People and wildlife of Eastern Himalaya_My journey to some remote village_Ghumtigaon

[Samrat Sarkar]

I came to know from Kartabya that a new Division of the forest Department of the newly formed Kalimpong District has been declared. They have a number of branches. Out of those the Forest Development Corporation Limited (FDCL) is an important one. One can see the closed down workshop of the FDCL. This was where the tools and plants of the forest department were assembled and their maintenance works were carried out. Very close to that place was a very old and obsolete road roller laying idle.

The wheels of that road roller have long ago stopped moving. During the Gorkhaland movement in 1986 the workshop was burnt down and and was damaged beyond a condition of repair. Since then it could never come back to its original form and shape. One may wonder why the forest department should own a road roller! That is because the forest department previously constructed their own bituminous roads for the convenience of their patrolling through the forests. Those are all the things of the past now. Not only that, Kartabya claimed that this was the biggest stackyards for the wooden log among all the four Sub-Divisions of the erstwhile Darjeeling District.

A little further there is a large and open water reservoir at the foothills. Water from Murti River is being carried through pipes above the hills and is being stored here. This water caters the requirements for the tea estate of the Mittals’. The still water of the reservoir reflects the images of the tall trees near it. The surface of the crystal clear water looks like a large canvas in which the blue sky and the white clouds are floating merrily and in between some grey and black haphazard patterns made by the outlines of the trees peep in.

Spring is not very far away. The dry leaves have started falling in the water. As the yellow dry leaves were falling one after another suddenly I noticed some black and white stuff to pass with an electrifying alacrity with a very well known “ghank ... ghank” sound. That was a Hornbill! An Oriental pied Hornbill, to be precise. To watch that very bird I came to this place in Kartabya’s village.

Ghumtigaon village is a well known place of the hornbills. All during the day they come flying from the riverside. On the north side of Kartabya’s house is the only primary school of the village. There is a very large banyan tree which is full of banyan fruits and the branches of which have stooped over the roof of that school. That was a veritable open kitchen cum dining space for the Hornbills. All around the village there are many more trees and plants with wild fruits. These birds move from one branch to another in all these trees carelessly without any fear. They are seen in large flocks from the beginning of October. If a bird can find a suitable partner in the beginning of March it is not very often seen in the open. It remains busy constructing its nesting activity. A pair of the bird construct their nest in a tree at the backside of the range office every year.

We made some haste for the arrangements for the dinner at night. We were having conversation with Kartabya and he talked about his large family, about their cardamom and orange cultivation and about their homestay business. Kartabya’s father has now left everything on kartabya’s responsibility so that he can look after all the business on his own.

That way, Kartabya is now doing graduation on the studies of tourism. But the business is undergoing through a lean period since the last year which is a direct outcome of the Gorkhaland movement. Now they have got a new District. Still now the dream of a new state glitters in his eyes. He elaborates the identity of their ethnicity with a hope of a separate state of their own and the future possibility of the development of their community. I then changed the topic and started enquiring about the hornbills.

He assured me that the hornbills come to this place everyday without fail from 8 in the morning to 12 at noon. He seemed to be very confident about that. He stands in the wide verandah and points his finger out in the darkness to the branches of the trees where he claims the birds come to sit there and then in which direction they go away towards the hill.