I was wondering whether I’d die there or in the hospital: Lion attack survivor

Ahmedabad: It was a stare-down contest with death, and Kalu Parmar knew the slightest mistake could be his last. Pinned to the ground by a subadult lion for nearly 30 minutes in Garajiya village of Palitana taluka on Monday morning, the 45-year-old Maldhari herder says he survived by staying still, looking into its eyes and refusing to panic.

In the end, death blinked first.“I was looking at death up close, and every second felt like my last,” says Parmar, crediting divine mercy for his survival. Since the video of his encounter went viral two days ago, Parmar has become known worldwide as the man who faced a predator with extraordinary composure and a gentle touch.“I had tied my cow and was standing in the courtyard. As I turned to go into the house, something pounced on me from behind.

I was on the ground before I could even make sense of what had happened. It took me a few seconds to realise that it was a lion,” he recalls.For the first few minutes, the lion held his hand firmly in its mouth. Instead of fighting back, Parmar made a split-second decision that he believes defused the tension between them. But that is just a wild guess. For a lion that is not heavily hand-reared, a human hand reaching out to pat it could have been interpreted as a threat, say wildlife experts.

“I thought that if I gently patted the animal on the head and neck, the touch might loosen its grip on my hand. The strategy worked. But the animal was not willing to let go of me. I continued patting the lion to convince it that I meant no harm. We kept looking at each other, and I stayed as calm as I could,” he says.The faces of his wife, five daughters and son flashed before his eyes during those 30 minutes, he says. “I was wondering whether I was going to die in a hospital or on the spot itself.

But by Goddess’s grace, the animal spared me.”Experts caution that there is no guaranteed way to respond during a lion encounter, and that outcomes depend on the animal’s behaviour and circumstances. In Parmar’s case, however, his instinct to remain calm appears to have helped him walk away with only claw injuries.Parmar had only recently recovered from illness. Just 10 days ago, he had been discharged from the hospital after a bout of the flu.While the residents of Garajiya are used to hearing lions roar in the nearby forest, Parmar said the villagers had never seen one in the village. “Never did I imagine that I would come face-to-face with one inside my own courtyard,” he said.BOX: Hunt on for the lionThe forest department clarified on Tuesday that the animal that attacked Parmar was a lion, not a lioness as initially believed. A 32-member team of forest guards and officials has launched a search operation in areas near the village to locate and rescue the lion, believed to have moved into a nearby forest due to heavy rain.Deputy conservator of forests, Chirag Amin, said the rescue effort is aimed at identifying the lion and determining whether it had been captured earlier. The department may relocate the animal if it is found that the lion population in the area is already high.