Most watchtowers in Indian parks are named after places. Gorumara's best-known tower is named after an animal. Jatraprasad was an elephant of the forest department, and the tower that bears his name looks out over a grassland and salt lick where rhinos, gaur and elephants come to feed.
Guides at Lataguri tell visitors that Jatraprasad worked in Gorumara for many years, carrying forest staff on patrols through the tall grass, tracking rhinos and helping when wild animals strayed into villages. They describe him as calm and steady, an elephant the staff trusted in difficult places.
We have not found a published record of his dates or of particular events, so treat the details as local memory rather than documented history. Wikipedia notes only that the watchtower is named after a legendary elephant.
The story says something about Gorumara itself. This is a small park surrounded by tea gardens, villages and a busy highway, and keeping rhinos safe here has depended on people and working elephants on the ground. When you climb the Jatraprasad tower and wait for a rhino to step out of the grass, you are standing on ground he once patrolled.
Sources
- Gorumara National Park (Wikipedia)
- Told locally in Lataguri
Legends are retold differently from village to village. Where a story is told locally rather than written down, we say so.
