Valmik Thapar’s love affair with tigers stemmed from his love affair with Ranthambore at 23. “I’m a romantic at heart,” he says. There was something irresistible about the heady mix of history and natural life at Ranthambore, with the ruins of the Jaipur maharaja’s fort for a backdrop and tigers striding across the dry grass at the fore. His affair stretched across 20 books on tigers and other wild cats before finding its full fledged love letter in his magnum opus published by Aleph — Tiger Fire - Five Hundred Years of the Tiger in India .
In a lecture at Lit For Life on the book’s contents, Valmik said the book was a collection of the best writings and pictures on the tiger in the past 500 years. The book opens with the tiger’s biological evolution, leads onto its representation in mythology as the vehicle of Goddess Durga, revisits the Mughal era engraving of staged encounters with tigers, and shows paintings of over 150 years old by the British of their explorations in the forests.
An important section documents the creation of Ranthambore national park by Fateh Singh Rathore, with whom Valmik explored the land. It narrates the story of creating a sanctuary from scratch, the relocation of villagers and the slow growth, breeding and preservation of the tigers there. Alongside the story come stunning pictures of the tigers at Ranthambore — a male and female with their two cubs, mothers carrying cubs to change dens and tigers wandering the slim pathways amidst tall brush. After all this absolute beauty came Valmik’s chilling sentence: “Many of the tigers recorded here have died of poaching, either their mothers poisoned or their cubs killed.”
Tiger Fire also features rare photographs of tigers with varied prey — spotted deer amidst water, sambas, boars, crocodiles, sloth bears, pythons and even porcupines or anteaters in both stark black and white and rich colour. “These visuals have been gathered from across libraries and photographers nationwide,” said Valmik. The book closes with the stories of people who have worked with tigers such as Jim Corbett and Fateh, with final pieces on the problems India’s tigers face. “We need a sea of change in thinking,” says Valmik. Tiger conservation cannot be monopolised by the bureaucracy, he emphasises; rather he foresees a future where naturalists, villagers, tribal leaders, conservationists and activists play an equally important role in decision making. “We need to release tigers back into freedom, for that’s what they represent — the spirit of freedom.”
