A Wonder Tale: Jungle Woman of Kashmir

Late in the night, Zooni, raked the cinders in the big hearth. The children were asleep already.

"Look, Ramzana, " she said to her husband, who was darning his dirty chemise with a big needle, "your tomorrow's meal is ready. You will take it with you to the patch of maize field over the mountain which the cursed Patwari, the son of a prostitute, thrust upon us.-

'Yes, that is so," Ramzan replied rather mechanically. "This rusted needle doesn't work. Plague upon it!"

Outside, the night wind of the uplands made the usual noises through the tall firs, spreading pines and the hunchback mulberries. An owl hooted somewhere near. Disregarding what Ramzana had said, Zooni broke in, "Listen to the owl! May thunderbolt fall upon the silly bird. Something bad will happen. But, hark ! What is that? A strange shriek! Has the 'Jungle Woman' come again?"

"The bear will eat this witch of a 'Jungle Woman' who is haunting you every time," impatiently replied Ramzana. "Do your own work".

Zooni was silent for awhile. She again heard strange cries but she dared not comment on them for fear of Ramzana, who was absorbed in his work. Ramzana finished the mending, and then fumbled about in the hay, which covered the dusty mud-plastered floor, saying, "My sickle! My sickle!" Irritated with the fruitless search, he shouted, "Zooni! I've lost my sickle; my faithful sickle. It must be lying in the maize holding. I must fetch it just now. What else can we do?"

"No, no, Ramzana;" Zooni pleaded. "You will get your sickle in the morning. It won't be lost."

"Don't you know the devil that Qadir is," Ramzana said, correcting her. "He goes to the field earlier than we see the morning star. He is a cat, I tell you. He will find the sickle and take it away. Wherefrom shall we get another sickle? The City is one hundred miles away. Floods have cut us off for at least a fortnight till the corrupt, fat Tehsildar will have the bridge repaired over the Bloody Nulla. No, no, Zooni, you sleep, I must go and fetch the dear sickle".

With this he was gone. Zooni ran down to hand him an axe for his protection but he would have none of it. "I shall take a lathi to scare away jackals and dogs;" he said.

Zooni, left alone, went up to her hay bed. It would be long before her Ramzana would return. He had to cross three upland fields and one mountain brook. Oh !Allah ! keep him safe, she prayed, as she again heard the strange, horrifying sound. Was it the Jungle Woman?

Starlight and the mountaineer's uncanny instinct for tracks guided Ramzana to the maize holding. Jackals howled, slipping away at his approach. Their squeaky howls, being so near, grated upon his ears. Mountain dogs distantly barked in reply. Occasional gusts of wind blew long-drawn notes in conifers and pines. What did he hear? A horrifying sharp sound –a blend of plaintive howl and a fierce growl, unnatural and awe-inspiring. Oh! Zooni was perhaps right. She had talked about the Jungle Woman who had haunted the hamlet for the last week. He alone had disbelieved. He still did. But, before he could further think, to his consternation, he heard this freak of a shriek quite close to him

Ramzana's heart pounded like a hammer within him. Should he run, fly for his life? Yes, that he must. He ran fast, as fast as his legs could carry him. He only knew he was running. He did not know any longer what direction he was taking. To save his neck was his prime concern at the moment.

Something pursued him. It was not a bear though its heavy tread amidst the crashing bushes resembled a bear's step. The creature uttered those very terrifying sounds he had heard some time back. Only the Jungle Woman mold screech these strange yells. The thought of his possible pursuer electrified Ramzan. He quickened his pace to a very fast gallop, so much so that he discerned that he had left his pursuer far back, gut suddenly he stumbled against the stump of a fallen spruce. He fell down the very moment, helpless and exhausted. His head struck against a boulder and the wounds bled on his forehead and right hand. He reeled and became unconscious.


High above on the precipitous mountain, very much above the snow line, in a cave, damp, dark and with a narrow opening, closed by a round boulder, which was used as the door, lived the Jungle Man and the Jungle Woman. They were primitive sub-men of a group that had somehow survived near some remote peaks of the Valley.

The Jungle Man, finding no game for a few days, left on a long expedition with his bone weapons. He did not return for days together. Led by instinct, the Jungle Woman did not so much miss the Jungle Man, as she wanted a mate. Down below in the mountain hamlet, thousands of feet down from her cave, she had seen miniature men walking about, after autumn and in winter, when mist did not mantle the hamlet. Now that the Jungle Man had not come back for a week, she went down into the hamlet every night. There she howled and screeched, keeping away from the lights of the cottages, for she was somehow afraid of them. 

