When predators strike, only poor bleed

There has been a spate of leopard attacks in Pune's neighbouring district, Ahilyanagar.

- By R Raj Rao

The victims of these brutal attacks are invariably the subaltern. They are impoverished Dalits and Adivasi tribals who live in remote villages, far away from cities. Tigers and leopards mean very different things to them from what they mean to bourgeois urban men and women, and their clones, who, dressed in shorts, go to tiger reserves in their offroader Thars and Jimnys with their expensive cameras. So disrespectful are they of the environment that on a recent visit to the Tadoba reserve, I even saw them smoking in their safari Gypsies, in blatant violation of the rules.

Often, as I'm driving on highways out of Pune, I see illustrated road signs that say 'Wild Animal Crossing'. Motorists are supposed to be extra careful at such signs, lest they run over a wild animal, usually a leopard, as has frequently happened, the last such incident taking place only a few days ago. When I read these signs, I ask myself, isn't man the wildest animal of them all?

One can't imagine how excruciatingly painful a tiger or leopard attack can be until one reads a graphic description of it in Dane Huckelbridge's book No Beast So Fierce. He says, “ ... in the first milliseconds of a full-speed tiger attack, a human body must not only cope with a bone-fracturing impact ... but also absorb fourteen simultaneous stiletto-deep stab wounds-four of which are usually inflicted on the back of the head or the nape of the neck."