2nd

Face to face with a leopard

After early dinner we left Lumding, District Nowgong,Assam by forest road sometime in May,1980 for Half long, headquarters of North Cachar District. Pilku(12) and Silku(10) had accompanied. It was an arduous drive for the driver over zig-zag hilly terrain. We halted at a place on the way at about 10 pm. It was a place where birds came from far off areas and fell in the valley below as if they were pulled by some unseen magnetic force and died. The phenomenon was described by local populace as suicide by them. Children were asleep. I did not wake them up as nothing of the kind happened and no birds were seen falling. After half an hour we continued our journey. Later i checked with forest officers and they confirmed such incidents.... We had hardly traveled for about half an hour when we saw sudden appearance of a fully grown leopard making a jump from hillside of the car over to the gorge side.We directed our search lights to locate the animal. We could not locate it. By now children were fully awake and following the search lights....We arrived at Half long at about midnight. Dinner had been laid out. We had dinner. Children ate little.They were in a hurry to sleep.......It has been a practice with me to travel late after finishing office work, get up early and start the day's work from 8 am after parade so on so forth.... The SP North Cachar Hills took leave. He said he had to get ready for the inspection by 7.30 am. It was already 1 AM. 

Quotable Quotes :"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."Abraham Lincoln