CHILDREN OF THE ENCHANTED JUNGLE Timeri N. Murari’s career spans journalism, novels, non-fiction, as well as screenplays and stage plays. His film, The Square Circle, made Time magazine’s top ten best films. He later adapted it for the stage and directed it at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre. His novels include the international best seller Taj: A Story of Mughal India. His new work of fiction, The Small House, was published in 2007. In 2008, Penguin published his non-fiction work, Limping to the Centre of the World, A Journey to Mount Kailas. Visit the author at: http://www.timerimurari.com

Children of the Enchanted Jungle

Tim Murari

SCHOLASTIC New York Toronto London Auckland Sydney New Delhi Hong Kong

For Anhil.

Copyright © 2008, 2019 Timeri N. Murari All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic India Pvt. Ltd. A subsidiary of Scholastic Inc., New York, 10012 (USA). Publishers since 1920, with international operations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, India, and Hong Kong. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to: Scholastic India Pvt. Ltd. A-27, Ground Floor, Bharti Sigma Centre Infocity-1, Sector 34, Gurgaon-122001 (India) This edition: June 2019 ISBN-13: 978-93-5275-792-3

Contents The Big People A Child Meets Perythala The Jungle Village Coolclear Helps Perythala The Cage The Glade Meeting the Chief Secrets Revealed Finding Coolclear The Accident Meeting Saahoom Varang’s Baby Making Plans Perythala and Friends The Baby Barred Awful Creatures Starting the Battle The Gathering A Spy Watches The War Plans Trapped up a Tree

1 7 11 13 20 25 32 36 42 45 57 65 68 70 74 77 83 88 93 96 104

Crossing the River Caught in the Act The Chase No Escaping Varang Aiming to Kill The Dive Angry Animals Returning the Baby Setting a Trap A Child Captured Prying Out Secrets Latrommi Explains Talking to Father The Battle Plan The Secret Revealed A Second Battle Plan The Attack Mopping Up Tempting Riches Feeling the Pain Off in Search Finding Latrommi The Confrontation Into the Sun The Vanishing Act

109 113 118 121 126 130 134 138 140 144 150 153 157 163 168 172 179 186 192 199 204 207 213 221 226

Do not cut down the forest with its tigers, and do not banish the tigers from the forest. The tiger perishes without the forest, and the forest perishes without its tigers. Therefore the tiger should stand guard over the forest and the forest should protect all its tigers.

The Mahabharata

The Big People Standing on the southern bank of the wide river that separated them from the jungle, were three people. It was dusk, but even the fading light couldn’t hide the greed in their eyes as they stared at the dense tangle of trees so temptingly near. They didn’t notice the beauty of the setting sun brushing the tops of the trees a pale golden red or the flocks of crows, parrots, mynahs and koels flying across, calling loudly as they returned to their nests deep in the jungle. In the minds of two of the three persons, the jungle was already razed and they were calculating their wealth from such destruction. They would become multimillionaires from selling the timber and exploiting the cleared land. But for the third person, who stood slightly apart from the other two, and had no interest in money, the jungle held a secret that she had searched for many years. Varang was taller than her companions, slim and shapely, and wore a fine black silk outfit and black, knee-high boots. She had an oval face which could have been beautiful, but it was marred by a triangular beak of a nose which she caressed as if to reassure herself it hadn’t moved. She had once

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considered having the shape changed by plastic surgery into something more suitable—a gentle curve with a bob at the end—but it was a genetic inheritance and she was ultimately reluctant to change the feature that made her so mesmeric to strangers. People could never take their eyes off her cruel nose. Her eyes were as black as the clothes she wore. They were like dead zones in her face and because of that it was hard to read Varang’s moods. On her left wrist was a bright gold Rolex watch, man-sized, which she looked at frequently, and on the fingers of both hands she wore rings with precious stones inset in them. Every now and then her fingers flexed out like talons, clawed the empty air and returned to the folds of her garment. She paced a few feet away from her two companions and stared out across the silvery river. Bhask noticed her impatience and felt uneasy. He was a round, short man with a bald head and a fringe of greying hair surrounding the bald. He wore a white shirt of the finest material, white pyjamas, and he rattled with gold—chains, bracelets, rings—whenever he moved. Every now and then he ran his small tongue over his lips, already salivating over the money he would make from this venture. All he ever thought of was how to make as much money as he could with as little effort as possible. Beside him was his son, Rhask, a boy of around seventeen, who, like his father, was also fat and small; but he had a head of thick, black curly hair. He also had the face of a spoilt child—petulant lips and sullen eyes hidden by dark glasses. ‘How many children live in the jungle?’ Varang asked no one in particular, but expected a reply. Her voice sounded frail at first, but then one realised that

