TIMELESS CORBETT

EXPLORING THE HUNTER, WRITER, NATURALIST AND CONSERVATIONIST BEHIND THE LEGEND OF JIM CORBETT

- RAJAT GHAI

THE TIGRESS had carried the girl straight down on this spot, and my approach had disturbed her at her meal. Splinters of bone were scattered round the deep pugmarks into which discoloured water was slowly seeping, and at the edge of the pool was an object which had puzzled me as I came down the watercourse, and which I now found was part of a human leg. In all the subsequent years I have hunted man-eaters, I have not seen anything as pitiful as that young comely leg—bitten off a little below the knee as clean as though severed by the stroke of an axe—out of which the warm blood was trickling.”

These words are from Man-Eaters of Kumaon, the 1944 masterpiece by Jim Corbett, whose name lives on in India’s first national park—Jim Corbett National Park. On July 25, India paid homage to the legend, fondly remembered as “Carpet Sahib” in his native Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, on his 150th birth anniversary. But who was the real Jim Corbett—a bestselling author, a hunter, a naturalist, a conservationist or an ordinary man with keen observation power?

Perhaps the best way to understand him is by examining the times in which he lived, and exploring the challenges that shaped his multifaceted persona. Born into a family of Irish descent that served the British colonial regime during the 1870s, and lived in Nainital, Corbett spent most of his early years outdoors, amid the hills and jungles of Kumaon. This left an everlasting impression on his life and work. He developed an unparalleled knowledge of the forest. His ability to interpret the signs and sounds of the jungle and its inhabitants was exceptional. “The application of this knowledge of how the jungle telegraph works...helped Jim become a master sleuth of the wilds, a great sportsman and pioneering wildlife photographer,” writes D C Kala in the first biography of the legend, Jim Corbett of Kumaon.