Death of a King

It’s 2.40AM and I find myself unable to sleep. Last night I slept at 4. Don’t know what’s bothering me. I do not fit in my new abode.

My thoughts, I don’t know why, wandered towards the tigers. Tomorrow, I am planning to go to Melghat to see tigers in the wild. They are saying, only 1411 left. I know the number is exaggerated. There won’t be more than a 1000. And soon there will be a time when tigers will follow the path of Indian Cheetah. That is, only to be found in Indian folklore. I am not being pessimistic. I am being realistic. They won’t make it.

The reason is human being – the silliest and the puniest of all the creatures. I think we are nature’s biggest blunders. Having said that, I have heard that nature doesn’t make mistakes. It’s Mother. But there are aberrations, exceptions, and so, I strongly believe, we are the one. Hobbes after pouncing on Calvin predicted that he won’t survive in the jungle for a minute, to which Calvin retorted that that was why he lived there. No wings, no fangs, no canines, no speed, so strength, so endurance, no prehensile tail – Only so called intelligence using which we are destroying ourselves and others. We left the jungles but we carried the insticts with us. Like most of the animals, we also are territorial and that is the reason for so many clashes across the world, for the sky rocketing prices of homes. May  be I am wrong but the ‘chota sa ashiyana’ thing is that very instinct. It’s that very urge. And it’s that instinct and that urge that has led to the clash with nature. We are so successful, and hence so many that there are little scope of anything else on this earth apart from us. We cut trees because we need furnitures but what about the birds who were living there? We kill animals because we need purse, bags, souvenirs and what not. What about the young they left behind? We encroach land meant for animals and then complain they attack us. We went to their land, not the other way round. But I cannot complain about so many people living in buffer zone. We are just so many and so successful that we can’t help. We need animals eliminated.

Jungle’s rule rules – survival of the fittest, and so we will kill. We no doubt are the fittest. And so only we will live. Let’s see.

Starting 1900, there were 1 lakh tigers. Come 2000, there are 1000. 99000 tigers killed. It’s not the doing of poachers only. They have been active in the last 30 years only and are mainly poor people who do this because one tiger kill will ensure them bread and butter for a lifetime. It’s that lucrative. The major share of blame goes to erstwhile Maharajas and Kings for whom, gaming was a hobby and a tiger kill was the ultimate sign of masculanity. The photograpgs with their legs on the dead tiger carcass depicts that. I ask,  is sitting on an elephant, with a 1000 beaters to hole the beast out and firing numerous shots to kill one scared, poor animal is masculanity? I have read stories where hunters ventured into the jungle, saw a tiger or a leopard and bang they fired. That time it was not the necessity of land which prompted tiger kills. It was sheer fun and adrenaline. Now, the problem is that we need their land.

Tigers won’t survive because a certain players comes and tells there are only this much left and pockets some cool crores and goes. Tigers won’t survive because we sit in our A/C cubicles and write blogs and forward emails. It will survive only when left alone which we cannot because we must interfere. We are right into the buffer zone. Itcan’t  be helped and we are getting inner and inner. In short, they won’t survive. To expedite the exit, it’s they ear of the tiger in China.

Awaring city folks will not help. We need to reach out to the people who are directly involved. The poachers and the villagers. We need to make them aware that tiger tourism holds more potential than a tiger body. People need to be relocated and a share of tiger tourism should be shared by them. The same is being followed in the case of desert lions. Poachers should be brought to the mainstream. Because the problem is that people don’t realise that their one act of madness is so devastating. All they see is the money they get.

Thank you for living dear Tigers. You lent some of your beauty and grace to this world which is getting increasingly uglier with each one of you passing every day. You were the most beautiful and most powerful animal we saw. We killed the King.

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