Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright
My first experience with wildlife was through the pages of a book, ‘The Man Eaters of Kumaon’ written by the eminent hunter, writer and naturalist, Jim Corbett. A second hand, hard-bound with yellowing pages that still remains nestled in my bookshelf, passed down by my father during one such summer vacation as an attempt to make me read anything other than the Harry Potter books. The mesmerizing, tranquil beauty of Uttarakhand’s Pauri Garhwal and the gripping adventures with a tinge of mystique and suspense made an inexplicable narrative for a child who had only witnessed these magnificent feral cats as emancipated and indolent beings in various Zoological Parks over the years. The vibrant cover image of a feral tiger, our national animal, in its very element, dredging up goosebumps is what I then longed to experience in reality— an opportunity to witness these glorious and feral felines in the pristine wild.
In 2015, the
opportunity presented itself; I was finally visiting the Jim Corbett National
Park to soak in the beauty of the place that up, until now, were confined to the
pages of the book. A fresh undergraduate studying Zoology, the thrill and pent
up enthusiasm had me gleefully peering out the window like a child at all times
as our car sped through the roads of Ramnagar, lined by tall Sal, Khair and
Sissoo trees. My eyes lay unfocused while I gazed at the slivers of sunlight sifting
through the tall canopies of the lush green, trying hard to materialize a
fictitious tiger running parallelly with us. Corbett National Park is divided
into six tourist zones: Bijrani, Jhirna, Dhela, Dhikala, Durga Devi and
Sitabani, each located in the vicinity of the city of Ramnagar. Having had come
for a short family vacation with my parents, we had decided to book the forest
lodge of the Dhiikala Zone, situated at the border of Dun valley and famous for
its captivating surreal beauty. The tall lime green grass swaying over in the
wind, the thick patch of forest in the distance and the crawling sense of
anticipation of what lay ahead had my veins pumping with adrenaline over the
thought of finally getting to witness nature’s wilderness and wild
creation— the bold and beautiful Bengal Tiger.
The thrill of the much-awaited
jungle safari early in the morning, the distant sounds of a brook nearby and
the faint calls of Nightjars and Owls made for a restless night’s sleep for I
was beyond excited to finally witness a view only ever seen before in a
Discovery Channel coverage, in reality, outside the pixels of my television set.
Amidst the early monsoon clouds looming over the plains and the wind thrashing
against the tarp-covered roof of the Jeep as it drove over the muddy tracks of the
forest floor, I was completely transfixed in the beauty of the moment and was in
absolute awe of landscape that lay in front of me— a stark contrast to the
urban jungle of concrete and stone that we live in; I let my senses run wild to
take inasmuch as I could. A herd of magnificent tuskers in the distance
munching away on the fresh tree leaves while the chitals ran galloping about
the crisscrossing paths and the rich smell of petrichor in the air made for an
absolute sight for the sore eyes and a utopian scenery straight out of a
cursory image search of the Prairie grasslands leaving in its wake a sense of picturesque
peace in the very least.
During any safari at a Tiger reserve, the most exciting event is the
much anticipated and piercing ‘alarm call’ of the animals, warning us about the
probable movement of a tiger nearby. While our jeep rushes towards the sound,
an interesting excerpt from John Vaillant’s book, ‘The Tiger:
A True Story of Vengeance and Survival’ stating, “The one
certainty in tiger tracks is: follow them long enough and you will eventually
arrive at a tiger, unless the tiger arrives at you first.” comes
to mind. The jeep
screeches to a sudden halt near an open field adjacent to a thick patch of
trees when we hear the coveted ‘alarm call’; a shiver of anticipation and
thrill runs down, as I realised that the moment, I had been patiently waiting
for could now be any second away. A herd of Chital (Axis axis) bound
towards the clearing, sprinted across the muddy road from the forest patch. The
faint chirping of crickets and the rustling of grass in the distance is where I
could see the tip of a Barasingha’s antlers gently moving amidst the tall grass
and within minutes emerged a pair of piercing yellow eyes of a tiger and with
just a pointed stare, it had paused time itself for we all stood as still and
stoic as we could while it peered at us and into the distance to carry on with
its meal that had so rudely been interrupted by us. The menacing look and a
blood smeared face, patiently holding onto its prey as it stared us down with
the sound of multiple camera shutters going off, till date remains as the most
bone-chilling and adventurous memory I have had so far. A memory, which for
many of us soon might be limited to colossal screens and digitised holograms;
if memory, if not treasured and protected today may cease to ever exist in the
minds of our future generations given as humans have reduced themselves to mercenaries of nature. As
the tiger gradually dragged its early morning prey farther away from the crowd
of impatient spectators, the image of this feral yet beautiful feline that lay
in front of me made lay as a huge contrast to the image of dilapidated,
malnourished and tortured tigers in various roadside zoos across the globe with
cubs packed away in tiny crates with little to no hygiene care and extreme
duress, ready to either be trafficked or smuggled for their hide, meat or
entertainment purposes; a painful dichotomy reminding us of the dystopian
society we lie in where these misunderstood creatures time and again have faced
the brunt of human impacts be it through a means of entertainment such as
hunting or have fallen victims to vicious and antipathetic sensationalism by
various misinformed groups under the ruse of human-wildlife conflict.
As a few more jeeps are heard rushing to chase the big cat, the tiger
slowly retreats towards the trees and gradually disappears, once again amidst
the tall grass. The feeling of crossing paths with this feral beauty in its
very own territory cannot be over-emphasized; the towering canopies accompanied
with the smell of damp moss and rain, and a magnificent tiger is an experience
of a lifetime and worth every bit and an absolute storybook ending for me.
- Swagatama Mukherjee
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