The teeth were crushing his neck and then, with one last failing gasp, he went for the attacker’s head. That is how the unequal battle between a Bengal fisherman and a Bengal tiger began in the waters of a creek in the Sunderbans.

Hit back, the tiger let him loose for a moment and Gour Mondal held the animal by, believe it or not, its jaws. His two friends hit the tiger with sticks and it fled. They used two kilograms of sugar stored in the boat to contain the heavy bleeding.

The incident happened on the morning of August 17 and Gour, 54, had to undergo a critical surgery at a hospital in Calcutta. He has recovered and went home last Saturday.

Gour, a resident of Chhoto Molla Khali in Gosaba block of South 24-Parganas, had gone inside the Sunderbans forest’s Jhila area early on August 17 to catch crabs. He was accompanied by two others, Manoranjan Mondal and Jhontu Mondal.

“We were dipping sticks that had crab feed in the tip as bait. I was rowing the boat through the creek slowly,” Gour recounted.

The boat was a few yards from the bank. “There was dense forest and nothing could be seen inside,” he said.

Suddenly, the tiger jumped on the boat and hit Gour with a paw on the right side of his face. “Immediately I knew it was a tiger. The oar in my hand fell and I did not have anything with which I could hit the tiger,” he said.

Gour and the tiger fell in the waist-deep water of the creek. The tiger then bit him on the neck, making Gour almost unconscious.

“I felt my bones crush. I knew I was dying and then realised what desperation meant,” he said.

He first shoved the tiger with his elbow. The tiger released him but aimed for his neck.

“I held its jaws and did not allow it to bite my neck because that would have been the end for me,” Gour said. He also felt the whiskers of the tiger which was violently trying to free itself.

“I can still feel the whiskers in my hand now,” he said on Wednesday.

The struggle went on for a few minutes when his two companions, who were too shocked initially, rowed the boat towards Gour.

“They were also shouting and started hitting the tiger with the sticks,” he said. Finally,
the tiger left Gour, swam to the other side of the creek and vanished into the jungle.

Gour said: “They brought me up on the boat and although I was bleeding profusely, I was still conscious.”

Gour’s companions realised that he would die if the bleeding was not stopped.

“There was 2kg of sugar in the boat. I asked them to put sugar on the wounds to stop the bleeding,” he said.

The boat took him to Satjelia in the Sunderbans from where the forest department helped him.

“The forest department took me on a speed boat to Pakhiralay and then to Gosaba Sub-Divisional Hospital in an ambulance. There the doctors stitched the wounds,” Gour recounted.

Gour was then taken to Manipal Hospitals, Dhakuria, on the afternoon of August17.

“There were three bite marks in the joint of thespine and the brain. The right occipital bone was crushed and fragments were embedded into the brain stem. There were also multiple fractures in his right cheek,” saidNirup Datta, a consultant neurosurgeon at Manipal Hospitals, Dhakuria, who performed a critical surgery on Gour.

“We performed the surgery for around four hours and removed the crushed bone,piece by piece, from the brain stem. It led to an extremely low heart rate or bradycardia and he had severe hypotension,” said Datta. Mondal collapsed thrice during the surgery and had to be administered life-saving drugs and multiple blood transfusions to revive him. He was ventilated for two days and gradually recovered.

“From day seven he started getting out of bed and went back home walking with support. In case of tiger bites, most people die within one to two hours because of blood loss leading to shock. Around 80 per cent do not survive because of other complications,” said Datta.

Nilanjan Mallick, director of the Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve, said they had rushed Gour on their speed boat to the nearest healthcare facility.

“We work with the community in the forest and have to help them,” said Mallick. He said on average there are about 10 incidents of tiger attacks in the Sunderbans every year.

Gour had seen a tiger earlier on several occasions, swimming in the river or standing on the bank.

“We see crocodiles too, particularly in the winters,” he said.