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there was a steely resolve behind each word. She was much older than she looked too; there was an ancient timbre in her voice, as if she came from another era, another place. ‘What’re you talking about?’ Bhask said. ‘I didn’t know children lived in the jungle. If they are living there, I’m surprised the animals haven’t eaten them up. Not that they’d make much of a meal for anyone.’ He laughed out aloud at his own wit. ‘Does it worry you that there are children in there?’ Bhask laughed. ‘Why should it? They’ll be driven out when we begin cutting down all the trees.’ Standing apart from them, Shyam overheard the exchange. He was a gaunt man with sad eyes, dressed in threadbare clothes—a patched shirt and a grubby pair of pyjamas. He was barefoot. He had been summoned to stand behind them at the water’s edge and he waited nervously. Two small boys, thin and scruffy, with large anxious eyes, came towards the gathering. They could not have been more than six or seven years old and each carried a wooden tray with cups of tea and plates of biscuits. They could barely keep their trays steady as they passed each person, who took a cup without even looking at the boys. As the weight shifted on the tray, one of the boys, unable to adjust the balance in time, dropped two cups of tea. Rhask took a step towards the boy and, without saying a word, but with a smile, slapped him across the face so hard that the boy fell. Bhask smiled in approval at his son’s action and Varang ignored it. The boy’s companion stood trembling as the last cup was removed from his tray and it was only then that he helped up the other boy, who was

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crying. They remained standing behind the group, waited till they retrieved the empty cups and returned to their chores in the tent kitchen further up the slope. ‘I asked a question,’ Varang snapped. ‘We don’t know,’ someone spoke out behind them. ‘Come here,’ Varang ordered. Shyam stepped forward timidly. He’d not meant to open his mouth. He had a few days’ stubble, which had turned his face a ghostly white, and his toes curled in the dirt with nervousness. Varang frightened him. ‘You’re from this part of the country?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So, can’t you people count? Ten, twenty … more?’ ‘We’ve never seen the children. They are there but when we look for them, we can’t find them. We believe they’re ghosts.’ ‘They’re not ghosts.’ Shyam knew they weren’t ghosts. The children were there in the jungle. As were two of his babies. His wife had given birth to twins, both boys, but they had been born blind. How could they afford to raise two blind boys? They would be a burden all through their lives. They wouldn’t be able to go to school or work in the fields. They would only sit at home and that was two extra mouths to feed. And yet, they were beautiful babies. Shyam knew about the children of the jungle. They would care for the babies and maybe in the jungle being blind didn’t matter. At least in the jungle they might live awhile, he and his wife had reasoned, and they would be cared for. So one night, he and his wife had carried the two babies, swum across the river and left them in the reeds. They had kissed their babies goodbye, and crying softly, had swum back to the

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other side. This had happened over ten years ago and he imagined that the babies would have grown up by now into young boys. Of course, they would not know he was their father—babies didn’t have that memory. Even if they did have that memory, how would they recognise him? They were blind. ‘And no one has seen them?’ ‘No one. Sometimes, we can hear them calling to each other, walking on the dry leaves, we can see a branch bending under a child’s weight. We have heard singing too and while the singing is heard, nothing within hearing distance in the jungle can move. Every animal, serpent, bird and insect is so enchanted that they stop whatever they’re doing. Only when the singing stops can they move again.’ ‘That’s all nonsense, superstitious nonsense you village people believe in. Do you know where they live then?’ ‘In the jungle,’ Shyam said, thinking it was a stupid question since Varang knew the children were in the jungle. ‘No, no, no … I know that, you idiot,’ she said angrily. ‘They must be living in a certain place, a hiding place. A cave maybe? A secret ravine? They must be living near … something.’ ‘We don’t know where they live.’ ‘We will, very soon,’ she said and turned to Bhask. ‘When do you start cutting down the jungle?’ He checked behind him. Where the ground sloped upwards and flattened out were around a hundred men milling around fourteen large yellow machines. These were bulldozers with huge, shiny blades which could flatten anything in their path. Some of the men were unloading

