Five hours by train from Delhi to Kathgodam and three hours by taxi up the winding road to Mukteshwar and we — Bins, Rocky and I — arrive at the mountaintop home of a dear friend.
“Ooo-aarrrhh,” groans Rocky as he crawls out of the car, a small furry ball of misery. Raccoons are not used to Indian hill roads. After the first couple of twists and turns, he curls himself into my backpack and won’t come out even to eat a cookie. “That was really awf...” he stops mid-word as he sniffs the air, fragrant with the scent of eucalyptus and pine. His black eyes sparkle and his whiskers quiver with intense excitement. From all directions, there are thrilling sounds and scents and visions. As a city-dwelling creature, he’s never encountered such abundance before.
Without a backward glance, he bolts down the hillside. “Watch out for the leopard!” Bins calls out to him. But Rocky’s grey, low-slung form vanishes from sight like smoke on a windy day. On either side, the terraced slopes are thick with fruit trees, tall grass and flowering plants. The garden is awash with colour: tiger lilies, giant chrysanthemums, begonias so red that our eyes hurt to look at them. The barbets are calling, doves are cooing. “D’you think he’ll be okay?” I ask nervously. “He’s not really wild, after all. He’s never been to an actual forest, never mind a tropical jungle.” Bins shrugs and tugs on his moustache. “Maybe,” is all he’s willing to say.
We’re staying with our friend for a week. “Our resident leopard won’t know what to make of a raccoon!” she says, as we sit at her outdoor stone-topped table drinking tea. The hillside drops away a few yards from where we sit, affording us a glorious view of tree-covered ridges rippling towards the far horizon. Clouds obscure the snow-capped peaks of Nanda Devi and her friends. “He has his instincts,” says Bins, reaching for a cookie. “But there are no leopards in North America,” I say. “He has no race-memory to help him ...”
“Did someone say COOKIE?” Rocky springs out from the bushes just behind us and leaps up onto a chair. After we introduce him to our hostess, he asks, with a cookie in either paw, “What’s a leopard?” “A big spotted cat that eats stray dogs,” I tell him. “I’m NOT a dog!” says Rocky, indignantly, “and I’m not in the least afraid of cats. These cookies are amazing, by the way. And there are ‘way too many birds. Crazy noisy! When is dinner? I need to go exploring again.”
He scampers off once more. At night, I find a shiny black scorpion in the bathroom sink. I fret about snakes, jackals, pine martens. But at nine o’clock sharp, Rocky returns, ready for soup. “Yum,” he says. “By the way, why’s the carpenter out there right now?” “What carpenter?” I ask. “With bright green eyes,” says Rocky. “Sawing away.”
Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column