25 July,2011 09:09 AM IST | | Hemal Ashar
Recently, I read a report that said a woman was killed by a male lion, which strayed out of a game sanctuary in Kenya (Africa). It took me back some years when I was in Africa on a safari.
The tour guides would tell stories about people (even tourists) being attacked by wild animals because they had broken rules, failed to heed warnings or simply in some very few cases, been unlucky.
Many of these guides relished the wide-eyed wonder at which tourists heard these tales, making all the more compelling against the African landscape, the spine chilling roar of lions and sights of a giraffe's long neck silhouetted against a setting sun, scenes straight out of a National Geographic magazine.
It is natural then that tourists devoured these stories like wild animals do their prey, with a hunger and eagerness that sated their imagination running wild like the wildebeest in an exotic land. Some of these guides had a twinkle in their eyes as they told their tales, which made one doubt these, but then, one could never tell.u00a0u00a0
I remember hearing a story about how a waiter at a hotel in the jungle was killed after a lion strayed out of the game park somehow and entered the hotel one early morning when there was nobody about. The guide said the waiter was putting cutlery on the table when the lion attacked.u00a0
Another story was about a preoccupied tourist, who was listening to his walkman. The tourist decided to go out for an early morning jog. He did not stay within the boundaries of the hotel and instead jogged straight out in the wild and was killed by animals.
Then, there was another more morbidly fascinating one, where a leopard on a tree jumped down at the precise moment when a jeep of tourists were passing underneath and severely injured one or two of them. Now, the guide said, open jeeps are not allowed for safaris.
One heard so many stories like these and many, no doubt were true. They may have been embellished, dwelling in that grey zone between fact and fiction but one liked to think that the fact outweighed the fiction.
Some years have passed since that safari and the stories relegated to the recesses of the mind. Yet, when I read a report like the one I referred to at the beginning of the column, those tales come back, flapping around me like the gigantic ears of an angry, African elephant and rewind to the roar of a lion a sound that could leave your blood cold in a land of staggering beauty.u00a0u00a0u00a0
