This is how they live in Manas. Forest and human settlements matrixing with each other. The first picture was taken just outside the core area of the forest. It is self-explanatory. The second was taken in a seed farm near the village bordering the forest. And the buffalo bull in the picture is a wild one, which often meanders out of the forest to graze with domesticated cow buffaloes. The villagers say they encourage wild bulls to mate with the domesticated cows because that increases the chances of a calf being healthier and relatively free from diseases.
(Names of Bodo characters have been changed for obvious reasons)
The evening that I reached the Kokilabari resort in Manas, I was introduced to Tau (not his real name, that's what the others at the camp resort called this man). He drove a run-down Maruti Gypsy pick-up—one of the two vehicles at the disposal of the Manas Maozedongri Ecological Society (MMES). Middle-aged and pock-faced, he came across as an amiable man. The guys at MMES tell me that he is their only answer to snake bites in a roughly 200 sq km radius (if I remember the distance correctly).
And the reason is pretty confounding. He uses chicken to get rid of venom.
Chicken to get rid of venom!
This man, in urban terms is at best a haturey—the word Bengalis use for a hack. The difference is, this man, living in an area that is anything but conducive to human habitat especially during the summer and monsoon months, has developed a technique that is mind-bogglingly scientific and immensely simple.
When a snake bite victim comes to him, he first asks the relatives of the victim to gather at least eighty live chicken. He then cuts the tail off one, overlapping the cut with the anus. In a live chicken, it immediately sets off a suction process. Tau then holds the chicken with the cut-off portion covering the bite area. The natural suction process sucks in the venom. The chicken soon dies, with loss of blood and with the sucked-out venom rapidly spreading through its blood. The process is repeated, until the venom is totally sucked out. For the most poisonous of snakes found in the area— the cobra—Tau would need nothing less than 200 chickens.
Grotesque by urban standards. But to the average Bodo, grotesque is a concept they can ill-afford. You don't worry about grotesque, if you see your neighbour dying of malaria even before reaching the health centre, because there is none within 200 sq km. You don't think about grotesque, if you see your family being depleted year after year, falling prey, first to killer mosquitoes and then to snakes—not to speak of wild animals, scorpion bites and what not, all through the long months of summer and monsoon, when there is only the jungle to live with, sans smiling tourists and wide-eyed nature lovers bent upon finding the lost paradise or some such vague urban romantic dream in the whole stretch between October and February, when all things that crawl and hop go into hibernation and buzzers are depleted appreciably.
For the rest of the year, you need to survive, and survive the hard way. And the Bodos were never starngers to surviving the hard way.
And the reason is pretty confounding. He uses chicken to get rid of venom.
Chicken to get rid of venom!
This man, in urban terms is at best a haturey—the word Bengalis use for a hack. The difference is, this man, living in an area that is anything but conducive to human habitat especially during the summer and monsoon months, has developed a technique that is mind-bogglingly scientific and immensely simple.
When a snake bite victim comes to him, he first asks the relatives of the victim to gather at least eighty live chicken. He then cuts the tail off one, overlapping the cut with the anus. In a live chicken, it immediately sets off a suction process. Tau then holds the chicken with the cut-off portion covering the bite area. The natural suction process sucks in the venom. The chicken soon dies, with loss of blood and with the sucked-out venom rapidly spreading through its blood. The process is repeated, until the venom is totally sucked out. For the most poisonous of snakes found in the area— the cobra—Tau would need nothing less than 200 chickens.
Grotesque by urban standards. But to the average Bodo, grotesque is a concept they can ill-afford. You don't worry about grotesque, if you see your neighbour dying of malaria even before reaching the health centre, because there is none within 200 sq km. You don't think about grotesque, if you see your family being depleted year after year, falling prey, first to killer mosquitoes and then to snakes—not to speak of wild animals, scorpion bites and what not, all through the long months of summer and monsoon, when there is only the jungle to live with, sans smiling tourists and wide-eyed nature lovers bent upon finding the lost paradise or some such vague urban romantic dream in the whole stretch between October and February, when all things that crawl and hop go into hibernation and buzzers are depleted appreciably.
For the rest of the year, you need to survive, and survive the hard way. And the Bodos were never starngers to surviving the hard way.
In fact, living on the edge had become a habit during the Bodo movement (for more on Bodo movement, where else but to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodoland), when the villagers failed to cope up with the heavy hand of the state machinery as it came down and, like the way the state has always dealt with underground secessive movements, punished those at hand when they could not reach those that mattered with the hope that if you hit the toes, the pain will be felt through the body.
In an attempt to live, the average Bodo of the Kokilabari area had turned with a vengeance on the very forest that had nourished them through generations. For almost two decades, almost every family housed a poacher or a logger. And there were eager buyers from Bhutan across the border, or even nearer home, in the state capital—Guwahati.
In an attempt to live, the average Bodo of the Kokilabari area had turned with a vengeance on the very forest that had nourished them through generations. For almost two decades, almost every family housed a poacher or a logger. And there were eager buyers from Bhutan across the border, or even nearer home, in the state capital—Guwahati.
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