Man-Eaters of Kumaon

Every now and then, I like to read something completely different. And it doesn't get much more "different" than Man-Eaters of Kumaon, the personal account of Colonel Jim Corbett about his exploits in tracking the tigers and leopards posing a threat to the citizens of Northern India in the 1920s and 30s. Born and raised in the area, Corbett spent his childhood learning the ways of the jungle, and it was from this background that he came to be seen as the only man to be called on to help the local population, of whom an estimated 1200 were killed by various animals at the time.

I found Man-Eaters of Kumaon, and I am sure that this is as a result of its having been written in 1944, to be a book of bizarre contrasts. Corbett clearly possessed a talent for descriptive writing, and combined with his exceptional knowledge of the area's flora and fauna, creates a wonderfully vivid image of the jungles and valleys in which he stalks the tigers. He was also clearly a great lover of nature and is keen to stress that man should make great efforts to limit his impact upon it. All of which goes out of the window somewhat as he goes around shooting tigers, deer, birds and landing hundreds of fish. While his reasons for it were fair enough - to protect the lives of others, and for food - it did seem something of a contradiction to me. Likewise, in his interactions with the local population, Corbett describes their cultures and customs in a way that only someone who had put in the time and effort to understand and appreciate them could - but is more than happy to be waited on hand and foot whenever he reaches a village, and of course is clear on the point that the locals are incapable of sorting out their own problems with these animals. On balance though, Corbett takes care to describe the reasons that these tigers became dangerous to humans - always some form of injury or illness that rendered them unable to hunt their usual prey - and the fact he shows any respect to local culture at all is admirable given the historical context.

Otherwise, the book was an enjoyable enough read, despite some archaic language use and a liberal sprinkling of (what I assume to be) Pubjabi or Hindi loan words with little explanation. Corbett makes the hunts as much about the build up as the actual kills themselves, leading to some heart-stopping moments as he suddenly finds himself face to face with a man-eating tiger after days of tracking, or almost running out of time to find his quarry after six weeks in the wild and the prospect of letting down the locals weighing over him. He takes care to explain his tracking techniques, based on a staggering knowledge of the network of interactions between animal life in the region, and switches up narrative styles by including first-hand anecdotes by villagers who had survived encounters with the animals and official reports from the time. There are even some moments of (perhaps unintentional) humour, as Corbett drops in incidental details probably deserving of chapters in their own right. "That house was definitely haunted, but this isn't a book of ghost stories", and "at that point we were almost killed by a leopard but I'm talking about a tiger at the moment" were two highlights from this point of view.

Ultimately, Man-Eaters of Kumaon is an interesting throwback to a time when man and nature were still not quite on equal terms, a time when the British Empire was still very much in force in India, and an account from a man whose own story is often more interesting than those he is telling.

4/5

There was a whole range of songs I could have gone with here, but with apologies to Nelly Furtado I had to go with the one that reflected Corbett's prose style best. So many tigers...