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My Life with Tigers
Ranthambhore and Beyond
The book takes you on a journey through the jungles of Ranthambore to the conference rooms of the Ministry of Environment and Forest. En route, it introduces people, who cared for the wildlife and the contradicting set of callous beings. And accordingly, you love and hate them. As you turn the leaves
of Valmik Thapar’s My Life With Tigers Ranthambore and Beyond,
you look up to Fateh Singh Rathore, who Valmik refers to as his friend
and ‘tiger guru.’ At the same time, you desperately hope the
system to be rectified, wherein the manpower is wasted and so are the
fund allocations as huge as Rs 350 crore for village resettlement and
an annual amount of Rs 200 crore for the The book is replete with interesting anecdotes of the author’s encounters with tigers in Ranthambore. He revels in the memories of his tiger-watching years, of the day in 1985, when he spotted 16 different tigers and of escaping tiger-chases. The pictures clicked by him make for the striking visual element. You realise the enormity of the sprawling Ranthambore fort and the beautiful spectacle that Jogi Mahal makes for at the edge of the Padam Talao or Lotus lake. Just as you adore pictures of tigers, up, close and personal, especially the one with the caption, "The sharpest canines in the world carry tiny cubs in the gentlest of grips." Unfortunately, the book is equally about the apathetic manner in which matters of tiger reserves are handled. The author expresses his helplessness, in the last chapter of the book, where he writes, ‘recommendations made 30 years back still had to see the light of the day.’ Also, one of the reasons that he decided to call it a day at the National Tiger Conservation authority. But even as he tried to fight the system, he didn’t let it dent his love for tigers, and we know it because he spent that buying tiger art. Rest, his pictures of tigers, of their cubs, of their preys….are an evidence enough of his love for the National Animal.
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management of tiger reserves.
One fact that Valmik emphasised on in the book is that human beings
and tigers can’t co-exist. They need their own area to prosper.