THE TIGER CATCHER-Ziaur Rehman

"वोह किस्से और होंगे जिन्हें सुनकर नींद आती है,

कलेजा थाम लोगे जब सुनोगे दास्ताँ हमारी"

What do say about a man who runs after a man -eater tiger with nothing but a blanket in hand and captures it too? Courage incarnate,a hero or simply crazy?

I have no words to describe him. If you ever visit ASSAM STATE ZOO and walk down to have a look at the splendid looking animal-THE ROYAL BENGAL TIGER, the introductory note outside the cage would inevitably have one line-'Captured by Ziaur Rehman".Soon, the initial admiration for the beast would shift towards the captor and remain stupefied there. How a man can achieve such an impossible task, not once or twice but over and over again?

Rehman was often hailed as the jim Corbett of Assam but the comparison is not correct. Unlike the British hunter and environmentalist, Rehman preferred to capture tigers, rather than kill or maim them. In fact, he never considered an animal a man-eater. It was circumstances that forced a tiger to relish human flesh.

Statistics have it that he caught about 65 man-eaters, both tigers and leopards, with minimum paraphernalia. The last time he caught such an animal was in 2002 with just a blanket.

Of course, in his fifty years career as a hunter he is believed to have gunned down 40 man-eaters. The killing happened under extreme provocation, only when nature left him with no other option.

After all, for somebody who caught his first tiger at the age of 14 by offering himself as a bait to save his village folk and cattle from being devoured by a royal bengal tiger, he was in sync with his surroundings, the nature he grew up in.

Alas, unlike Jim Corbett, he could not wield his pen as mightly as he did with his proverbial 'sword'. Now that the hero is no more with us(he passed away on April 27 at the age of 67), his amazing hunting stories will remain with us like folk tales.