Almost 11 years ago, my colleagues and I were returning from “A Walk into the Wilderness”, organised by my then-employer, Sanctuary Asia. We had spent the evening in Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, listening to crickets and parakeets and watching the sun set among the many trees. As we turned to head back, our forest jeep stopped suddenly. Caught in its headlights was a leopard, sprawled on the roadside. He lay there, regal in the moonlit path. After what felt like ages, he got up, and stretched his sinewy body. A flick of the tail, and he melted back into the forest.
That was the first time I met a leopard in the wild. After that, the cat has proved to be elusive for me. But I often return to books to read about this magnificent spotted cat. It makes frequent appearances in books by Ruskin Bond, the writer on the hill.
When I first interviewed Bond over the phone, it was inevitable that we’d speak about the animal. “Leopards are good survivors, they conceal themselves well,” he said. “They can climb trees. I have had them on my roof looking for monkeys who go to sleep.”
In Stories Short and Sweet (Red Turtle), Bond writes about one such sighting in “The Tunnel”. Suraj looks up at a tree-covered hillside – “He thought he saw something moving between the trees. It was just a flash of orange and gold, and a long swishing tail. It was there between the trees for a second or two, then it was gone.”
At one point in the story, the terrified leopard runs from the human beings. Bond spoke about human-animal conflict during our conversation – “With cities eating into forest land, you get these instances of conflict quite frequently,” he said, reflectively.
Later, in his characteristic dry wit, he said, “They eat dogs, you know. One used to pick up my neighbour’s dogs, so now he keeps a cat.”
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Parks (Clarion Books)
“Going was easy. Going the big plastic container held only air.” That’s the first line of A Long Walk to Water. Written by Linda Sue Parks, this young adult novel is set in Sudan and tells the story of two children, in two different times.
Salva has been separated from his family by war. He starts a long journey on foot, and faces all sorts of hardships along the way, from illness, to hunger and thirst. At the same time, we read about Nya, a young village girl who sets off on a cumbersome and dangerous journey of her own twice a day, to fetch water for her home.
A Long Walk to Water is a stark reminder of the collateral damage of war and also of the hardships women and girls around the world face when it comes to accessing a basic right and need – water.
In collaboration with BAM Books, an Instagram-led project that highlights diverse books for children and young adults.
Guest Editor Diaries: Of Leopards and Water Resources - Eight-year-old Guest Editor Shaurya Mantena assigns stories to the NiF team.
H2 Uh Oh! – Water sustainability consultant Shubha Ramachandran explains why water is critical for life.
The Story of a Misunderstood Cat – Wildlife biologists Aritra Kshettry and Nikit Surve tell us why it’s not easy being a leopard.
Check out more stories on our Young Tusks page.
