Safari with Tiger Sahib

The moment I started reading Vikram Sundarji’s sensitive recall, ‘My Father and his Presence’, my mind switched to the closing months of 1982, to a picturesque blue water lake in the lap of pale brown sand dunes of Rajasthan, in the vicinity of Suratgarh village.

The newly promoted Western Army Commander, Lt Gen K Sundarji, lost no time to mobilise his entire command for a two-sided war game across the vast Thar Desert region to validate his futuristic concepts of mobile, deep-penetration warfare. As one among half-a-dozen chief umpires of the pitched war gaming, I had ample time to wander and explore the pristine open spaces and chanced upon a moderate lake, teeming with resident and winter migrant water birds.

Scanning with binoculars, I noticed a mound jutting above water about 100 metres from the shoreline with a solitary Eagle Owl perched atop. Fired by curiosity, I commandeered a rubber dingy to approach the mound — no more than a 2-metre circumference but wonder of wonders, home to a pair of the Eagle Owl, raising three chicks!

Having taken several photographs of the sub-adult chicks and on getting back to my Jonga jeep, seated on a camp stool was a person in uniform sipping tea from an enameled mug and deeply engrossed in a magazine. That was my first and much cherished encounter with the future Chief of Army Staff.

The Army Commander was out scouting space for the next phase of the war game and noticing a magazine pile in my Jonga, he got “chatting” with the driver (as was his wont), who promptly invited the General to have a mug of tea! ‘Sanctuary Asia’ was a recent publication on wildlife and it caught his fancy. On termination of the war game, General Sundarji addressed a personal letter to all Major Generals in his Command, gifting one-year subscription of Sanctuary Asia and exhorting each to do likewise with their subordinates for instilling the message of nature and wildlife preservation!

Shortly before assuming command of the Indian Army in 1986, General Sundarji had composed the ‘Vision 2000’ document, ushering a major doctrinal, tactical and organisational overhaul of the Army. What with war-gaming the emerging concepts for validation and modification or outright rejection, followed by a major stand-off against China at Wangdrung in Arunachal (almost in the middle of Thag La and Bum La) and escalating confrontation against the LTTE in Sri Lanka, the Army Chief had had a punishing work schedule.

I was not surprised, therefore, when his Military Assistant telephoned that the Chief had taken three days’ leave before two gazetted holidays and wished to “get lost” for five days. Would I please organise and accompany him on a tiger-sighting holiday? Now, it so happened that there were two Tiger National Parks (TNP) in the near vicinity of my outfit, and one in particular had never disappointed me with its rich stock of mini and mega fauna on display, always. But I had serious misgivings whether a tiger-sighting could be guaranteed on demand, as it were.

When tiger tourism first appeared as a commercial enterprise in India, tigers were lured to live baits in the proximity of suitably constructed “hides” for the spectators. Luckily, this repulsive spectacle was banned after persistent lobbying by the tiger conservation fraternity. A day prior to the Chief’s arrival, the field director of the Ranthambore TNP drove me over one intended circuit. And sure enough, we saw a tiger lapping water from a stream, barely 20 feet away. About an hour later, another tiger was spotted.

These bright prospects were, however, shattered by the weather gods. Overcast skies, intermittent rain and foggy mornings were the fare for the next three days. We braved the winter chill and soaking wet clothes but Sher Khan was nobody’s stooge to show up on command! On the fifth early morning, barely two hours before their departure for Delhi, a forest functionary burst into my room to inform that a tiger had settled under a Karaunda-berry bush, a kilometre away.

I literally bundled the Chief and Mrs Sundarji (both in their night gowns) into an open Jonga and taking the wheel drove to the site as fast as I could dare to.

I drove the Jonga almost into the bush till the Chief’s wife commanded, “Stop!” The confronted tiger began to snarl as he sat holding the severed head of a village pig in his paws. I gradually reversed the Jonga, providing an exit for the tiger.

Coiling his body, the tiger leapt past us and headed for a more secure cover of the TNP. It is not unusual for young tigers to be pushed out by older males from their established territories and in a way compelling the young tigers at times to even prey on livestock, which indeed was the case that we had witnessed!

As we returned to the forest lodge, the staff who had had a grandstand view of the sighting episode, fondly remarked to the Chief, “Tiger kitna sunder hai, sahib!” The Chief was amused beyond words. For, in the Army vocabulary, the Chief is called Tiger, who in the instant case also happened to be ‘Sundar’, albeit Ji!

The Chief loved bird song too; so, using an improvised antenna (made from a kitchen utensil) and his portable tape-recorder, he had made an enviable collection of feathered music from around his one-time residence up in Shimla.

‘Brass-tacks: An old soldier returns home’ was the insightful obituary by the grieving son, Vikram Sundarji, in which he had summed up precisely my thoughts as I stood by the hospital bedside of the ailing Chief: “… One by one, every one of his muscles deserted him. Finally, the man who once commanded one of the world’s most powerful armies could not even order his little finger to do his bidding.”