I met Biplab Chakarvarty in a general coach of a train; I took from Calcutta to Siliguri when I was travelling to Darjeeling to spend my summer holidays. A ritual I had never missed in the last ten years. I worked as a lecturer of Psychology in a reputed college in Calcutta and when the rising mercury level made the college management declare the summer holidays a week in advance, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I tried getting a reservation in any of the trains running between Calcutta and Siliguri, but when I couldn’t get one, I decided to travel in the general coaches. Something, I had never done in the last few years.
When the train arrived on the platform in Calcutta, I dropped the newspaper I had bought from one of stalls lining opposite the station building, on an empty seat through the window to mark that the seat was already taken. An act I was well acquainted with after all these years of travelling. But, when I reached near the seat, shoulder wrestling through fellow passengers and hawkers, I found another man sitting on it. He had buried his face deep in the newspaper, quite unaware that the seat and the newspaper belonged to someone else.
‘Sir, the seat you are sitting on and the newspaper you are reading both belong to me,’ I told the stranger with an authority.
‘Oh, I am sorry,’ said the stranger, rising from the seat and taking an empty space on the opposite seat and started reading again.
He was around my age, well built in frame, but a little taller than me. If not for the little grey near his temple, he looked much younger for his age. He wore thick rimmed spectacles which kept falling off his nose and the colour of his lips suggested he smoked regularly.
When the train stopped at the next station, I realized he was still holding my newspaper. So I asked him to return it, if he had finished reading.
‘Hello! I am Biplab, Biplab Chalarvarty,’ he said, returning the newspaper, after he had neatly folded the pages at the edges and asked a chaiwallah on the platform to pour two cups of tea, taking one f himself and requested me to take the other.
When we began talking over tea, I came to know he was a herpetologist and unlike me he wasn’t travelling to Darjeeling to escape the heat of the plains instead he was going to spend his stay in Darjeeling studying the Darjeeling Salamander, an endangered species nearing extinction. Though his field of study sounded fascinating, having not the slightest idea about it, I kept listening like an attentive child in a classroom. Moreover, I was happy to have at least found a company.
The following day when we reached Darjeeling in the afternoon, I came to know, Mr. Biplab hadn’t booked a place for his proposed stay. So, to ease his burden of finding a hotel, I invited him to the hotel, where I had booked a room for my intended stay and assured him to make arrangements for his stay also.
When we reached the hotel, the manager was happy to offer another room to Mr.Chakarvarty for which he thanked me enough later that day in the evening when we went round the Mall Road for a walk. Mr. Chakaravarty also insisted me to address him Biplab Da now, though there was very little difference in our ages. I found this easy-going nature of Mr. Chakarvarty quite comforting. Biplab da’s generosity continued later at the dinner table; in the restaurant where we had decided to dine when he refused to split the bill and went on to pay the entire amount.
The following day when we met at the breakfast table, after exchanging morning greetings, I asked about Biplab da’s his plans for the day.
‘I will be heading for the zoo, after breakfast,’ he grinned.
‘Would you like to come along?’ he asked me, while rising from the breakfast table.
During my previous stays in Darjeeling, I had visited the zoo a couple of times, so the prospect of going there again didn’t raise any level of curiosity in my mind. Again, denying to Biplab da’s invitation directly didn’t sound welcoming, so I lied that I had already planned to visit the Capitol Hall, where paintings by local artists were on display.
‘Did you find anything worth buying for your Calcutta home in the exhibition?’ asked Biplab da when we met in his room after dining at a local eatery.
‘Yes, a few.’ I lied again.
‘How was your visit to the zoo, Biplab da? Did you make it a point to also visit HMI?’ I asked, reaching for my cup of tea, brought in by the hotel staff, after Biplab da had quietly taken his, from the tray.
‘No!’ replied Biplab da rising from his chair and after brief pacing up and down in the room sat on the edge of the bed.
From the look of his face and body language, I sensed something was amiss.
‘They didn’t let me visit the breeding site!’ Biplab da thumped his right fist on the mattress in rage, spilling a little tea on the white sheet spread over the mattress.
From the conversations that followed later at night, I came to know that Biplab da’s request for visiting the breeding site of the endangered Darjeeling Salamander was denied by the zoo’s authorities. According to him, the officials present had turned a deaf ear, when he pleaded to them to allow him to study the endangered newt species, whose numbers were dwindling every day.
Loss of natural habitat, unchecked regular poaching and change in climatic conditions were the main reasons for the dwindling numbers, cited the caretaker of the breeding site, though laws were framed for its protection under Schedule II of Indian Wildlife (protection) Act, 1972.
