The hunt for the Bison - 1

"My uncle saw the Bison. Mother promise!" Prabhu said. I stared at him for a good minute and said, "Let's go camp then. Tonight?" The late winter morning had a deceiving chill to it. Prabhu pulled his hands into his sweater sleeves and shook his head and said "Not today. Probably next Sunday?"
He was two years junior to me and was still considered a kid: he was in 7th class after all. So were Suri and Viju. But they all showed a maturity that defied their age: they lied like their lives depended on it. We stood outside the door of Anita Tutorials, the education hub of Durga colony. It drew teachers from all across Chittoor and was absolutely hopeless when it came to punctuality, for all the teachers were final year college students from the PVKN Arts college and none of them ever came on time.
We were waiting for Suresh (Suresh sir to be precise), our psychotic science tutor. I was sure that this piece of news about the Bison would excite him. I was sure he'd go camping with us to the hills around Iruvaram, Prabhu's village. Iruvaram was on the Bangalore by-pass, a quiet, insignificant settlement away from the buzz of the Chittoor town. Facing Iruvaram, on the other side of the by-pass were the hills and the arid home of the Bison. A part of me wanted to buy the Bison story. I mean it was so romantic and exciting but the other side of me refused to buy it: what will the Bison survive on? There was absolutely no vegetation other than the Cactus with the plum red fruit or those long thorny shrubs with thick trunks; we used to cut the trunk, dry it, and use it for flotation while learning how to swim in the irrigation wells. I was quite certain that the Bison can't reach the leaves or fruit of the occasional Palm that dotted the area. If the Bison did exist, why was it alone? How did it get here in the first place and why? I had read about the man eating tigers: I knew these were old tigers that were looking for easy prey and that was why they moved closer to human settlements. But why the Bison? It is a herbivore? Right? The story just didn't stick. But I did not share my apprehensions with Suri and Viju. I wanted to go camp, Bison or not. (...to be contd)

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