Taking a dip under the gaze of a buffalo and elephant!
Sri Lanka is blessed with many National Parks where a great variety of wild animals may be observed sometimes at close quarters, but usually in complete safety.
The most popular of these parks is the Yala National Park in the south-east of the island. Away from the usual tourist haunts within this park are beautiful bungalows, many along the major river(Menik, river of gems) that flows through the park. I have spent many happy days over a lifetime in these splendid wilderness areas, but a recent visit nearly ended in calamity
We had arrived in the bungalow, which is one of the remoter bungalows on the river, at about 2 p.m. It was terribly hot and we had been driving since 5 a.m., so I felt the need to have a swim. Now this I have done, and in this river, all my life, and I know all the rules. The river was quite dry, with two single rivulets meandering along the bed, with a few deeper pools which promised beautiful, cool, clear water. A quick glance upstream and downstream, all clear; I took off my clothes, and immersed myself in my chosen spot against the far bank, and let the healing waters of the Menik work their magic while I performed my rituals and libations.
I had not been there a couple of minutes, when I observed between immersions, a very big bull elephant, now walking towards me on the river bed downstream from where I was. Also it was clear that the elephant had seen me though he was 80 metres or so away. I did not know this elephant, and it would have been silly to risk a confrontation. I was not at all worried, but it was time to go and I stood up still knee deep in water.
I smelled him before I saw him, and as I turned to check upstream found myself face to face with a huge buffalo. He must have come down to the river from the bank behind me, and clearly was as surprised as I was. Now, of all the animals in the jungle the buffalo is the most dangerous. They are fast, excitable and unpredictable. But they also have a homicidal streak, and will try to follow, track and intercept people who cross their path. This buffalo ticked all the boxes; he was massive, heavily maned and solitary. His muzzle was at the level of my chest almost within touching distance. He lowered his head, and rapidly adjusted and tensed his haunches, giving me a good view of a fearsome pair of shiny horns.
It is amazing what goes through your head at times like this. So, this is how it ends, I thought. What a stupid way to end quite an interesting life. I also thought “checkmate”; there was no getting out of this one. I also remember being most sad as I was wearing nothing but a Rolex, and this may have resulted in an unkind obituary.
The seconds ticked by, and the buffalo looked at me out of one cocked eye, the white of which was painfully visible. I stood stock still, not as strategy but because I could not do anything else. The seconds ticked by. He suddenly stepped back, brought up his head with a fierce shake covering me with spittle and sand, swung around and trotted away and up the bank and out of sight.
I had time sufficient to gird my loins with the towel, and as Nelson was supposed to have memorably said, turned to face “the lesser of the two weevils”. The elephant had halved the distance, and my calculus suggested that if I simply walked across the bed of the river we would have arrived at the same spot at about the same time at the bottom of the bank, an unsuitable arrangement. To turn my back was to invite a pursuit, elephants being fairly predictable. So, trusting that he was a “good” elephant, I simply walked towards him along the hypotenuse, while getting closer to the bank myself. He immediately stopped, a little uncertain, and pretended to sniff the air with trunk outstretched, and ears wide. I continued toward him quite deliberately, and he took a couple of backward steps. If I was a genuine elephant man, I may have asked him to push off at this point, and he would probably have done so.He continued to retreat, though more slowly, and I had by now got very close to him. I sensed there would be a problem when I changed direction away from him, and I was beginning to wonder what I should do.
God is just, but also merciful, and I heard the excited chatter of my friends coming down to bathe accompanied by the tracker. They had just watched a large buffalo crash through the undergrowth and they reached the top of the bank just as I was approaching the bottom, with an exasperated elephant a few metres stage left.As I turned away, the elephant, advanced with a roar, but Chandana the tracker quickly silenced him with a few choice words, and he swung around and went up the bank and out of sight. A good elephant indeed!
I reached the bungalow, unzipped the icebox and took out a cold one. The click and hiss of release was a comfort while I pondered the lessons of the previous few minutes. The first was that hubris can be so easily the prelude to nemesis. That existence is not the default option. That threads of circumstance may weave and unweave in complex ways, and the centrality of self is an irrelevance in our journey through the cosmos.
The beer went down quickly, and I felt ever so much better.