Birds, Beasts and Bandits , livre ebook

Penguin Books Ltd - Krupakar

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77 pages

English

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In a comic case of mistaken identity; wildlife photographers Krupakar and Senani were kidnapped one night from their home at the edge of the Bandipur National Park by Veerappan; India s most dreaded bandit . He thought they were important government officials; and his plan was to hold them hostage in return for clemency and a substantial ransom. The bandit and his gang kept the hostages on the move in the forest; and their only contact with the outside world was via an old transistor radio. While Veerappan;who had already killed some 250 people; formulated strategies to force the government to agree to his demands; his hostages not only got a close look at the plant and animal diversity in the forests of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu; but the intimacy of their life on the run gave them an insight into Veerappan s strange mix of cruelty and humanity. Though Krupakar and Senani came from a world that was completely different from that of Veerappan s gang; the kidnapped and the kidnappers became closely involved in each other s concerns. Birds; Beasts and Bandits is a witty and poignant account of an extraordinary adventure with the notorious poacher and his companions.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	01 août 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184754803
Langue	English

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KRUPAKAR AND SENANI
Birds, Beasts and Bandits
14 Days with Veerappan
TRANSLATED FROM THE KANNADA BY S.R. RAMAKRISHNA
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Translator s note
Whisked away on an eerie night
Veerappan conducts jungle interviews
Gang daydreams about white hostages
A melody beguiles the killer
Veerappan gapes at the Sacred Elephant
Is the army coming?
The Gopinatham Veerappan knew
Veerappan holds forth on destiny
Anbu and his dark-faced sibling
Maithi turns astrologer
How many zeroes to a crore?
A hush falls as news breaks
A night passes without vigil
Pain of parting grips our camp
We walk townwards in pouring rain
Afterword
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
BIRDS, BEASTS AND BANDITS
KRUPAKAR and SENANI are wildlife film-makers by profession and conservationists by passion. On a voluntary basis, they run a non-profit society called Namma Sangha, which is dedicated to conservation by reducing human pressure on the forests of Bandipur tiger reserve in south India. This is now considered one of the most successful nature conservation movements in India.
They work together under the name Krupakar-Senani Features. Together, they have travelled extensively, studying, photographing and filming birds and animals of the Western Ghats. More than forty of their photo-essays have been published in popular Kannada magazines. Their work has won acclaim from peers worldwide, and state and central governments in India. They have contributed over one thousand photographs to leading books on birds the world over, and to magazines such as Natural History Magazine , Geo , London Times and BBC Wildlife . Two of their recent films on Asiatic wild dogs, for National Geographic and Discovery channels, have achieved international acclaim. The Pack , which they shot for Discovery Communications, won the Green Oscar 2010, the first ever Asian film to have won this award. They hail from Mysore, and call the forests of the Nilgiri foothills home.
S.R. Ramakrishna is a journalist who has worked with Mid Day, New Indian Express and Deccan Herald , among other newspapers. He taught editing at the Asian College of Journalism during its Bangalore years. He is now senior editor, Yahoo! India News. His translations have appeared in many anthologies and literary magazines and his rendition of Ooru Keri , the critically acclaimed autobiography of Dalit poet Siddalingaiah, is prescribed reading at many universities. He set up The Music Magazine , India s first online music magazine, and ran it from a kitchen corner for five years. He lives in Bangalore.
Translator s note
This book is a caper story. It begins with the kidnapping of two wildlife film-makers and ends with their safe release. In the fourteen days they spend in captivity, they experience a whole range of emotions, from bewilderment, fear and desperation to hope, laughter and exhilaration. It is also a story of courage. The hostages chat and argue with Veerappan, pitting themselves against a killer who could shoot them dead on a mere whim. In the course of this adventure, they learn astonishing new things about the forest, the nature of good and evil, and themselves.
Veerappan, then India s most wanted bandit with a huge reward on his head, routinely killed policemen and forest officials, besides villagers he suspected of being police informers. In 1991, he tricked and beheaded P. Srinivas, a deputy conservator of forests who had set out to reform him. The following year, he ambushed and killed superintendent of police Harikrishna, sub-inspector Shakeel Ahmed, and four of their men. In 2002, he kidnapped H. Nagappa, a gentleman-politician and former Karnataka minister. Nagappa s body was found three months after his abduction, pierced by a bullet. No one was willing to own up to the shooting. In fact, Veerappan and the police pointed fingers at each other.
Born in 1952, Veerappan took to crime when he was eighteen by joining a gang of poachers. Police records suggest he committed his first murder in 1987. In a life spanning fifty-two years, Veerappan s murders add up to a chilling 120 (some put the number at 184). He also slaughtered hundreds of elephants for their ivory. In the last fifteen years of his life, he found kidnapping for ransom more lucrative than poaching and smuggling.