Rambling aimlessly, led by her forest-bred instinct, now set on
edge by her passion for a man, the Jungle Woman scented a man poor unfortunate Ramzana on his sickle errand. She whined and yelled to attract his notice but he cut straight across the fields. Then she made towards him neared him and found him, a lump of a roan, heaving insensibly. She pawed him all over, very much like a bear. He uttered low whines of fear and pain. She lifted him and carried him in her broad powerful shoulders, stopping for a while after miles of hilly distance when some sudden sound or other alarm made her alert.


Though unconscious, Ramzana was not quite so, for a long time. When he was carried by the Jungle Woman he had a strange perception of dangling over a hairy bed, which was quite unlike his warm, soft hay bed. Subconsciously, he heard grunts and yells and felt that he was sleepily riding over his father-in-law's newly-bought mare, who was not well broken in yet.

A jackal's howling awoke Ramzana suddenly. He did not realise at once who was carrying him. After a dreamy moment or two, he understood with horror that he was bestriding on the spiky shoulders of a bear, who was grunting and heavily breathing. But no, Oh Allah! it was not a bear! It was... it was, as his dangling legs, touching the hairy, ample, falling breasts told him, the Jungle Woman. The Jungle Woman! He tried to cry only to find his tongue tied and his mouth parched. No, he must cry to invite help. Again, words did not come. His head reeled. The wily creature clutched him faster, uttering something like a savage's yell. Giddiness again mercifully changed into unconsciousness for Ramzana for many many hours. The Jungle Woman trudged on with her man's burden, scrambling up ascents and precipices, miraculously, balancing her weight, till she, in the small hours of the morning, reached her cave, where she deposited it in a corner, covering it with jungle berry leaves and pine twigs.

Late in the morning, Ramzana, feeling his head splitting and rocking, awoke upon the cold and damp bed of filth-laden earth. Where was he? Why wasn't his baby crying? The goat was silent. Zooni was nowhere to be seen. The window was shut but the chinks in the crazy wall should have admitted light. Could it be so very foggy outside? Fidgeting about with his hands, he did not find his tattered quilt over him but he was taken aback on finding leaves and branches about him. What did it mean? He sat up with a start. In so doing his head struck against a protruding stone of the cave. Holding his aching head, where he found fresh scars of last night's wounds, he saw the mouth of the cave blocked with a stone, admitting faint rays of light through apertures at its sides. Last night's nightmare rushed upon his memory. Oh! Allah - here he was, in some plagued cave. Zooni, sweet Zooni, what must she be thinking and doing?

Impatiently throwing away the leaves and twigs, Ramzana stood up. Again his head struck against the low roof. He had to walk with, bent back. Over the opening of the cave, he found a round boulder which he could not push off or even move an inch though he applied all his desperate strength to it. Nerve-shattered, he slipped down to his leafy bed and lay down, taking in with his mountaineer's common sense that he was the Jungle Woman's captive. From his childhood, he had heard many stories of witches, she-monsters and Jungle Women.

Now he was-so decreed Allah-the prisoner of this dreadful woman. But he need not fear. Sitting on his knees, he lifted his outstretched hands in prayer and prayed to Merciful Allah to save him. In his prayer he did not forget his wife and his children. He thought with a pang how his sickle must now be in the usurping hands of Qadira. Allah would curse him and He would blast the cursed Jungle Woman. Something within him, proceeding perhaps from a subconscious reminiscence of folk-tales of witches and Jungle Women, assured him
that the wretched Jungle woman would not kill him. She would keep him. He determined to steel himself to live it through till he found a way of escape from this hell of a den.

The thread of his reverie was snapped when the stone over the opening of the cave was pushed to one side, falling with a resounding thud into a watery ditch outside the cave. In came the horrible looking Jungle Woman, more of a bear like ape than a human form. Her long, woolly hair fell about her intensely hairy, naked body as she came towards Ramzana with bent back and hands outstretched sticking out of hairy paws and showing claw-like nails. The front view of the Jungle Woman showed nothing but the long, thick, black hair of the body out of which large, pendent and swinging breasts fell down, covering the tummy of the heinous creature. Her angular face was not so hairy but it bore a great deal of resemblanc, to a forest monkey, big heavy and flat. Her quasi-human form was awesome in the extreme. The small chin protruded from the harsh and hairy jaw bones, which were clearly incapable of speech. Great brow ridges receded farther from the small, bright, fierce eyes. Though almost human, she had baboon traits.

