Today I am going to write about an incident that took place some week back and will surely be itched in my memory forever. It happened when I along with my colleagues went to Nagarhole National Park one weekend and luckily spotted a beautiful full-grown tiger in behest of nature in full wild.
I have had my previous experiences of touring various forests and national parks across India including Sundarbans, Tadoba, Pench, Kanha and Bandipur in search of sighting that elusive beast. I had seen tiger pugmarks, tiger shit, tiger piss and all things remotely linked to tiger in previous outings but unfortunately no tiger. A guide who accompanied us in Sunderbans said a very scary and thoughtful statement about tiger sighting in Sundarbans. He said “If you ever see a tiger in sundarban, that will be the last thing you will ever see in your life”. Amitava Ghosh in ‘The Hungry Tide’ perhaps best captured this emotion.
By the time when I came to Nagarhole, I was quite convinced that tiger sighting is not only a matter of extreme luck but an impossible thing to happen. Inspite of that, hope keeps me going and I woke up a 4 am in the morning for another elusive quest at seeing tiger. We reached Nagarhole early in the glorious Sunday morning. We took the first jungle safari of the day and went out for another sojourn into the magnificent wild.
After traveling for about 15 minutes and having multiple encounters with deers and peacocks I started feeling sleepy, perhaps Sunday morning syndrome was getting over me. Suddenly a guy from the back started shouting “Sher Sher!!”.I look back at him thinking what kind of joke he came up with in the middle of the jungle. I saw where his finger is pointing and to my utter disbelief there it was, the king of the jungle. On our left, some 30 meters away, behind dry grass - a yellow heap with black stripes. It was bigger than any Tiger seen at any city Zoo in our whole entire life. It seemed anywhere between 6-8 feet long at the torso alone, with a huge face and thick paws. People gaped, eyes were still and the shutters were fluttering at full tempo. The driver started moving the vehicle slowly backwards, parallel to the cat. The tiger seemed conscious of our presence gave us a shrill look (perhaps we spoiled its Sunday). It then started moving slowly and disappeared sublimely like a true king.
This was really a moment which took my breath away and in the end , all I can say is the tiger is everything William Blake wrote in his famous poem "The Tyger".
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