas-tola and Parbata, uninvited, for the simple pleasure of eating a little rice.

Late in the night, I was woken by some sound. It was painful even to poke my face out into the cold. Not knowing it would be so cold here, I had not brought suitably warm clothes or a proper quilt and mattress. I had brought the same blanket I used in Calcutta; in the cold of the last watch of the night, it felt like cold water every day. The side I lay on would be tolerable from my own body heat, but when I turned over to my other side, I would find the bedding there bitingly cold—it was like taking a dip in a cold pond on a winter night in Poush. Just outside, in the jungle, there was a sound of collective footfalls—it was as if something was running, breaking through trees and dry tamarisk bushes with a cracking sound, running at breakneck speed.

Unable to make out what was happening, I called out for the sepoy Bishnuram Pande and the schoolmaster Ganori Tewari. They sat up, their eyes heavy with sleep. In the last embers of the fire that had been lit on the kachari floor, their faces showed a mixture of indolence, deference, and drowsiness. Ganori Tewari listened for a moment and said, “It’s nothing, Huzoor. A herd of nilgai running in the jungle.”

Having said this, he was about to turn over and go back to sleep with a placid mind when I asked, “Why would a herd of nilgai suddenly be running like that so late at night?”

Bishnuram Pande said in a reassuring tone, “Perhaps some animal is chasing them, Huzoor. What else could it be?”

“What animal?”

“What else, Huzoor, a jungle animal. Could be a tiger—or else a bear.”

Unconsciously, my eyes fell on the flimsy reed-stalk screen that served as a door to the hut where I was sleeping. That screen was so light that even a dog pushing from the outside could knock it over into the room. In such a state, to be told that in the silent, deep night, a tiger or a bear was chasing a herd of wild nilgai right in front of my hut—it goes without saying that this news did not leave me feeling particularly reassured.

Shortly after, the dawn broke.

As the days went by, the spell of the forest began to possess me more and more. I cannot say what a pull there is in its solitude, in these tamarisk forests strewn with the afternoon’s vermilion—but lately, I have begun to feel that I will never be able to leave this horizon-spanning, vast forest plain, to leave its fresh, sun-baked earthy fragrance, this freedom, this liberation, and return to the clamour of Calcutta.

This state of mind did not come about in a day. In how many forms, in what diverse guises, did wild nature come before my enchanted, unaccustomed eyes to beguile me! How many evenings came, wearing a diadem of magnificent crimson clouds; how many noons of scorching sun, in the guise of a frenzied Bhairavi; how many deep midnights, dressed as a celestial beauty clad in moonlight, anointed with the fragrance of frost-chilled wild blossoms, a garland of stars filling the sky around her neck; and on dark nights, in the vast and terrible form of the goddess Kali, spanning the cosmos, the fiery sword of Orion in her hand.

There is one day I will never forget as long as I live. I remember it was the day of Dol Purnima. The kachari sepoys had requested the day off and spent the whole day playing Holi, beating on drums. Seeing that their song and dance showed no sign of stopping even in the evening, I lit the lamp on the table in my own room and wrote letters for the head office until late. When I had finished my work, I looked at the clock and saw it was nearly one in the morning. I was on the verge of freezing. Lighting a cigarette, I glanced out of the window and stood there, enchanted and amazed. The thing that so captivated me was the indescribable moonlight of the full-moon night.

Perhaps because it had been winter, I had never been outside so late at night since my arrival, or for some other reason, but this was the first time I had ever seen the beauty of Phulkia Baihar on a night of full moon.

I opened the door and stepped outside. There was no one anywhere; the sepoys, exhausted after a full day of revelry, were fast asleep. The forest was silent, the night hushed and deserted. There are no words to describe that moonlit night. I had never in my life seen such shadowless moonlight. There are no very large trees here, only small tamarisk and kans grass, so they do not cast much of a shadow. The moonlight falling on the glistening, white, sand-flecked earth and on the kans grass, half-dried by the winter sun, had created an unearthly beauty, the sight of which inspired a kind of fear in the heart. My mind felt a wistful, untethered, liberated feeling—my heart cried out. Standing there in the silent night under the moon-filled sky, looking all around, I felt as if I had stumbled into an unknown fairy-kingdom—no human law would hold here. At the dead of night, these deserted places, bathed in moonlight, are turned into the roaming grounds of fairies, and I had trespassed and done wrong.

