Paharpur: Life Across the Gumti

WE WERE TOLD that the hanging bridge over the Gumti River would not be able to bear the weight of our van. So we disembarked with all our luggage and handed the bags over to the Reang tribals who had come on their bicycles to receive us. Kulendra Reang was there with some of his friends to take us to his village where we would stay for the next two days to conduct a survey of the wildlife of south-eastern Tripura’s Gumti Reserve Forest.

Earlier that morning, we had started from the Amarpur PWD Bungalow driving down a dusty but smooth road, which however soon turned bumpy after crossing Jatanbari and by the time we reached the Hydel Power Station at Tirthamukh, we were already having aching limbs. Tripura’s longest river Gumti had been dammed here to generate the small State’s meager need for hydroelectricity, to light the homes in towns and villages, there being no industries except the cottage industry and come to think of it, no pollution.

The river seemed to have vanished for a couple of kilometres after Tirthamukh as the river water had been channeled through underground pipes to rotate the turbines of the Hydel Power Plant. We drove up past the dam to see the Gumti again, passing through a gorge amidst the low hills and reached the hanging bridge to cross over it. From there we had to walk or pillion ride on bicycles for another three kilometres to reach the boat ‘ghat’, from where we had to take a rowboat to reach Paharpur, the village of these Reangs.

Once at the boat ghat, we found that everyone there was a skilled boatman including school children. However none used oars but paddled with their bare hands!

On reaching the village we soon realised that we would face a language problem. None of the tribals except Kulendra spoke Bengali, although some seemed to understand it at least partially. Hindi or English was out of question, most inhabitants communicated in their own tribal language—Kokborok. This put a moratorium on our socialising with the villagers, so we watched their activities intently from a distance as they did of ours. The tribal children, like children every-where, have no language problem. Although most of them wore no clothes, they were the first to come forward to greet us with smiling faces.

The people of Paharpur were poor but kept their thatched huts extremely neat and clean. Women did most of the household work from cooking to washing and layering their doorsteps with fresh mud every morning and evening. They also fetched water from the nearby hill-stream in several pots arranged on top of one another on their head. We later came to know that this ability was essential for a young girl to get married. Women also carried bamboo baskets slung on their shoulders in the afternoon, to bring in the grain produced in nearby fields located in the little valleys amidst the low hills. Men tilled the land in these valleys and grew paddy. In the afternoon, they fished in the nearby hill-streams and often went out in the evenings for hunting in the surrounding forests for wild boar and the occasional Barking deer. Other wildlife like civets were also not spared, while trapping the hoolock gibbon ushered in a village feast with the chieftain (gaonbura) being offered the brain. However, the Spectacled langur was never killed. They believe that these monkeys with their black fur, white lips and white rings around their eyes represented the ghosts of their forefathers!

The sun set at 4.30 pm, reminding us that we were very much in the extreme northeast. We went to bed in the chieftain’s home after an early dinner, hearing about the lifestyle of the Reang tribal villagers from Kulendra. The next morning, we got up early at 5.30 am, only to find that everyone in the village was already up before us.

The sun rises early here and all animal as well as human activities start earlier than the rest of India. Today we were to accompany the tribal villagers to their paddy fields after crossing the forests on the hills. At the onset each one had to cross a narrow bamboo bridge over a hill stream, one by one. It took quite a balancing act. Dense forest surrounded the village, the forests being mostly on the top of the low hills. The forest was full of berries and lot of berry-eaters assembled there in the early morning. These included several species of Flowerpeckers with the exquisitely beautiful Scarlet-backed flowerpecker being the most common. The female has a patch of red on the rump but the male is bluish-black with a scarlet-red band down the entire back. Red-breasted Parakeets gorged on berries in the canopy, the occasional Hoary-bellied squirrel storing them inside tree-holes for the lean months.

