As clouds gathered, what was looming wasn’t rain, but the revival of memories from another era.
Tag: Tala
Mirth
My perch in the tree-house creaked. I sat heavily on my feeble rump, feeling in every breath the pangs of a bereaved man. “Old Hag knows the cause of your melancholy,” said Old Hag, who, turning around I noticed, was seated legs folded, roughly two feet off the floor in thin ether. “But let me…
A Tiger’s Way
The wheels rolled into Rajbehra one searing afternoon, and we learned that one of the Jhurjhura cubs had taken throne on a rocky outcrop behind the dam. As I sat in brief contemplation, the following advisement from an eminent photographer cracked the silence at its seams: “Kaunsa lens hai tere paas, bhai? 300 hai, na?…
The Heart’s Eye
Two gleaming gems. Like polished marbles from the Welkin’s riverbeds. By day they hide, at noon they rest, and by night they glow in the lonesome bight. Yet, by morning they’re gone, set with the moon, down horizons unknown. Sparks from tinder, brilliant but short, fanned by the wind. How bright they glow! How bright!…
Kinarwah Chronicles
In the pursuit of wildlife, fantasy is a constant companion. With ambition as its close ally, the mind goes about weaving dreams at every corner, and causes the heart to wistfully sigh when they don’t come true. One such long-nursed dream was to see a tiger at Kinarwah, the manmade waterhole at the fringe…
Wise as a Tiger
My eleventh visit to Bandhavgarh began on an ominous note. At the tail end of the first safari, we arrived at Gopalpur Meadow to find an extremely genial English gentleman, whom I was to later identify as John Aitchison, a wildlife cameraman who’d won an Emmy for my then favourite documentary, Frozen Planet. He…
Late-Morning Action
My friends have a most profound distaste for the road that runs precipitously down from Vulture Nest to Ghodademon Junction. I’ve always loved it for the sense of adventure and anticipation it evokes but my friends find it too bumpy for their hips, so they’d rather spare themselves the teeth-clattering ride for all the obscure…
The Bold New Face of Banbehi
It was late in the morning. The sun, having long since gained a firm foothold in the sky, climbed to dizzying heights. The ground, warmed by his telling ascent, baked the living hopes of the visitors into thin air, leaving only the most tenacious ones behind, who, including us, patiently pursued a change of…
Eye of a Storm
On the first death anniversary of B2, the greatest cat I’ve known… The storm brewing in the sky halted its charge midway. It retreated abruptly, with respect writ large on its face, seemingsffvdly to give way to its more subtle and potent counterpart on the earth, which the inchoate sapling to the grandest…
Crucified for No Crime?
Let a hundred guilty go scot-free, but not one innocent should be punished” says the Law. Unfortunately tigers don’t seem to be eligible for such penal largesse as they continue to pay the ultimate price for human avarice and callousness. Cornered, squeezed out of their decimated homes and slaughtered for their beauty, they find scarce…
Tiger Wars: A New Hope
On the occasion of tiger reserves being reopened to tourism after a three-month ban… The Banbehi female cub in hot pursuit of her brother at Sita Mandap, May 2012 I can smell the wet earth and lap up the dew again. I can breathe the whispering wind and watch a virginal dawn crack again. I…
Cry Baby
On 24 April 2011, evidence was presented that the only thing big about an adolescent male tiger is his body. Deep inside, he’s still a toddler, really. A little after half past five, M2, another handsome product of the Mirchahni School of Superstardom, crossed over to the grassland from the woods of Andhiyari. We thought…
Portfolio of a Princess
A Green-Carpet Welcome: When all hope was lost and chances seemed thinner than a shoestring, against all odds emerged from the woods this precocious girl of incredible audacity, crossed between a crowd of vehicles and walked out into the open where an exalted crowd of stunned onlookers gave her a rapturous green-carpet welcome on the…
Venus and Adonis
Even as Bamera was showing himself off as pictured and depicted in the previous post we realised that Kankati too was nearby. Shortly, prompted by a sun who was increasingly asserting himself, Bamera moved to sit down in a shaded area and thinking this to be a spot conducive to romance, Kankati moved in before him,…
TIGGA TALES 