There has scarce been a book about the tiger which does not have a picture of the cat, its forward facing yellow-gold eyes boring a neat hole in the reader’s heart.
There has scarce been a book about the tiger which does not have a picture of the cat, its forward facing yellow-gold eyes boring a neat hole in the reader’s heart. It is into that incision that its strength, its machismo, its enthralling, enticing, entrapping lore is poured. And when the mould cools, the golden lore stays rock-solid, holding for a lifetime the undivided attention of a tiger addict. William Blake was describing the Spanish le tigre, the jaguar, when he wrote the immortal lines of Tiger! Tiger!
Generations of readers have, however, ascribed them to its Asian cousin, and borrowed lines from the poem each time a description of the beast has to be made, be it for a school essay or in scholarly tomes. So, Aleph (the publisher) and Valmik Thapar (the author) are easily forgiven for having fallen prey to the charm of the Fire in the title and the Eyes in the image adorning their magnificent tome on 500 Years of the Tiger in India. They can even be forgiven for not remembering and attributing Tiger Fire as the title of the 1973 David Shepherd masterpiece that sold at an auction raising seed money for initiating Project Tiger in India.
All forgiven, as long as the reader is enlightened about why yet another glossy on the tiger must be bought or read when over 500 books on the beast exists, 20 of them by the redoubtable Mr Thapar himself! As Blake might have said, On what wings dare he aspire
What the hand dare seize the fire And I could add, “Yet again!”
But, Thapar dares well. For with the tiger, unlike with his previous book on cheetahs and lions, he is on familiar terrain. The tiger is a beast that has consumed his days and seduced his nights if his writings are any testament. In Tiger Fire, he has produced a royally laid out illustrated synthesis of the life and times of the main protagonist of his own life. Its heft and exorbitance notwithstanding, it is a great addition to any tiger library that exists in the world.
For one, the book is magnificently produced. Gold, ochre, mahogany and sepia leap out of the carefully crafted pages. The illustrations and photographs are chosen well and of special charm are the new inclusions (see the tiger eating a pangolin 522-23) or playing with a python (534-35).
Among the older lithographs and prints, the enigmatically tusked and entrapped tiger in an elephant’s grasp (35), the white lady about to open her brolly into the face of a tiger (54), the loving embrace of a tiger and nobleman (123) and the death throes of a tiger in a python’s equally loving embrace (139) are worth noting.
The colours are vibrantly reproduced, the design stunning and the binding holds up, despite the weight. Only one thing irks the eye and that is the gutter of the book repeatedly cutting across an animal’s face and body.
The six parts of the book are well conceived. The first, which is unnumbered, lays out the premise of the book, the second (Book One) takes a biological and taxonomic look at the beast, the third (Book Two) unleashes the best part of the book, the anthology of tiger writings, the fourth (Book Three) gives us a personal account of a tiger’s life, the fifth (Book Four) a panoply of pictures and the sixth (Book Five) ends in the by now familiar and anguished cry at the plight of the tiger.
The strength of the book is its midsection (Book 2-4) for there is great love in the selection of the tiger writings, illustrations and photographs. In the rendering of a tiger’s life in Book 4, one is drawn into the life of a young Thapar, in the shadow of his mentor-friend Fateh, driving through the Ranthambhor forests and watching tigers. That is where Thapar is at his lyrical and passionate best. All conservationists will do well to read it, for in it lies the secret to the personal obsession that has made Thapar synonymous with the tiger in India.
And yet, it is on that very note that Book 5 disappoints. From his vantage perch over Indian conservation, Thapar has the opportunity to excite, enthral and make the young Indian passionate about conservation. Alas, this section is vintage Thapar, dripping pessimism, decrying science and promoting conservation based on gut feeling (“Most of my colleagues and I know that there are only between 1,500-2,000 tigers left in India, we even know where they are. Why play games about estimation and counting by a ‘scientific ministry’” ) and fearing that the tiger would go extinct soon. While Thapar is justified in underlying the grave threats to the tiger and the lackadaisical will of governments in the past, there is today a new hope for the tiger. In signing off, such a landmark tome on the tiger with such a gloomy outlook would only lead to further disenchantment rather than hope. I, for one, am among a breed of conservationists who believe that the tiger will outlive us. The next generation, I believe, will see our charismatic national animal and continue to mis-recite the ode to the jaguar:
Tiger, tiger, burning bright, In the forests of the night
Vivek Menon is a practicing wildlife conservationist and environmental commentator
