For a split second, Fatik Haldar didn't know what had hit him. It was a sudden, searing pain. His feet were stuck in the mud, in four feet of water in a river near Benifeli forest in the Sunderbans. Dropping his fishing net, he screamed in agony as two pairs of canines — sharper than knives — pierced his skin.

He remembered, 20 years ago, his father Gour had died similarly, mauled by a tiger. Fatik thought of his two children and wife, who were at home waiting for him to return. Digging his heels into the mud and his fingers under the tiger's jaws, he fought back.

In the Sunderbans, the only place in the world where tigers regularly hunt humans, Fatik's heroic survival had already passed into folklore in the 12 hours that it took to bring him from the mangrove jungles to a hospital in Kolkata. When TOI caught up with him at SSKM Hospital on Wednesday, he had the glassy-eyed look of one who has stared death in the face. His first words were: "I'll never go fishing again."

"No, I am not scared," he said. "Had it been so, I would not have survived. But I have to look after my children and wife. I don't have anyone else in my family to take care of them after I'm gone. I will have to find out some other means of livelihood now," he said.

Bleeding and traumatized, he clung to every breath through the 220-km journey from the river to Kultali and then to Kolkata — four hours by rowboat, three more hours on a launch and three more by ambulance.
The 20 minutes that he spent battling the tiger in Matla-Katsai river, deep in the Sunderbans, still sends shivers down his spine.

On Tuesday, Fatik went fishing for crabs in the river with two of his friends, Bapi and Dilip. The Matla-Katsai was a three-hour boat ride from his village Katamari in South 24-Parganas' Kultali. Bapi and Dilip were in the boat when Fatik jumped into the water and threw the net. "It was around 10.30 in the morning. The bright sunlight shimmered off the water. I never saw the tiger coming," said Fatik.Dilip and Bapi did, and fainted. Before Fatik knew, the tiger had pounced on him and sunk its claws and fangs. He only saw a bright orange blur. The animal had probably swam up to within a few feet of him.

The tiger's teeth pierced his right shoulder. It tried to wrestle Fatik down with its paws but the river made it difficult for the animal to keep its ground. "I stuck my right hand under the beast's jaws. But with every passing minute, the pain increased. The tiger, too, was desperate to crush my skull. I don't know how I managed to dodge the blows," he said.

With a snarling tiger inches away from a kill, every minute seemed like an eternity, said Fatik. The tiger's teeth were sinking deeper into his flesh, ripping apart the muscles. With his strength ebbing, he made a last-ditch attempt. The tiger had started shaking its head vigorously to rip off chunks of flesh. But this gave Fatik the opening he was looking for.

He put his left hand inside the tiger's mouth, and threw a kick with the cry, "Joy Maa Bonbibi" (the guardian deity of the forest). It hit the tiger in its soft underbelly. "The tiger released its grip on my shoulder and swam back. I collapsed on the riverbed," he said. But with such severe wounds, he couldn't afford to lose consciousness. He struggled on to the boat and roused his friends who were still lying unconscious. Together, they rowed for four hours, back to their village. One look at Fatik, and the Sunderbans natives realized what had happened. Within minutes, the entire village rallied round. Fatik was taken to the Jamtala health centre, which bandaged his wounds and sent him to Kolkata. It was past midnight when he landed up at SSKM.

He was given an extra bed and a heavy dose of antibiotics and painkillers. When a doctor inserted a gloved finger to probe how deep the canine wounds were, the whole finger went in, and there was room to spare. The doctor could only shake his head in disbelief.

It was the tough life in the Sunderbans, where villagers face death every day for their mere survival, that hardened Fatik enough to fight off a tiger unarmed — one of the very few in the world who can boast a feat like that. But now, Fatik just hopes to get back to his village and set up a shop in some other part of South 24-Parganas. "My father was killed by a tiger. My mother died of snakebite. I have survived one brush with death. I don't want my children to meet with the same fate," he says.