By the time Biplab da finished narrating his day’s tale, it was already past eleven. Though, I wanted to listen to all his stories, but it was already quite late. After bidding good night to Biplab da, I went to sleep because the following morning I had planned a trek to Tiger Hill for which I had to wake up a couple of hours before the day broke.
The next morning, after seeing the sunrise at Tiger Hill, I also took the opportunity to pray for my parent’s well being at the Senchal Temple and visit the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Museum at Ghoom. When I returned back to the hotel in the afternoon, I found Biplab da waiting for me at the reception. With a beaming smile, he told me he was really happy and wanted to take me out for lunch.
‘I visited the breeding site,’ came quickly from Biplab da, once we were settled across the table.
‘How did that happen?’ I questioned more curious than surprised.
‘I bribed the caretaker!’ whispered Biplab da, bending over the edge of the table, almost knocking the glass of water which was poured by the waiter a few minutes ago.
‘Is that another of your jokes, Biplab da?’
Before he could assure me this time, the smile on his lips and his twinkling eyes was enough for me to realize that he wasn’t cracking some lame jokes this time.
Before, I could further go into the enquiry; Biplab da reached for his cloth bag and drew out a bunch of hand painted pictures and asked me to look at them.
Every time, I had visited the Darjeeling Zoo previously, all I wanted to see was the Snow Leopard and Red Panda. Never had I bothered to look at the other animals and more particularly the Darjeeling Salamander. I had assumed it look like the wall gecko’s found in abundant in my Calcutta home.
But, when I saw the pictures, which Biplab da had passed onto me, I was astonished. The newt was uniformly blackish brown in colour was between 10-15cm in length. The head was a little wider and its snout a little shorter and the body was around three times the length of the head. The tail was slightly flattened at the bottom to ease in swimming, told Biplab da later.
Before returning to our rooms in the evening, after lunch we spent the afternoon strolling around the Mall Road, talking about college days. The courses we had taken and why he had chosen to remain unmarried.
The next morning when I woke up, I felt too tired to walk down to the hotel’s restaurant for the breakfast. My legs felt heavy.
‘I shouldn’t have gone strolling round with Biplab da, after having gone on a trek to the Tiger Hill the same day,’ I cursed myself when my legs hurt.
But, the hotel’s manager was kind enough to arrange for my breakfast in my room along with a copy of the daily newspaper, Telegraph.
After eating, I settled down with the newspaper and a cup of tea on a chair facing the window. The outside scene was just perfect to set the mood for browsing through the newspaper.
As an old habit I quickly flipped over the pages, until I found the editorial page. After reading a few articles and columns relating to the state of the country, I flipped back to the page reserved for news relating to North Bengal. Before, I could read anything my eyes fell on a black and white picture of a lizard like creature. It was a picture of the rare Darjeeling Salamander.
In the article adjacent to the picture, it was mentioned that of the few salamanders being bred in the Darjeeling Zoo, one had gone missing the previous day.
According to the breeding site’s caretaker, when he returned after lunch break, he found one of the salamanders missing. He had tried finding it in the crevices of rocks present in the artificial pond but when he wasn’t able to spot it, he had reported to the higher authorities. The authorities had reported the matter to the nearby police station and the search was going on.
When I finished reading the article, I wanted to tell Biplab da about it myself. So, I folded the newspaper back in four and rushed out of my room to meet Biplab da. But, before I could knock on his door, the hotel manager interrupted me. He held a telegram in his hand. It was addressed to me from my father.
In Calcutta my mother was admitted to the hospital. She had fainted one afternoon in the courtyard. My father had found the hotel’s address in a diary I had kept in his study in which I had written down the address and phone number of hotel and now he wanted me to come down to Calcutta as soon as possible.
Once I was in Calcutta, I forgot everything about Biplab da and the Darjeeling Salamander until one morning when my eyes caught sight of another black and white picture in the newspaper. In the picture, it was Biplab da standing between two uniformed men, while a couple of other men stood beside them in casual dresses.
Biplab da was accused of poaching and bribing. The local police had found the missing salamander in a glass container in Biplab da’s hotel room. It was the hotel manager who had reported to the police, when one of the housekeeping staff had found the container underneath the bed when Biplab da was away doing some shopping in the local bazaar.
From the investigation it was found that Biplab da was no herpetologist. Instead he was a famous poacher involved in smuggling rare reptiles to herpetologist across the country for hefty sum of money. Though, he was booked for similar charges in the past but was let go in the absence of any substantial proof but, not this time.
Later in the custody, Biplab da had admitted that it was he who had conjured up the plan of calling oneself a herpetologist so, that he could get easy access to the breeding site but when the zoo authorities denied him the permission, he had bribed the caretaker of the breeding site to allow him to get away with one of the salamander’s and had asked the caretaker to circulate cooked up stories among the officials.
Gadhanevaala- The storyteller 