After that, I saw the moonlit nights of Phulkia Baihar many times. In the middle of Phalgun, when the dudhli flowers bloom and spread a carpet of colourful flowers across the entire plain, how many moon-white nights I have breathed in the sweet fragrance of dudhli blossoms on the wind, my heart filled with the scent. And every time I have thought: that moonlight could be so magnificent, that it could bring such a sense of wistful melancholy mingled with fear—while living in Bengal, I had never imagined it! I will not attempt to describe those moonlit nights of Phulkia; until one has a direct acquaintance with such a world of beauty, it cannot be understood merely by hearing of it or reading about it—it is not possible. Only in the midst of such an open sky, such silence, such solitude, such a horizon-spanning sweep of forest, can such a world of beauty bloom. One ought to see that moonlit night at least once in one’s life; for one who has not, one of God’s most wondrous creations will remain forever unknown to him.

One day, returning from the survey-camp at Dihi Azimabad as evening fell, I lost my way in the forest. The forest floor was not level everywhere; here and there stood high, jungle-covered sand-dunes, with small valleys nestled between them. But the jungle itself was unbroken. Climbing to the top of a dune, I looked all around to see if the light from the Mahavir flag at the estate office was visible in any direction. There was not a trace of light to be seen—only undulating dunes and forests of jhau and kash, with occasional groves of shal and asan trees. After wandering for two hours and still finding no end to the jungle, it suddenly occurred to me: why not use the stars to find my way? It was summer, and I could see Kalpurush, the celestial hunter, almost directly overhead. But I couldn’t tell from which direction it had risen to be there, and I could not find the Great Bear. So, abandoning hope of navigating by the stars, I gave my horse its head. After about two miles, a light appeared in the middle of the jungle. Making for the light, I arrived to find a very low grass hut in a clearing of about twenty square cubits. A fire was lit in front of the hovel, even on this summer day. A little way from the fire, a man was sitting, busy with something.

Hearing the sound of my horse’s hooves, the man started, jumped to his feet, and cried out, “Who’s there?” Then, recognizing me, he hurried over and, with great courtesy, helped me dismount.

I was exhausted; I had been on horseback for nearly six hours, for even at the survey-camp I had been trailing the amin through the jungle, trotting to and fro on my horse. I sat down on a grass mat the man offered me. I asked, “What’s your name?” The man replied, “Ganu Mahato. I’m a Gangota by caste.” I had learned by then that the livelihood of the Gangota people in this region was farming and raising livestock—but what was this man doing all alone in the depths of this uninhabited forest?

I said, “What do you do here? Where is your home?”

“Huzoor, I graze buffaloes. My home is in Dharampur, in Lachhmaniyatola, ten krosh north of here.”

“Your own buffaloes? How many do you have?”

The man said in a proud tone, “I have five buffaloes, Huzoor.”

Five buffaloes? I was genuinely astonished. That a man with only five buffaloes to his name would come from a village ten krosh away, pay the grazing tax, build a solitary hut in this lonely forest, and tend his animals—how he passed his time, day after day, month after month, in that tiny hovel—I, a young man fresh from Calcutta, raised on the city’s theatre and bioscopes, could not understand.

But as I gained more experience of this land, I came to understand why Ganu Mahato lived as he did. There was no other reason for it than this: that this was Ganu Mahato’s very conception of life. Since he had five buffaloes, they had to be grazed; and since they had to be grazed, he had to build a hut in the forest and live alone. It was a perfectly ordinary matter; what was there to be astonished about?