So this was his mistress, in whom power Ramzan. As he had already prepared himself, Ramzana did not feel much afraid. The Jungle Woman uttered shrill cries of delight on seeing him there. The shouts reminded Ramzana of the mumbled words of an idiot out of which one could make out nothing. He stared at her, not in horror but in amazement, as she came towards him. She fondled the torn lappets of his chemise and caressed his face. He shrunk away from her but there she was again before him, catching hold of his hands, and dragging him a feet or two. Then out of a recess, which Ramzana had not marked, she produced walnuts and forest nuts and berries and scattered them about the cave. Ramzan greedily caught a few and ate them. So did the Jungle Woman.

The Jungle Woman did not kill or molest Ramzana. She fetched him jungle fruits and feasted him on raw flesh of the deer, jackal and fox. Seeing that he felt cold she brought jungle hay, soft, dry and long bushels to form his bed. She played with him in a strange way, an admixture of bestial fierceness and fondness of love.

Hearing him groan, cry or shout out the names of Zooni or his children, she tried to ape him, producing only a monkeyish babble. That amused Ramzana but he would bite his lips and curse himself on his helplessness. For every time the Jungle Woman left the cave, she bolted the cave with the big boulder that fitted the opening like a door. Ramzana could not, for the life of him, shift that cursed stone even when he tried for hours. Once the Jungle Woman, pushing aside the boulder, found Ramzana pulling against it from the inside. Emitting fierce growls, she kicked him with her big feet, sending him reeling down. He fell against a jutting rock of the cave, wounding his arm. She clawed him on the face. Finding him bleeding, the Jungle Woman picked out a certain grass out of the hay bed and clumsily bound that over the wounds. The bleeding stopped, as if by miracle. Ramzana thanked her with a silly look wherein despair loomed large. He held his side as he felt his heart throbbing and lay down awhile. The haunting image of his mountain home came before him.

What could Zooni be doing just now? It was more than a month that she had missed him. Did she take him to be dead? And, the children, Allah was their father now. Allah is merciful. No, no, Zoom would not, should not consider him dead. Once, earlier, he had been missing from home for a fortnight when snowstorm and landslides had blocked him in the upper hamlet. Zoomi had then bravely hoped for his return. He did return to her. How he had embraced her and the children! The fond memory sent shafts of anguish in his stricken heart as he heard the gawky Jungle Woman striding towards him, coming to pinch him, to nip him and to tease him. He despised her peculiar smell, her hairy form which was almost double to that of his own mountaineer's physique and her overbearing ways with him. He half opened his eyes as the hateful creature crawled towards him. How long would he rot like this? How long Oh Allah! Oh Pir Dastgir! Oh Saint Shah Hamdan! would he lie helpless as he did? He shut his eyes, inwardly sitting down to prayer in the mosque of Juma Masjid whose interior used to give him peace and calm. He prayed and prayed, not heeding the pinching by Jungle Woman.

Suddenly he got up, feeling, like a prey held at bay, the urge to free himself, only to look about the semi-dark, cribbing walls of the cave and damned stone sitting glumly over its opening. She marked his eager look and mistaking it for an expression of hunger, produced fruits and a leg of venison from a recess and placed them before her captive man. Ramzana ate a few after a few minutes till he had composed himself. He must eat, he reaffirmed to himself or he would die. Now he liked the fruits and the raw flesh. They imbued him with a strange, restless energy. He did not feel exhausted in the body though he lived in this damp hole in the mountainside. His growing beard and nails only menaced him, adding to his biting sense of prison life.

Losing count of days in this dark cell Ramzana became impatient with himself at his lack of reckless, dare-devil spirit with which he ought to fight his way out. Next morning when the Jungle Woman was leaving and pushed the stone away, he crept close behind her and before she mold place the stone back, he leaped at her. The stone fell back in the pit. The Jungle Woman grappled him, giving out fierce shrieks. Her nails pierced his skin but he did not feel the pain. He bit her hairy hands with his mouth but she only tightened her steel grasp and dragging him, carried him back to his corner and there she kicked him, threw sticks and hay over him and clawed him, besides giving, him stunning blows with her ungainly hands.

Ramzana, exhausted, heart-broken and defeated, made no reply. Tears welled in his eyes. He cried piteously. Moaning aloud, he sobbed like a child, "Zooni! I die for you ! Where are you? Oh! what has happened to me? What curse has fallen upon me!" Pity softened coarse, apish features of the Jungle Woman; she caressed him on the, chest though he shrank away from her. She left, cautiously looking behind that Ramzana did not follow her.

