November 8, 2023

Tuesday, 10:30 PM

Bandhav Vilas, 

Village Kuchwahi, 

Tehsil Manpur,

District Umaria,

Madhya Pradesh, 

India

We did our morning safari in Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve’s Tala Zone, which is not exactly renowned for tiger sighting, which meant that we had no reasons to get our hopes high. So with duller than modest expectations, we entered the reserve. Howsoever modest our expectations, we did find a lot of pugmarks, but no tiger, which did not dampen our enthusiasm because we had not entered the jungle with much hope anyway. The one thing that we knew and were excited about was that one gets great poha and Maggi in the canteen of the Tala Zone. So in the absence of tiger sighting, we focused on other animals and the gastronomic promises of Tala Zone reasonably famed canteen. 

And I was just recording an onscreen surrender to the circumstances, saying that we had not encountered any tigers and were heading to the canteen to savour the food now, having given up on the hope of finding a tiger for the moment. The driver of our gypsy was talking to the drive of another gypsy, probably sharing the disappointment of not coming across a tiger (or, for all I know, exchanging notes on how best to cope with the travails of hosting their mothers-in-law). Irshad was lost in his own thoughts, like he usually is when he is left clueless about how to find a tiger, which can always happen because tigers, being big cats and cats, in general, being notoriously unpredictable, can act in baffling ways. So Irshad was deep around the rockbottom of his thoughts when I heard something that seemed like an unusual sound. And I directed Irshad’s attention to it but he dismissed it as nothing significant. But it sounded like the roar of a tiger because it couldn’t be the sound of far-away thunder. And I said so. Irshad again dismissed it as nothing. 

By the time my short exchange with Irshad ended, the gypsy had already started moving with the drivers having finished their conversation, but it hadn’t rolled far from where it had stopped that the tiger roar became unmistakable and the tiger, called Kajri, made an appearance on the road, crossed it and disappeared into the woods. I managed to click several wonderful pictures. Kajri is suspected by a few people of having killed human beings but it is still doubtful. However, two of her cubs have been put in the enclosure away from her because they were found around dead human beings, who are thought of having been killed by a tiger. But neither of the cubs was seen attacking the humans or eating them. So the best guess is that the human beings came too close to the tiger, perhaps Kajri, and she, being with her cubs, was alarmed and lethally wounded the human beings. Since Kajri or her cubs had not been seen eating them, it doesn’t appear to be the case that the human beings were hunted as prey.