In the Jungles

On reading Kenneth Anderson

Imagine yourself a big game hunter on a machan,
waiting over the kill of a man-eating tiger
– the scourge of areas bordering a jungle –
unmoved but looking up at stars as if puffed rice
against the dark. You are not hard of hearing
nor poor of sight but profusely perspiring over
your reflexes not as lightning-fast as a hooded snake.
Don’t forget all of what you are depends on defeating 
a man-eater’s cunningness with yours. Imagine

mud glued to your shoe heels in the scorching sun
and damp trousers sticking like your second skin
after a slip on the sludge. At the cow-dust
hour, you see grazing cattle return home from the lush
vegetation on the jungle’s fringe. The villagers’
lifeline is crops and cattle that put a heavy toll
on wild herbivores. Conflicts with carnivores
go out of control; then arrive the hunters –
now a politically incorrect species for environuts.   

Imagine it’s your first jungle night, a very scary
fog-painted night at that. You might have
more than accepted jungle bushes to be alert for –
under which man-eaters crouch and from which
they unnervingly spring. Returning through bushes,
across nullahs and over boulders wouldn’t be easy.
So by a lake, build a fire to stay secure.
After that, enjoy fireflies with birds and bees
as the background music amid ever-increasing fears.