A mood of despair, frustration and utter desolation, overwhelmed Ramzana. In his simple way he sobbed and brooded naively. What had he done to merit this? Qadira, his rascal neighbour, now the owner of his sickle, ought to be in his place here. He had an idea that he had spent more than "four tens" of days here. He counted by tens, and, after the third ten, he became confused as to the length of his captivity. Autumn must have change to winter. The chill winds striking him, when the hell of this jungle Woman came and left, airing the opening of the cave, told him that the crop of his maize holdings must since have been reaped. Who did that? Where was Zooni? Would he ever return to them? He again sobbed, sinking his head in his raised knees as he squatted against the damp wall where a dripping drop of water told him that it was raining outside. Would that the Jungle Woman slipped on the precipice and died! No, she would not. She was hardy. He went up to the chink of the opening of the cave. He tried the stone. It was stuck up in the stone depression outside which acted as its hinge and repelled all his force to be moved. The cursed jungle Woman was stubborn.

One day he had seen from this hole how a bear crossed her path. Sitting uneasily behind the boulder in the cave, he had reveled that the bear would kill and make a meal of the jungle Woman. The bear would not of course reach his cave, thanks to the boulder. He had quite forgotten that if the Jungle Woman did not return and open the cave, he would never go alive out of it. But, to his disappointment, not unmixed with amazement, he had seen how the bear, lowering his tail, had simply slunk away at the approach of the Jungle Woman. From that day his fear of the Jungle Woman increased tenfold.

Oh! he wept, cried, prayed. Allah did not hear! Allah has no ears! Was Allah merciful? The Pir said so. But the Pirs were unreliable. He remembered Ali Pir who always stroked his beard to impress his flock in the mosque, but who was secretly adulterous and dissolute. The Pirs traded on the beliefs of the poor like him, Ramzana thought bitterly. No Pir or Allah could save him. He struck his forehead again and again with the palm of his hand. But he cursed his own hand. This arm could not move the stone that held him captive. Could he not tunnel his way out? But the twigs which he had about him could not even make a small hole in the rocky soil. The night would come soon, the long, dark night wherein he rarely found sweet and sound rest as he used to in good old days when he returned home, fatigued and hungry, after the day's hard and loved toil in farm and field. How long back was that? He could not tell. His maddening reverie was broken by the rude, noisy entrance of the Jungle Woman.

The Jungle Woman was strangely unusual this time, Ramzana somehow understood in the fading light. According to her wont, she did not close the opening with the stone just after her entrance. Instead she slipped down to the floor and lay there in a huddled but restless heap. Come on, fly away, the cave for once is open, Ramzana bucked himself up. But the necessary pluck did not come. His limbs did not obey his natural impulse. After a while, the Jungle Woman gave herself a shaking, squatted up, looked about and saw the rave open. She gave a quick reassuring look at Ramzana. He was unmoving as a statue, regarding closely her strange behaviour. She seemed to recognise him after an effort and gave a cry wherein surprise and apathy were coupled together. Snorting in a bestial manner, she went up to the opening of the cave and dosed it, slowly and dreamily.

For the whole night, Ramzana heard shrill growls and grating squeaks from the corner occupied by the Jungle Woman. Her inexplicable restlessness intrigued him and made him very much afraid of this freak of a cave companion. In this terrible mood, this devilish creature, half woman and half ape as she was, might do anything to him.

Much as he tried, he could not make out what must have happened to her to have so metamorphosed her. Soothing sleep afforded his splitting brain rest for a few hours. But even during his broken sleep he heard her somnolent noises.

Early in the morning, earlier than usual, he heard the familiar heavy tread. His heart beat fast. Was she coming towards him to strangle him? No, thank Allah, thank all the Pirs, she did not. She repaired towards the mouth of the cave and gave the stone a rude push. The fresh breeze of the mountain dawn struck the sensitive nostrils of Ramzana. It reinforced his longing to be back in his fields to lift the hoe early morning and beat the clods into smooth sheets to receive the new kind of maize that he had got through the headman.
Oh! presently she slipped down and came, not towards him as she used to when she would fondle and nip him, but near the fruit recesses where a leg of a fox lay rotting. Ramzana could see in the dim light that she picked up a fruit only to throw it against the wall. Her loud munching gave him to understand that she was greedily at the stale flesh. But this was for a while. She crawled about. Ramzana felt his heart sinking, thinking that his end had come. In a trice, she scrambled up to the open mouth of the cave, edged her way out and was gone.

