The legendary Jim Corbett is always remembered in Uttarakhand as a great personality whose life and writings have been fascinating people not just in this hill region but all over the country and the world.
More than a century has passed since this famous hunter turned conservationist was born in the lake city of Nainital. Edward James Corbett, affectionately called Jim by the family, was born in Nainital to Mary Jane Corbett and Christopher William Corbett who was the Post Master at Nainital. The family spent summers in Nainital and winters in Kaladhungi near Chhoti Haldwani. Jim shot his first leopard at the age of eight. From the mid-1920s, he put down the gun and took up the camera and the pen. His undying love for India was honoured when the national park he helped set up at the foot of Kumaon hills was renamed after him in 1957.
Renowned Mussoorie-based author Stephen Alter’s latest work is a novel about Jim Corbett titled “In the Jungles of the Night: A Novel About Jim Corbett”. While Alter’s novel is a work of fiction, many of the characters and situations are based on historical and biographical facts. A few dates and locations have been adjusted.
In this novel, we see Jim first as a young boy of fourteen, growing up in Nainital, confronting demons that haunt the hill station where he was born. In the second part of the book, he hunts the man-eater of Mayaghat, a tigress who preys on labour camps in the foothills of Kumaon where forests are being felled to serve the needs of the Indian Railways .The final section of the novel takes us to Kenya where Corbett settled after 1947 and lived out the final years of his life. The author shows us this complex yet simple man at different stages of his life and witness his hidden fears and desires. His personal relationships with family and friends, companions and strangers, villagers and viceroys were all marked by an eathy compassion that sets him apart from other figures of the British Raj.
As this beautifully written novel unfolds, the readers see with great clarity the vulnerability, courage and integrity of Jim Corbett. In the Jungles of the Night is a warm narrative that takes us close to the day to day life of Corbett. It surprises and delights the readers and has attracted many fans of Jim as well as new readers who have yet to read and experience the books written by Jim Corbett.
The book brings us close to Jim - of a hunter who tracked down marauding tigers and leopards , a naturalist who spoke the language of the jungle, one of the first wildlife photographers, a conservationist who
voiced the earliest warnings about India’s dwindling natural heritage, a legend whose knowledge of the forests was unsurpassed.
Corbett’s books on shikar and jungle lore have inspired generations of wildlife enthusiasts. Much of Corbett’s life remains enigmatic, though two biographies have written about him and he has been the subject of several films.
Through the lens of fiction, Stephen Alter shows us the man behind the legend and explores both the shadows and the sunlight of his jungle world.
Before opening his novel, Alter quotes a stanza from William Blake’s famous poem “Tyger”- “tyger burning bright/In the Forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye,Dare frame thy fearful symmetryIJ” The title has been inspired by this inimitable poem.
The author also quotes from Jim Corbett’s Man-eaters of Kumaon “ Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds of old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to take to a diet of human flesh”.
In a note on Jim Corbett, Alter says “While this book draws upon many of Corbett’s stories and historical facts surrounding his life, it is a work of fiction and does not aspire to any pretence of biographical surety”.
In fact, it is this imaginary dimension that adds greatly to the beauty and wonder of this novel. It weaves fact and fiction in a dexterous fashion that creates a world where we can live along with Jim and face the troubles and adventures he is facing. We begin to love some of the characters and come close to the natural surroundings of Kumaon.