O Dappled One Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

Many-speckled sprinter1, O dappled one2,
Here is the land where thou for long hunted,
Here is the home missed by thee and haunted,
O thou the fastest a beast could e’er run.

In this thine native land that gave thee birth,
We feel sorry for centuries of wrong
We wrought, each trophy hunt of vaguest worth;
Six decades3 seem like estrangement too long.

We were heartless hell-bent folks to hunt down
Helpless moms raising pups single-handed4,
Vulnerable to all big cats of brawn,
To baboons, hyenas, meat-eaters red.

Let us now welcome thy Afro cousins5,
Perhaps thy very sibling blood sanguine,
Pray pardon our unpardonable sins,
Come to rule our grasslands and keep them green.

We know we failed our tigers to protect,
Yet, our lions languish not regardless,
We were asleep ere, now ready to act,
We failed thee once, but no more, O temptress.
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Cheetah once ruled Indian grasslands. But by the
middle of the last century they were mercilessly
hunted down. The last one was hunted in 1947. Wiser,
we now want to rehabilitate the fastest cat in our
grasslands. This poem was born during my stay in
Wellington when I noted that every time I come to
Ooty/Coonoor I see the forest cover depleted. I also
noted that even leopards are now rarity in these wilds.
The poem comes with the hope that we would not fail
cheetah again.

1. Many-speckled sprinter: Cheetah is not only the
fastest sprinter among all animals, he accelerates
0-100 km/h in three seconds.
2. The dappled one: Cheetah derives its name from the
Sanskrit ‘chitraka’ which means ‘a dappled one’, or
‘picturesque’.
3. Six decades: Conservationists say that the Maharaja
of Sargujar killed India’s last cheetah in 1947—
nearly sixty years back.
4. Single-handed: Female cheetah are generally loners,
while the male siblings often hunt together for life.
5. Afro cousins: It is believed that Asiatic cheetah
(Acinonyx jubatusvenaticus) is same as the African
cheetah. There is little genetic difference between
the two. Hence, either they are siblings, or at least
first cousins.
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- Nostalgia | 01.10.09 |