Gone! Gone! thought Ramzana. The devilish ape was gone. No, but she would return. He must escape, yes, this very moment. His heart pounded against his breast. He had to calm himself by holding his hand against his heart much as his blessed mother-peace be to her soul! - used to when he used to be frightened as a child.

The Jungle Woman did not return, not for hours. Ramzana slothfully clung to his seat. The sun had risen and its light played on the hills. Now he must stir himself or else it may be to late. Slowly, he went up to the opening. After many, many dark days and darker nights, he saw the beautiful panoramic view of a mountain sunrise. Where was he? He said to himself, as he peered out of the mouth of the cave. A steep precipice eyed him in the fare. How would he climb down? Thank Allah! there was a goat track caressing the mountainside. He came out of the mouth of the cave to take that. He heard a sound. Was it a screeching bird or was it the Jungle Woman? Instinctively, he retraced his steps and scrambled inside the cave. He listened hard and heard nothing. He came out, bolder than ever before.

The pine forests clothing the copse gave him fresh courage. He would brave the Jungle Woman if she now came in his way. He would die rather than be dragged back into that hell of a cave. In the thick of the jungle, he heard a swift rustling sound and, moving his head in the direction of the sound, he saw a brownish white bestial form drowning into the spruce foliage. A jackal or .... a leopard ! Let it be. I must go ahead, come what may, Ramzana reminded himself. Freedom gave him courage he never possessed before. Walking on and on, for an hour or so, he still found no path or track that he could tell.

To his great relief, Ramzana heard human voices proceeding from somewhere. He fashioned his steps towards the sound, quickly and breathlessly. He reached a craggy ledge and down below, on a broad goat track, he saw two mountaineers walking with their axes on their shoulders. He recognised one as Ahmdoo, of another hamlet. He shouted but words did not come readily to him and he only blurted, "Ahm... Ahm... Ahmdoo... I.... I..... Ramzana.... help!"

Ahmdoo looked up and stopped, startled, and elbowing his companion, said to him, "Who is this beastly, mad fellow?"

"Some mountain Faqir", said the amazed mountaineer.

Words came after all, passionate and piteous, as Ramzana cried, "It is I, Ramzana, who was carried away by the Jungle Woman. I am free.... Help me !"

Ahmdoo and his companion exchanged amazed looks as Ahmdoo said, "Come down by that track -and slip down."

Ramzana became self-conscious as he saw them gazing at his miserable chemise and salwar which had gaping holes all over, and his beard and his grizzly hair. As he slipped down, thorny bushes pierced his sides. Getting up he adjusted his salwar, and, embracing Ahmdoo, broke into a flood of tears, telling him his tale of woe.

Zooni had given up Ramazana to be dead. She, who already led a widow's destitute life, was simply overjoyed to find Ramzana back though her eyes were unbelieving that it was he, her dear mate, delivered from the clutches of the Jungle Woman, after all. Late in the night, when Qadir and other neighbours sat there, listening to the wonder tale of Ramzana, she said to him, for the umpteenth time. "I had told you it was the Jungle Woman. You would not listen to me, my liver, my life. Praise be to Allah! The Pir told me you would be back" The children wept and laughed, alternately, to find Ramzana back -and they would not sleep.

The calm of the late autumn night was disturbed by the unmistakable yells of the Jungle Woman. She had come again!

"It's she," panted Ramzana, as he took up the axe. His neighbours followed suit. No order of battle was given! Only they cried aloud, "Come out with torches ....axes....lathis", "Get your sickles." The rural torches led the party, Ramazana foremost. The freakish yells were distinct and louder. "Find her out! Kill her! Spread out in a semi-circle" thundered Ramzana as the spirit of vengeance rose within him. He ran impetuously and other villagers followed him. They were eight in all. Women cried shrilly and the watch-dogs came with them, barking fiercely.

Ramazana stopped and cried, "There she is... Behind that bush. Beat the bush!"
They all beat the bush with their lathis, keeping their axes ready, as they did when they killed a raiding bear.

The light behind showed Ramzana the dark, hairy outline of the Jungle Woman, as she found herself entangled. She leaped at him with the agility of a panther, with a bone weapon in her hand. The swift axe fell upon her woolly head and again, on her dark shoulder and she crashed down. A shout of triumph rose from the mountaineers as Ramzana looked up his bloody axe.