topics: |  fiction | bengali | children

kAkAbAbu, jojo and santu are in kaziranga, where they run into a gang of
desperate rhino poachers, headed by a enigmatic bandit who announces his
participation halfway through.  kAkAbAbu has at least two miraculous
escapes, but in the end manages to nab the baddies and also wreak his
revenge on their leader.

combines a travelogue of the kaziranga / jorhat / silchar area, along with
the thriller.  empowered by the anti-poaching mission, the team visit a
number of sites not open to the public, including a pond where they build
machans and watch animals through the night.

jojo has a gift of imagination, and is quite a poet.
at one point, w kAkAbAbu they are to visit orang forest, which has
the river dhAnsiRi running through.  kAkAbAbu asks them if they know a
famous poem that mentions this river.  jojo immediately says that it
appears in a 
famous poem by tagore.  he then recites:
		sandhyA nAme dhIre dhIre
		dhAnsniRi nadItIre
		pAkhiguli DAnA jhApTAy
which of course is a fine poem as is.  santu, who is the less precocious of
the two, points out that a) jojo has just fabricated this poem, b) dhAnsiRi
has no chandra-bindu, and c) the famous poem is by jIbanAnanda, and goes:
		AbAr Asiba fire
		dhAnsiRiTir tIre
			ei bAnglAy
kAkAbAbu complements jojo on his imagination. 64

at one point, they catch the bird poacher jalil.  at his house, they find
five hundred rare birds - hornbills, doves, mynas, etc. instead of taking
him and his birds to the police, where they will have to process papers to
rehabilitate the birds to the zoo and get a magistrate's order etc,
kAkAbAbu has the birds released from their cages.  he also befriends
jalil's daughter, who later runs away and is found by kAkAbAbu.

the story mentions the large south american flightless bird
rhea, which is not very known compared to the emu or ostrich.