As of now, it was a season of plenty. Dragonflies, butterflies and their caterpillars were everywhere with the insectivorous birds like Drongos, Rollers, Barbets, Bee-eaters and Spiderhunters feasting on them. Many of these birds were nesting too. The Racket-tailed drongo had a nest very high up on a tree while the Lineated Barbet had one atop an old dead tree-trunk. It was busy feeding small insects to its chick inside the hole on the tree-trunk. Watching it was a Rose-ringed parakeet chick from inside another tree-hole. It peeped out of its nest hole to see the outside world and call aloud to its mother who soon arrived with a juicy fruit for it. Down below, I noticed a Bronze-back tree snake basking among the twigs of a bush and wondered whether it had any plans to climb up one of the trees to gobble any of the bird nestlings. However, I found that there were policemen too. A Spotted owlet skulked under the leafy branch of a tree waiting for darkness to fall again in the evening. A Jungle barred owlet hid nearby.

This was how Mother Nature regulated the population of each and every creature in the wild, allowing none to overpopulate the Earth.

The forest undergrowth was full of unknown plants. Mushrooms grew here and there and bracket fungi stuck out from the fallen logs. Skinks slithered over the leaf litter while leeches reminded us that we should be careful while putting forward every step. A troop of Spectacled langur was spotted—they indeed resembled the ghosts of the forest according to our tribal companions. Undisturbed, they gorged on fresh leaves and some even became pot-bellied like our city dwellers. A snail was climbing up a tree-trunk, while at a distance a beautiful Blue-tailed bee-eater had dug a nest-hole on the earthen bank of a small pool. When I went near to photograph it, it flew away but from the moss-covered bank of the pool a Painted frog hopped out and dived into the water. A little later a Crested serpent eagle was heard screeching from the top of a huge tree.

It is the top predator in this pristine ecosystem.

Walking further along we reached the edge of the forest where we climbed downhill to the paddy fields, the Reang tribals had cultivated by clearing the forests in the little valleys among the low hills. Their technique is very simple. They just cut down the trees and let them dry for months and then, set fire to the dried logs. The fire burns for days and reduces everything to ashes which fertilises the soil and allows crops like paddy to grow once the rains start. This type of slash and burn cultivation is called ‘jhum’ and is being practiced for centuries in the north-east. Today the Reang tribals had come along with us not only to show us the forest and wildlife around their village but also to set fire to another hacked down patch on the other side of the hill. As they did so, the fire spread quickly engulfing the entire hill slope. Some of the dried up tree trunks began to burst, creating a deafening noise. Along with the smoke, emerged hundreds of insects.
Dozens of Rollers, Drongos and Bee-eaters dived into the smoke to feast on them. The sun set and it soon got dark but the fire blazed on.

We returned to the village but throughout the night, the light from the blaze could be seen from the huts.

Kulendra returned in the evening from the Tirthamukh Forest Office to join us for dinner. He, being the village chieftain’s (gaonbura’s) son, had some access to education beyond the primary school at Tirthamukh. He had joined the high school at Jatanbari town but failed in his school final exams. He now works as temporary field staff at the Ranger’s office. We heard from him that before the Hydel Power Plant had been set up, there was only a small Forest Office at Tirthamukh. Those were the days of insurgency and no forest officer or school teacher felt safe to stay there. No outsider ever came to their village which itself was very small, a hamlet with only eight families.

Now there are over seventy families in his village. With the growth of human population, the pressure on the forest has increased many folds. The land, not being very fertile, the tribals still practice their age old traditional jhum cultivation, shifting to a new forested patch every time the harvest is poor in the older patch.

While earlier a fresh patch of forest was burned down every 10-15 years, nowadays the same patch is being cut and burned every 3-4 years. This is giving no time for any forest patch to regenerate. Pristine forests remain in very small patches, only on the top of some of the hills. These patches, being fragmented, can sustain only small populations of wild animals. Earlier they were in plenty.
As we left Paharpur the next morning, I wondered how much wiser Mother Nature is in keeping a balance over her denizens and wished we humans learnt more from her wonderful ways.

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