Ganu fashioned a long pika, or cheroot, from a fresh shal leaf, and welcomed me by respectfully placing it in my hand. In the firelight, I saw his face—a fine, broad forehead, a high nose, a dark complexion. His features were simple, his gaze calm and tranquil. He must have been over sixty; not a single hair on his head was black. But his body was so well-built that even at his age, you could have counted every single muscle distinctly.

Ganu threw more wood on the fire and lit a shal-leaf pika for himself. In the glow of the fire, a brass utensil or two glinted inside the hut. Beyond the circle of the fire pit lay utter darkness and the dense forest. I said, “Ganu, you live here all alone. Aren’t you afraid of wild animals?”

Ganu replied, “Can people like us afford to be afraid, Huzoor? Not with this trade of ours! Why, just the other night, a tiger came right behind my hut. I have two buffalo calves; it had its eye on them. Hearing the sound, I got up in the night to beat on a tin can, light a torch, and shout! I didn’t get any more sleep that night, Huzoor. And in the winter, the jackals howl in this forest all night long.”

“What do you eat here? There are no shops or anything. Where do you get your provisions? Rice, dal—”

“Huzoor, do we have the money to buy things from shops? And can we afford to eat rice like the Bengali babus? Behind this jungle, I have a two-bigha field of kheri. Boiled kheri grains, and there’s a green called bathua that grows in the jungle, so I boil that, and add a little salt. That’s what I eat. In the month of Falgun, the gudmi fruit ripens in the jungle. It’s quite good eaten raw with salt—it grows on a vine, a small fruit like a tiny cucumber. For a month during that time, all the poor folk of this region live on gudmi fruit. Hordes of children come to the jungle to pick them.”

I asked, “Don’t you get tired of boiled kheri and bathua greens day after day?”

“What can I do, Huzoor? We’re poor people. Where would we get rice to eat like the Bengali babus? In this whole region, only Rashbehari Singh and Nandlal Pande eat rice twice a day. I work like a demon behind the buffaloes all day, Huzoor. When I return in the evening, I’m so hungry that whatever I get to eat tastes good.”

I said to Ganu, “Have you ever seen the city of Calcutta, Ganu?”

“No, Huzoor. I’ve only heard of it. I went to Bhagalpur city once; it’s a very big city. I saw the ‘wind-car’ there—a most astonishing thing, Huzoor. No horse, nothing, just moving down the road all by itself.”

I was amazed at his health at such an age. And I had to admit to myself that he had courage, too.

Ganu’s sole means of livelihood were those few buffaloes. Of course, who would buy their milk in this jungle? He churned the milk into butter to make ghee, and after collecting two or three months’ worth, he would sell it to the Marwaris in the market at Dharampur, nine miles away. His only other possession was that two-bigha field of kheri, or shyama-ghas, the boiled grains of which were a staple food for nearly all the poor people of the region. Ganu guided me to the kachari that night, but I had taken such a liking to him that I spent many a quiet afternoon thereafter, sitting by the fire in front of his hut, passing the time with stories. No one else could provide me with as much information about that land as I heard from Ganu.

I heard so many strange tales from Ganu’s lips. Stories of flying snakes, of living stones, of newborn babies that could walk, and so on. In the context of that lonely forest, Ganu’s stories seemed utterly delightful and mysterious—but I know that if I had heard them while sitting in the city of Calcutta, they would have seemed preposterous and false. One cannot simply listen to any story anywhere; anyone who loves stories knows how much their magic depends on the backdrop and circumstances in which they are heard. Of all Ganu’s experiences, the one that struck me as most astonishing was the story of Tãdbaro, the god of wild buffaloes.

But, since this story has a strange conclusion of its own, I will not tell it now, but in its proper place. Let me state here that the stories Ganu told me were not fairytales, but matters of his own personal experience. Ganu had seen life, but in a different way. Having spent his entire life in intimate contact with the wilderness, he was a veritable expert on its nature. His words could not be dismissed out of hand. Nor did I feel that Ganu possessed the kind of imagination required to invent falsehoods.