Birth anniversaries are the intangible pearls that string together life, death and the infinite space of time thereafter. And July 26 marks one such continuum — the birth of the legendary Jim Corbett, 140 years ago in the hills of Uttarakhand.
Immortalised the world over as much for his heroic exploits of hunting man-eating tigers as for his love of nature, it was in the quaint locales of Nainital that the British conservationist took birth and spent the most important years of his life. Of how close these mountains of Uttarakhand were to Corbett’s heart was laid bare by the words engraved on his gravestone in Nyeri, Kenya- “Jim Corbett, from Nainital”.
It was in 1862 that Corbett’s parents made Nainital their home when Jim’s father, William Christopher Corbett, became the city’s postmaster. Thirteen years later, Jim was born to a large family of siblings and he manifested his love for the picturesque natural settings of his birthplace from an early age. Instinctively and by observation, Corbett came to identify animals and birds by their calls as he developed a knack for tracking and hunting.
Though an avid nature lover and conservationist, Corbett tracked and shot a total of 33 man-eaters between 1907 and 1938, though only about a dozen were actually well- documented. It is claimed that these big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women and children. The first tiger he killed, the Champawat Tiger in Champawat, was responsible for 436 documented deaths.
Though most of his kills were tigers, Corbett successfully killed at least two man-eating leopards. The first was the Panar leopard in 1910, which allegedly killed 400 people. The second was the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag in 1926, which terrorised the pilgrims to the Hindu shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than eight years, claiming responsibility for more than 126 deaths.
Other notable man-eaters he killed were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater, the Thak man-eater, the Muktesar man-eater and the Chowgarh tigress. When Jim was little, each winter, the family shifted to their beautiful colonial cottage called ‘Arundel’ at a verdant place that is popularly known as ‘Corbett’s Village’ and officially named, ‘Kaladhungi’. lying in Himalayan foothills, this place is bestowed with spectacular scenic beauty and the surrounding woods and its wildlife intrigued Jim, and as a rather small child, he would set out to the forests, soaking in the habitat.
Sadly, when he was only four-years-old, he lost his father, and his elder brother took over as the postmaster of the area. Following this, in 1881, Jim’s mother, Mary Jane along with her many children shifted from their abode ‘Alma House’ to the slopes of the Ayarpatta Hill in Nainital and built Gurney House.
Both these edifices still stand strong preserved in their historic charm. While the house at Kaladhungi has been a museum since 1967, Gurney House is today a private property owned by the Varma-Dalmia family who allow Corbett lovers a tour of the house.
Jim Corbett's mother had bequeathed the house to her daughter Maggie, to whom Jim was very attached, and in 1947, when they left for Kenya, Maggie sold the house to Kalavati Sharma, wife of a Cambridge-educated barrister, Sharda Prasad Varma. The house still contains Corbett's possessions, namely his trophies, African Drum, boat, fishing rod, books and furniture. Additionally, there are spots and stories that keep Corbett's legacy alive.
The Jim Corbett legacy Trail initiative documents some of these like the Bandstand. On the Flats at the head of the Tal, where many gathered in the evenings and where the Europeans played polo from time to time, Jim paid for the construction of a bandstand on the water's edge. For this, he gave to the town the princely sum of Rs 7,300. The bandstand remains to this day as a very incongruous-looking structure indeed.
Then there is the Pony Trail on which Corbett had several encounters with tigers that we find written about in his books, Ghatgarh- a small village where he frequently rested under a mango tree while commuting between Nainital and Kaladhungi. That mango tree still stands tall as if priding itself on its legacy. For as said Corbett himself, "The book of nature has no beginning, as it has noend. Open this book where you will, and at any period of your life,and if you have the desire to acquire knowledge you will find it ofintense interest, and no matter how long or how intently you study thepages, your interest will not flag, for in nature there is nofinality."