All Shikaris Get Hunted Down

So potent was the legend that over the years it became distorted and magnified, so that it became difficult for an interested observer to separate the man from the myth. Kala set about to do just this. He spent several years on the trail of Wilson, and his research was carried out without funds, grants or sponsorships—without which modern researchers find it so difficult to work. Kala was the old-fashioned sort who used his own limited resources to accomplish his ends—and is the more interesting for doing so.

Having now read this work, it is hard to see Wilson as the romantic Errol Flynn-like figure that has come down to us in legend. True, he did marry for love—a hill girl, daughter of a temple drummer—and kept the odd mistress, but his exploits as the great white hunter would raise many an eyebrow today. He had no compunction in systematically decimating the wildlife in the Garhwal hills, exporting his skins and trophies, and acting as the local guide or expert to those who came looking for game, big and small. And as timber contractor to the Tehri ruler, he levelled large areas of Deodar forest, floating the logs down the Bhagirathi and the Ganga, to be turned into railway sleepers for an ever-expanding Indian railway network. All this was quite permissible, of course, the hill state’s natural resources were there for the taking, and Wilson helped himself, building up a personal fortune in the process.

He has to be admired for his boldness, enterprise and opportunism. Contrary to popular belief, he was a small man, frail and sickly-looking. How he survived the rigours of the mountain climate, and the hard outdoor life of the professional hunter, is quite remarkable. As a young man he had been invalided out of the British army. Yet he managed to live an active life well into his 60s, fathering three sons from his legitimate wife Sangrami. What happened to some of them, and their descendants, is a saga in itself, but Kala confines himself largely to the fortunes and career of Wilson, with an additional chapter on other eccentric or unusual ‘Whites’ (an expression he is fond of ) who came to the hills. One of Wilson’s great-grandchildren, Ian Davis, went to school with me and joined the British army in 1946; he may still be alive to tell a tale. His younger brother Geoffrey, who lived across the road from me in Dehra Dun (with old Mrs Wilson, Frederick’s daughter-in-law), joined the Indian air force in 1951 and was killed in a training accident.

The tragedies that befell Wilson’s other descendants are sometimes ascribed to divine retribution for having stripped the Tehri hills of a wealth of flora and fauna. The Raja’s old capital has also perished, with the submergence of the town beneath the Tehri dam. Wilson’s house at Harsil was burnt down some years ago. But his apple trees remain. The apples he introduced to the valley are rosy, large and sweet. Perhaps, they are his true legacy.

He was also a prime source of information to naturalists and others on the birds and animals of the Himalayas (when he wasn’t out hunting them), and co-authored a rather dull book called A Summer Ramble in the Himalayas (1860). In hindsight, he may not be deserving of a full-fledged biography. But now he has one. Ten out of ten to Mr Kala for putting it together.