Folktale: A hunter’s daughter falls sick from a curse once he begins poaching in the forests

In the foothills of the Himalaya Mountain village, there lived a hunter known for his precision and sharpshooting skills. Ganda wasn’t always the silent, brooding figure people came to respect. In fact, there was a time when the only thing louder than his rifle was his laugh echoing across the bamboo groves. Villagers joked that even the trees blushed when Ganda walked past with his proud gait, rifle slung over his shoulder like a movie hero from an old Bodo film. His moustache was legendary, so sharp-looking that local kids claimed he trimmed it using the reflection on a pond and the wind alone.

He had a stare that could quiet a gossiping tea-shop crowd faster than a police siren. It was said that once, a mischievous goat kept nibbling vegetables from his garden. Ganda walked out, gave it one look and the goat stopped, turned around, and walked itself to the neighbour’s yard. That was Ganda – a man who didn’t raise his voice, because he didn’t need to.

If you asked him directions in the forest, he wouldn’t waste breath. He’d grunt and point with his chin, as if saying, “Figure it out, rookie.” But if the topic turned to food, especially napham or the perfect way to roast pork over fire, or football, particularly when Mohun Bagan played, he’d become a poet. His daughters often teased him: “Baba says more words to the fish he catches than to his own family!”

He lived in a sturdy bamboo house at the fringe of the forest in lower Assam, where the wild breathed close. Some nights, elephants passed so near the house that the walls shook like drums at a village wedding. Ganda claimed he could tell the difference between each tusker just by the rhythm of their footsteps. “That limpy one with the crooked ear? He likes jackfruit too much,” he’d say, squinting through the dark with a calmness that only seasoned forest men carried.

His wife, Jonaki, was a small woman with a booming voice, and villagers were more afraid of her ladle than Ganda’s rifle. “You shoot animals. I shoot sense into your head,” she once declared, whacking him lightly after he forgot to buy mustard oil. Despite their playful quarrels, the two moved like a team, she in charge of the kitchen and he in charge of everything that crawled, flew, or prowled outside it.

Their daughter thought of their father as half-man, half-mountain, a giant who could trap porcupines with just a glance and make tigers think twice before crossing paths. They also knew his secrets: like how he talked to plants when no one was watching, or how he always left a bit of rice outside for the ants because “they too have families.”

Ganda wasn’t just a hunter; he was a skilled hunter. People claimed he once shot a snake mid-air as it leapt between two trees. Another time, when a wild boar charged at a wedding feast (having mistaken the buffet for a divine offering), it was Ganda who leapt over a fence, slapped the pig on its snout with a sandal, and sent it squealing back into the forest. To this day, old men reenact that slap with dramatic flair after a few pegs of zumai.

Even the forest itself seemed to know him. Birds didn’t fly away when he walked by. Langurs, usually the pranksters of the canopy, grew unusually respectful in his presence as if whispering, “That’s the guy who hit a cobra’s eye from 40 feet.”

Yet beneath all the bravado and bushcraft was a man caught in a changing world. The whispers of the forest were slowly being drowned by gunfire, politics, and greed. The old balance between man and wild was slipping. Traditions were giving way to temptation. And Ganda – hunter, hero, husband – was beginning to feel it too.

But legends don’t vanish. They adapt. And Ganda’s story was only just beginning.

The early 1990s were strange times. Assam’s forests, once quiet havens of nature, began whispering louder stories. With the economy failing and conflict rising, the lush, leafy Manas National Park became less a sanctuary and more a shadowy refuge for armed groups and illegal traders.

That’s when they found Ganda.

They didn’t need a philosopher; they needed a guide who knew the forest better than his own dreams. At first, Ganda thought he was being clever. “Just point the way. No blood on my hands.” But money is sly; it doesn’t come in floods, it comes in drips that wash away old values.

Soon, Ganda was doing more than guiding. He and his old hunting gang began poaching. Not recklessly, no. Even then, they followed a quiet rulebook – no elephants, no rhinos, and definitely no peacocks (his wife had drawn the line there).

But one day, standing beneath a tree so primal that it seemed to hum, Ganda saw the great hornbill.

It wasn’t just a bird. It was a storybook come alive, beak curved like a king’s crown, feathers glossy like polished dreams. It sat near a hollow tree, proud and patient.

Ganda hesitated. The hornbill blinked.

Then crack.

It dropped like a memory ending too soon. No one had told Ganda that the great hornbill mates for life. That once the female enters the hollow of a tree, she seals herself inside with mud, droppings, and fruit pulp, leaving only a narrow slit through which the male, her partner, must pass food. That for months, the entire survival of the mother and chicks depends on the devotion of the father.

By shooting the male, Ganda hadn’t just taken a life. He had sentenced a family to starvation. A slow, silent kind. A kind the forest never forgets.

Maybe someone had told him, in whispers over fire or in the old hunting chants. Maybe it was written in the eyes of the elders when they warned against touching hornbills. Maybe Ganda had forgotten. Or worse, maybe he’d chosen not to remember.

Three weeks later, his daughter fell ill.

It started subtly. Just a quietness in her laughter, a sluggishness in her steps. Then came the fever. It burned through the night like a second sun rising behind her eyes. Her skin glistened with sweat even in the cold. She began murmuring in her sleep, speaking in tones Ganda didn’t recognise. Not Assamese. Not Bodo. Not human.

She would wake up with tears she couldn’t explain.

Then the land turned against him.

The chillies he’d planted with care were gone overnight, chewed down to ghostly stalks. Rats moved through his paddy like drunken dancers, ruining more than they ate. The bamboo shoots in his back grove curled inwards, blackened at their tips, as if scorched by shame.

Even the birds avoided his yard.

His wife, Jonaki, once the life of the house who hummed lullabies while cooking and scolded crows like children, grew silent. Her hair, always tied neatly, now hung loose and dull. She spent hours sitting on the wooden porch, combing through strands like each stroke might untangle their fate. But it never did.

They tried everything.

Local herbs crushed into bitter teas. Traditional chants from the elders. A priest brought from a town three rivers away. He came with a sack full of sacred ash, incense, and the unmistakable stench of burnt camphor and overconfidence. He rang bells, muttered mantras, and declared the house cursed by “unseen forces”.

But the fever stayed.

The air grew heavier. The nights darker. Even the wind seemed reluctant to pass their doorstep.

And so, one sleepless night, Ganda rose without knowing why. Guilt moved his feet. Regret lit his path.

He didn’t carry a torch.

The forest was still, but not silent. Leaves rustled without wind. Somewhere far off, a nightjar called once and then, nothing. The usual paths he had walked for decades now seemed unfamiliar, twisted by some unseen hand. The trees leaned a little too close. The roots tangled like traps beneath his steps.

But Ganda walked on, pulled by something deeper than fear.

Finally, he reached it.

The hollow tree.

It looked taller than before. Greyer. As though the grief of the hornbill had aged it in weeks. The hollow yawned like a wound carved into its trunk – deep, still, and watching.

He wasn’t alone.

Excerpted with permission from ‘The Cry from the Hollow Tree’ in The Memory of Shadows and Other Folktales from the Northeast, Mijing Gwra Basumatary, Rupa Publications.