Human beings are real fangless witch. We condemn other beings to death for filling our belly. We have got in place Wild Life Protection Acts, which no way seems deterring our fellows from poaching. Unfortunate lives forgo in the altar of our hunger and greed.
This time of the year is the moment the ‘protruded ribbed’ Himalayan Bears most assailed by the dreadfully poisoned-hidden arrows on the path it reaches the stream for a sip of water that quenches the devouring thirst, that are being stationed by the ruthless poachers. Scores of Bears are silently poached at this time of the year in our part of the Country.
Upon these backdrops, I narrate an episode that garnered heavy emotional torture which took me down the distress and pain. I was deeply pained. It proved fatal sympathizing and empathizing the pain of others when you very much know you’re not abled enough to make other’s pain subside. I bet, sympathy without ability to help is terribly traumatizing and painful.
It was 16th November, 2006; I got call from my sister at home. The message she was putting to me took me down instantly. It was a bombshell that tremored everything irretrievably in me. I was told he was hit by poacher’s hidden-arrow and pierced across his knee-joint. I felt a jerk of writhing pain.
Reader’s possibility of taking my dad for one of the poachers can’t be ruled out. Therefore, to prevent your goodselves being swayed by the presumptions, it is pertinent to clarify the same. No, he is absolutely not. He is white-haired, wrinkled, and feeble figured succumbing to age 72 years old.
He forayed the thick subtropical jungle battering heat and rain, herding herd of cattle only to intrude himself to ‘Sang Da’ [Gakh we call in sharchop], kept waiting for a hapless bear to pull the string to get the arrow kicked off.
Before poison outdid his body, he ran to the stream, battled for life by removing the piercing sharp arrow. The poison, however, unfastened and left inside the wound, for which he had to insert his finger to remove them. Ouch! You could imagine the pain. He then rinsed with the water spilling it through the tunnel of wound.
While he was still in the grip of his consciousness, he could call his co-herders and after two grueling hours, he was somehow dragged to home. It was then 6 PM.
Fact being that my village located at the far-flung countryside hill that is being perched on the shoulder of ‘Yongla Gonpa’, minimum nine hours walk from roadhead Dewathang, medical facilities can’t be accessed very easily. You meet grievous injurious; you only pray and keep the fingers-crossed for good. He was carried to nearest Basic Health Unit, which took around six hours, making horrified journey crossing the torrentially falling rivers and trudging the uphill footpath, guided their feet from being ran into unmindful boulders only by kerosene lamps, breaking the silence of the dark night by an incessant cry of my poor mom and sister, when the world was still sleeping.
I kept calling only to find the cell not reachable for obvious reasons. Even technology fails to reach the labyrinth of deep jungled horrendous gorges. I heaved a relief at 1 AM when I was informed about dad being treated. Next day, he was referred to Dewathang Military Hospital
The very next morning I started my journey to see my dad. I couldn’t believe my dad has grown too fragile and reduced to pale ‘last minute before death’ like appearance. Every attempt on his part to utter something to me brought him pain, and I felt the pain he was experiencing for I could notice him holding his breathe. I found him sobbing silently and indeed, ‘that’ arrow has incapacitated my dad to cry even. I wasn’t better either.
He, somehow, recovered after having confined to bed in hospital ward for one month. However, he was lamed. While endangering the wildlives being one issue, collateral damage sustained therefrom, is another. As expected, culprit went uncaught, guilty lapsed unproved, so on and so forth, but this is the world we live in.
The End
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