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chainsaws from the back of a truck. They made a great noise, talking and testing the chainsaws. ‘Soon, Madam, very soon.’ ‘Your work will not be as easy as you think. This jungle is unlike any other that you’ve destroyed.’ ‘Why not?’ Bhask laughed ‘The land has no voice, it’s helpless. We can do with it what we want. There are only animals, snakes and birds in it, like in any other jungle, and of course, now the children. What can they do but die?’ She hesitated, not certain herself. ‘The children could fight you.’ ‘Children fight me?’ He laughed so hard that he began to cry. He stopped and snapped his fingers at a man standing further up the slope. The man ran to join them, carrying his AK-47 machine gun. Bhask took it, snapped off the safety catch, aimed at the distant jungle, and fired a long burst of bullets, shattering the silence. Birds cried out and flew up into the sky, and this made Bhask laugh even louder. ‘That’s what will happen to them if the children even think of fighting me,’ he boasted, and threw the weapon back to his bodyguard. As the woman made him nervous, he hesitated for a moment before plunging on. ‘But why do you want the jungle destroyed, Madam?’ ‘I told you once already, for the money, of course,’ she lied easily. He would never know that a source of unlimited power over the world, and even up to the stars, was somewhere in the jungle, near the children.

A Child Meets Perythala The ferocious tiger, Perythala, arrogant as a prince, heard the ruckus of birds calling out their warnings that he was lying in the shadows of a peepul tree, and rose. He was waiting for a child of the jungle. He growled his impatience, ‘Hurry up, child,’ he said to himself, as he prowled back and forth. He spoke in a low, slow, deep rumble, almost from the back of his throat, which was barely audible. It was a fine morning, cool and grey. Night still lingered on, not wanting to leave, with fresh dew clinging like tears on the flower petals and sliding down blades of long grass. It had been a good monsoon, after a long sweltering summer which had withered the trees and grass and dried out the ponds, and now the jungle was a bright, exuberant green. Bougainvillae and frangipani had burst into colours like fireworks, wild jasmine and tangerines scented the air, butterflies with wings patterned like cathedral windows and medieval crests fluttered in thousands. But in his worry, Perythala didn’t notice these small wonders around him.

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The coal-black crows croaked harshly: ‘He’s waiting under the tree.’ The brown mynahs sang out in more melodious voices: ‘Be careful.’ The black koels, with long tails, always so proud, sang out in rising scales: ‘Tiger … tiger … tiger.’ High above, Keee, the speckled brown kite hawk, also keened, but not about Perythala. He called down to the jungle ‘Trouble … trouble … across the river … be warned.’ As he circled from his great height he saw everything below with his sharp eyes. Ambornath, which meant ‘where all life exists’ in the local language, was a large jungle of many, many square miles, dense with trees, but with extensive patches of grassland that looked, from above, like bald spots on a man’s head. Lakes too, like scattered silver coins, broke the tight pattern of trees. It even had a biome, a dense hothouse with rare plants and herbs, near the eastern edge of the river. The broad river bordered the jungle in the shape of a giant silvery ‘C’ and, where the open points of the ‘C’ didn’t close on the north, there was a low mountain with sheer sides blocking any entrance to the jungle from that side. Crowning the mountain was the high, granite wall of an ancient fortress, which curled all around, though here and there it had fallen down leaving gaps. Inside the fort was the ruin of a long forgotten kingdom. So, in some ways, the jungle was almost an island and the only way to enter it was to cross the river. The dazzlingly coloured peacocks, safe on a low branch called like night-watchmen: ‘Myuurr … myuurr, trouble,

A mysterious power lies deep in the heart of a dense jungle. It protects the children of the forest who lead an enchanted life, coexisting with the wild animals and birds. One day, a ruthless woman decides to capture this mysterious power and she will spare nothing that crosses her path. Will the children be able to save the jungle? Find out in this gripping tale of adventure and mystery by internationally acclaimed author, Tim Murari.

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Cover design | Rohan Dahotre