When the jungle is an entity

Hugh & Colleen Gantzer

The Preserver seeded the idea.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh, we drove into a wooded hillock. There, a long boulder had been sculpted into Lord Vishnu lying on the coils of Sheshnag. A spring of clear water flowed over the Preserver, fell into a masonry pool, and then poured down the hill as a stream, watering the forest. We suddenly realised that a natural forest, one that has been allowed to grow at its own pace over the decades, becomes a living entity. Its trees and wildlife are as closely integrated as the organs, blood and cells in our bodies. From then on Bandhavgarh became a Jungle Book, teaching us new lessons about the unexpectedly linked lives of the animals; and, eventually, of their integrated rules of survival.

We saw families of wild pig bustling like irascible busybodies as they always do: digging for tubers, snuffling in the shallows of forest streams. They were often followed by adjutant storks who, because of their greater height, warn the foraging pigs of approaching danger by taking wing. A sambar stag, with a sweep of antlers, barked an alarm call, sensing danger, sending two timorous barking deer scuttling for cover. Chital, spotted deer, however, believe in the safety of numbers and have come to a cooperative relationship with the tribes of langurs. These black-faced monkeys are wasteful eaters. They consume only half of all they pluck and the chital, grazing below, feast on the bonanza that falls from above. And when the langurs’ sentinels, from their high perch, spot a stalking predator, they scream their alarm calls, and the chital flee, pursued by the great felines, giving langurs on the ground time to leap to the safety of the higher branches. It’s an excellent defensive partnership, much to the anger of leopards and tigers.

Bandhavgarh’s tigers were the ancestors of all white tigers of the world. The first lot of these unique felines was born to a pair of normally coloured tigers, the reassertion of a long dormant gene. Or perhaps, they were a throwback to the tigers’ Siberian ancestors with pale colours adapted to merge with the snowy taiga forests of the tundra. Whatever the reason might have been, when the first white cubs were spotted by forest guards, they became protected because their distinctive colour would have resulted in their extinction in our Indian jungles. But even the normal-coloured big cats seemed to be avoiding us in spite of us doing long rounds both in the morning and the evening.

Near the end of the next morning, we drove rather dejectedly to the Park’s Centre Point. But though a walkie-talkie was spluttering in a forest official’s ear, he didn’t seem at all elated. Many of the other vehicles left. And then our driver came running back. He had the reputation of being an excellent spotter much better than many of the so-called trained guides. His speed now would have beaten a chital in full stride! He leapt in. We lurched ahead, spurting gravel and dust from our tyres. “I overheard what the forest guard said on the walkie-talkie” he shouted over his shoulder. “I know where they’ve found the tiger!”

Thanks to his keen ears and knowledge of the jungle trails, we had more than a headstart over the others. We screeched to a stop near a small riding elephant with its mahawat perched on its neck and a howdah secured on its back.

But there was no ladder, no mounting platform. “How do we climb up?” we asked desperately.

“Use our Gypsy. Hurry!”

And that’s exactly what we did.

We ambled into the jungle on our pachyderm, and stopped. Looked. There, about two metres from the elephant’s foot, a large sub-adult tiger cub lay feasting on a fresh kill: a sambar. It filled our view-finders and digital screens. Dug its head into the carcass; withdrew, chewing; its jaws gory with its meal. Our cameras buzzed and clicked. The mahawat said softly: “There is another.” Lying on her side, satiated, was the cub’s mother, a magnificent tigress.

We, like the tigress, could ask for nothing more. Thank you, Lord Vishnu and your living entity that is the forest sanctuary of Bandhavgarh….