Ayushi Kainthola
One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is deeply associated with the big cat–human conflict in Uttarakhand. As a child who regularly visited her small village in Garhwal, I didn’t have a name for it, but I was keenly interested in the stories of tigers and leopards that often prowled the village at night, while everyone slept. Every year, my parents would take us to our ancestral village, especially during the summer vacation or some traditional function or puja we were not supposed to miss. Located approximately 20 kilometers from Pauri in Uttarakhand, mine isn’t an extraordinary village. It is rather ordinary, nestled between rolling hills. We often complained that it didn’t offer a stunning filmy mountain view and sat at a lower elevation than the surrounding mountains. This location probably made the area prone to frequent visits by the big cats whose stories became an integral part of my life growing up in ways I didn’t fully realize back then.
I quickly came to realize that it wasn’t just me or my childish curiosity, big cats have long held a special place in the collective imagination of the people of Garhwal. The stories of big cats are passed down, generation after generation, like Arsa’s recipe in Garhwal, something you’re just supposed to know. Something you should always get right. There’s one about the dog who fought until his last breath, and another about a cow, injured but somehow bravely managing to make her way home. Then there is always a tale of a woman who spotted a tiger or leopard while working in the fields but ran fast enough to save herself — every tale reflecting a shared desire to outwit the beast. And where real life often didn’t permit such victory, the tales did. Alongside these stories were peculiar theories about the big cats, passed down just as faithfully, especially in my family, though no one seemed to know where and how they originated. My favorite was the one my mother shared with us. She spoke of a silly local belief about man-eaters and how they chose their prey. According to her, if a woman working in the fields happened to injure herself and bleed, she would quickly cover the wound and her blood with mud, because man-eaters were said to have an uncanny ability to smell blood from miles away. Once a tiger or leopard caught the scent and tasted the blood, they would supposedly do some kind of “big cat math,” figuring out exactly who had been bleeding. From that moment on, the theory went, the animal would relentlessly hunt its target, marking them as the next victim. Looking back, I realize she was probably messing with me, but in my heart, I know better. I know she believed in it. As someone who grew up and married in Garhwal, my mother’s life was shaped by the rhythms of the hills, by the time spent in the forests, and by a constant awareness of the big cats. Unlike me, a child who only visited these hills and carried their stories away as memories, she lived them. And she passed them down to me.
Every night with my cousins would turn into a lively contest to see who could best mimic the roar of a tiger, or who had the most thrilling, spine-chilling story to tell. Ghosts and ghouls did not haunt our imaginations as much as the very real presence of big cats. One evening, one of my cousins told us about a girl named Suma from a neighboring village. Suma, a simple village girl, had stormed off into the forest on a foggy day to collect firewood after an argument with her parents, ignoring their warnings about a man-eater in the forest. She never returned. It was like a local Conjuring for us. Suma’s story wasn’t just a whispered legend passed around the villages; it was immortalized in the song, “Suma Danda Na Jaa” (“Don’t Go to the Forest, Suma”), by Narendra Singh Negi, Garhwal’s most beloved folk singer. This song was our obsession for quite some time, and we would watch the video on repeat on our VCD player. The man-eater pouncing on the girl in the music video brought the legends to life for us — a scary realization that these weren’t mythical creatures but living, breathing predators in our backyard.
And this realization brought with it a very real dilemma: whether to brave the night and go to the washroom or hold it until morning. “To pee or not to pee?” In the hill villages, the washrooms were not conveniently attached to the house. They still aren’t. They are a little distance away, shrouded in darkness and flanked by bushes. Every trip felt like an adventure, or more honestly, a test of courage. Each shadow seemed to hold the predator’s glinting eyes, and every rustle was a reminder of the stories we had been told. Sometimes, we’d go in pairs, clutching a torch tightly and whispering nervously. Other times, we’d convince ourselves we didn’t need to go, no matter how uncomfortable it got. On the nights it got unbearable, we knew exactly who to go to — our Daadi. She always slept with a torch beneath her pillow. She was always ready, despite her age and exhaustion. For her, this wasn’t a performance of bravery but simply life as she’d known it in Garhwal — one where fear coexisted with survival. Big cats were probably the least of her worries, given the countless challenges she would regularly face as a hill woman. To us, though, she seemed invincible, a figure untouched by the tales that kept us on our toes. She would laugh at our anxieties and tell us that the baagh (tiger) wouldn’t dare cross her path. It was a bit comical coming from someone like her, short and stout. But we believed her. We held onto her confidence the way she held onto her torch. She slept with it beneath her pillow until the day she died. Sometimes, I wonder if the big cats actually feared her. I know better now.
Thankfully, I’ve never had the chance to see a Garhwal tiger or leopard in the wild, but over the years, I’ve read plenty about them through books, news articles, and old stories passed down over time. Sometimes, I find myself thinking about the Champawat tiger or the Rudraprayag leopard, both shot by Jim Corbett. I wonder about the lives they took, the fear they instilled, and the way their stories were told and retold by generations. I wonder about the Sumas who never returned, the cows that managed to stumble back home, and the brave dogs that fought till their last breath. These stories, etched into our collective memory, created an image of the big cats as bloodthirsty predators. They became the stuff of folklore, woven into the fabric of our lives in Garhwal. But as I reflect on them now, there is another feeling that lingers, stronger than the fear I felt as a kid, a kind of sorrow and guilt, that I cannot quite shake off, mostly for them. And so, I think of Avni, the tigress from Maharashtra; of Ustaad, the tiger from Ranthambore; of Vijay, the white tiger from Delhi — of stories far beyond Garhwal and Kumaon.
I have cats now, and it’s funny to think that scientifically, house cats and tigers share almost 95% of the same DNA. In a way, I’m only 5% away from having a tiger living in my house. That thought sticks with me, especially when I find myself facing the same dilemma I’ve had since childhood in my village: to pee or not to pee in the dead of night. Because I know, no matter how quiet it is, I’ve got my own little tiger trailing behind me to the bathroom, its eyes following me like I’m the prey. The wild instincts might have been tamed, but they’re still there, lurking beneath the surface. With my mini tigers meowing right in my face at 5 am for food, I find myself hoping I pass down stories responsibly, especially now, when the world feels more connected yet so much more distant from the wild. I want the tales I tell to be rooted in understanding, not fear, and to remind those who hear them that we share the world with these creatures, not as enemies, but as neighbors.
Today, a single Google search about my village in Garhwal reminds me that I visited it two years ago. Recently, I skipped my visit due to some other priority. However, the big cats of Garhwal often find their way to me through the family WhatsApp groups or my parents who hear the latest happenings through my Chachi, who still lives there and sleeps with a torch beneath her pillow.
Ayushi Kainthola is a research scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, exploring questions of culture and identity in the Central Himalayas. Yet, what perhaps defines her best is that she is all things feline.
Insta: ayushikainthola
Featured photo: “Bengal Tiger walking on the dry river bed at Jim Corbett National Park” by Soumyajit Nandy (Wikimedia Commons)
