Kanha, Hunter & The Hunted (2011)
I haven’t had much luck with tiger-spotting although I have visited quite a few tiger sanctuaries in the country. My five visits to Jim Corbett over a period of 25 years yielded nothing more than wild elephants, deer and mynahs. But Kanha was so close at hand when we visited Jabalpur, Bhopal and Indore. So we took a cab from Jabalpur and drove to Kanha. With much aforethought, I had booked the forest guest house inside the jungle. It was a tiled old British bungalow with dark and dank bathrooms and a gorgeous courtyard in front where wild visitors dropped by from time to time. Peacocks set up a continuous racket all day while an occasional herd of deer would forage in the foreground. We had our meals and tea under the sprawling canopy of an ancient tree and never left our wicker chairs except for the two safaris included in the price of our stay.
So, when we set out on our early morning safari the next day, all I expected to see were the usual simians and deer. As our guide, a burly middle-aged man got on to the jeep (visitors are forced to hire a guide), he was yawning away. It looked as if he would much rather be in bed at this early hour than accompany us into the silent jungle. Somehow he roused himself awake and started pointing out trees and naming them. I lost my temper and shouted at him to shut up. I did not go to Kanha to see trees. If he can show us tiger, he should, otherwise, he might as well doze off, I said.
That completely jolted him awake. He mumbled something about luck playing a huge part in wildlife spotting. Nevertheless, he kept a sharp eye for movement and lo and behold, here we were, watching a tiger stalk a herd of deer, pick the weakest of the lot, grab the poor animal by the neck and hold it till all life ebbed out of the prey, then dragged it across our path. What a magnificent sight!
Initially, the tiger was hidden behind waist-high grass and shrubbery. We saw him stalking a herd of deer. There was much alarm among the deer as they pricked up their ears in premonition and glanced around nervously. But the tiger is the sultan of stealth. She took her time sizing up the deer to pick the weakest. Before we realised what was happening, she was on the poor timid fawn, her front paws on the hindquarters, tripping up the animal. The others took fright and scooted in an instant, looking over their shoulders to see what was happening. The mother might have been there, but there was nothing she could have done. The tigress is obviously an expert. She did not drag the struggling fawn, but just held its neck between her teeth and waited patiently for the thrashing to stop. My own emotion on seeing this primordial ritual was more sadness than awe. We watched in agonised silence as she dropped the fawn on the dust and began to drag it. By then, the herd of deer which had darted to a safe haven, turned back to witness the fate of one of their own. Do animals have emotions like us? Do they feel grief? Certainly they do feel fear, but what about sadness? I couldn’t even imagine living in a condition where I have to be constantly on the alert for a killer, constantly glancing over my shoulders for the attacker, never relaxing even in sleep. Can you? How we humans have managed to secure our own existence, using our privileged position at the apex of the living world even as we threaten every other species, encroaching into their space and preempting their food and sustenance. How we have fortified our dwellings with steel, concrete and complex electronics to dissuade any attacker, even as we render vulnerable, other creatures on the planet, exposing them to the elements and danger when we cut down forests, depriving them of food when we dig up their habitats for minerals. I couldn’t bring myself to write about this trip. So it is just this post.