Newspapers and TV channels across the world woke up to Veerappan in 2000 when he kidnapped the much-loved Kannada actor Rajkumar. By then, Bangalore had turned into a software and outsourcing hub. Reporters clamoured to cover all the action in this city. A resident of Bangalore, Rajkumar used to visit his ancestral farmhouse on the fringes of Veerappan s jungle domain on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border. Besides being an iconic actor, Rajkumar was also a singer and yoga practitioner, admired for his humility and discipline. He was seventy-one when Veerappan raided his farmhouse and took him away.
In the 1980s, Rajkumar had led an agitation to demand primacy for Kannada in Karnataka s schools. During a dispute over river water sharing between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, hooligans claiming to be his fans had assaulted Tamil labourers in Bangalore. His kidnapping at Veerappan s hands triggered a political crisis. In some quarters, Veerappan was being portrayed as a Tamil warrior who had crushed the Kannadigas by kidnapping their hero. He released Rajkumar after 108 days, but not before he had paralysed two state governments and sparked fears of largescale rioting.
Veerappan s craftiness and cruelty were feared not only in the villages but also in the big cities. From the safety of their secretariats, politicians boasted about how they would soon end his menace. Feature films about his exploits, though indifferent to facts, did well commercially. Veerappan held sway over 6,000 sq km of dense forest covering the three southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. State and central forces, even when equipped with sophisticated gadgetry, combed the forests and returned empty-handed. How could this lanky man in rubber slippers outsmart India s best commandos?
The public imagination had ready answers to that question. One was that he enjoyed the support of powerful politicans in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. These politicians, the explanation went, wouldn t want him arrested because he would then expose their criminal links with him. The second was that he was sheltered by poor forest-dwellers whose interests he protected. Veerappan was in the business of poaching and smuggling. People said he was kind to villagers who helped him carry out his business.
It was into the hands of this near-mythical villain that the adventurous Krupakar-Senani fell in 1997. The film-makers had migrated from the city comforts of Mysore to the wilderness of the Western Ghats. They had abandoned staid middle-class careers in construction and business management to live among the birds and beasts they loved. Their decision, needless to say, had perplexed many, including their new neighbours in the jungle.
Krupakar-Senani wrote this account in 1998. It appeared in the Kannada weekly Sudha, where it became the most avidly read serial ever. Pustaka Prakashana, the well-known publishing house in Mysore, then released it as a book. In 2000, at the request of some of Krupakar-Senani s friends, I translated a chapter from the book. Nearly ten years later, the authors asked if I could translate the full book. Editors at Penguin liked the chapter I had already translated, printed it in First Proof 5 , and paved the way for this project. I had left one newspaper and was about to join another, and bargained for extra time between the two jobs to complete the translation.
Krupakar-Senani s Kannada prose tells a gripping story with journalistic simplicity. I enjoyed translating it. Their humour is gentle and disarming. Even when death stares them in the face, they remain friendly towards their tormentors. They transform a hostage trip into a fun expedition. They are cheerful and inquisitive in their writing, as they are in real life. They occasionally stick their necks out with their humour, as when they stage a melodrama with help from a fellow-hostage, but their humour is free from gallows bitterness.
Veerappan was a rebel in his own way. He took on the mighty state with nothing more than native cunning and a handful of stolen guns. He motivated scores of young men to join his army , training them to retaliate when faced with police nastiness. He knew strategy and could anticipate police actions. His knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Western Ghats, as this book reveals, would be any illustrious naturalist s envy. His brutality took away from all that, of course, but when told about Gandhian ideals, as he was in the course of this adventure, he could open his eyes to the possibilities of non-violence. The police, outwitted for decades, finally shot him dead in 2004. Perhaps this book can add to our understanding of the bloody battles now raging in jungles across India.
Many thanks are due: to Krupakar-Senani for trusting me with the translation, Penguin editors Sivapriya and Tahira for their appreciation and encouragement, my dear friends who take the time to read and respond to all the writing I mail them, and my sisters Aparna and Arundhati, wife Suchitra, son Tejas and mother-in-law Subhadra, all of whom stand by me always.
Whisked away on an eerie night
We came to Bandipur in 1994. Our idea was to begin a long-term study of wild dogs, considered the most mysterious among predators, and make a documentary on them.
Before that, we had spent seven years in Mudumalai, to the south of Bandipur. Our house was in the middle of the jungle, a grand bungalow built by the British, at least a hundred years old and now in ruins. Lush deciduous forests surrounded the bungalow. Countless wild animals roamed our verandah. An occasional tribal walked silently among the trees. It was more