A female cub from the late Aunt Jujju’s first litter, photographed sleeping at Rajbehra on my first ever safari in Bandhavgarh. In those days the unsightly eyesore of the watch tower was not in existence and the water surface that season was flush with the top of the dam wall, making the already pretty heart of Bandhavgarh assume pulchritude of celestial proportions. Fittingly, she seemed to be taken in by the spectacle, for she would be seen almost every day around the dam that May. She disappeared during the monsoon of 2007 never to be seen when the park reopened. And so the home that she so loved and where her heart was, had turned from a haven to possibly a pathway to heaven.
TIGGA TALES 