Despite the thrills and chills of Jim Corbett’s accounts of hunting man-eating tigers and leopards, it is My India that remains my favourite. The stories of his job as Trans-Shipment Inspector at Mokameh Ghat and interactions with a diverse range of people told with humour and empathy tend to linger.
In Hero of Kumaon: The Life of Jim Corbett, British journalist Duff Hart-Davis puts together an eminently readable biography of the hunter-turned-conservationist. In ‘Barefoot Boy’, he covers not just Corbett’s childhood but also offers an overview of Nainital and its importance to the British. While the family lived in the town during summer, the winter months were spent at Kalahundi (now Kaladhungi), where young Corbett learnt to speak Hindi and local dialects. This would stand him in good stead when he began to work in the Railways and in communicating with village folk during his hunts. Hart-Davis recounts how “a powerful hunting instinct burned inside” the young boy and how he preferred to wander barefoot to facilitate both silent movements and climbing trees and how he moved from a catapult to a pellet bow to a bow and arrow, how he learnt to mimic bird and animal sounds and became an excellent tracker.
Jim Corbett’s house at Kaladhungi. | Photo Credit: special arrangement
Call of churails
He then goes on to outline Corbett’s education, before he traces his various hunting expeditions. He uses Corbett’s own words to describe the “exciting action” while setting the context for what happened. For someone who has read Corbett’s works, this may seem a bit repetitive but there are interesting nuggets to fish out. For example, while on the track of the Champawat man-eater, Corbett had to spend a night in a local bungalow, which the local tehsildar was supposed to share with him. Instead, the man claimed he was on a long journey, and disappeared only to reappear the next morning. Corbett never spoke about what happened at the bungalow during the night. As Hart-Davis concludes, “Clearly he had been frightened by some apparently supernatural event or visitation.”
There is also the account of how he established that the call of the churail (an evil spirit) was actually made by a bird. Hart-Davis reports Corbett’s description of the bird but what it was remains a mystery.
When World War II broke out, Corbett did his best to join up to the extent of knocking off 10 years from his actual age. Appointed Senior Instructor in jungle warfare at the army training centre in Chhindwara, he took the trouble to learn all he could about the jungles of Burma where the troops would be sent and to find out what the new recruits were actually afraid of and tailor his training accordingly. There’s an amusing incident of how one young man fainted after seeing a tiger and how Corbett was afraid that the boy had died. Another touching account tells of a meeting with a wounded soldier, who was from one of the villages terrorised by the Rudraprayag man-eater.
The single-storied bungalow at Kaladhungi, which was Jim Corbett’s house, is now a museum. | Photo Credit: Anuj Arora
A rich legacy
Hart-Davis finishes with an account of Corbett as author, his bewilderment at his sudden popularity, his departure from India soon after Partition and his life in Kenya, which of course includes the encounter with a famous royal who climbed up a tree as a princess and came down as a queen. The final chapter is a quick overview of Corbett’s legacy: the books that continue to enthral, the National Park named after him and its work and how his name continues to be kept alive today.
While there may not be anything new for the die-hard Corbett fan, Hart-Davis does keep the reader engaged with his clear and chronological telling of Corbett’s life. The Hero of Kumaon is a great way to introduce a new generation to Jim Corbett.
Hero of Kumaon: The Life of Jim Corbett; Duff Hart-Davis, HarperCollins, ₹300.
krithika.r@thehindu.co.in
Published - August 18, 2023 09:02 am IST
