Page 4 - E-magazine_October-2021

For few years, I lived in my ancestral house in the small and

scenic town of Ranikhet, where my father was a school teacher
in a primary school. That house was my little heaven where I

found my joys and peace. Its aging walls reflected the past of my

forefathers whose legacy we dearly cherished very much and

prided ourselves on as a family.

On the wall of our drawing room, in the midst of several arte-

facts, which included old portraits of my ancestors and stuffed

skulls of various animals such as tiger, deer, wolf and jackal, all
insignias of their illustrious acts of valor, what always captivated

my attention was a bow and an arrow hung beside my grandfa-

ther’s portrait showing him standing be-
side a bleeding hunted tiger while proudly

stamping on its head. Whenever I enquired

about it, my father began boasting of that
glorious legacy of our clan’s bravery over

several generations, when my forefathers

hunted down wild animals in the moun-
tains of Garhwal and stuffed and displayed

their heads as trophies. They also relished

the meat of some of the animals they

chased and felled.

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