Tiger! My Own Fondness for the Tiger is a Kind of Love Affair: Love at First Sight, Complete and Everlasting

To a majority of people, tiger watch is an exotic and dramatic pursuit. For some, an unbelievable occupation, but to a minority, It is an absorbing passion. Surviving through its dangers they discover it ot be a most spectacular engagement. Rahul Shukla and his photographer friend Yogesh Kumar are probably one of those handful of people for whom the jungle has always been a home and both its innocent dangerous animals their close and distant companions. The stories in this book are the recollections of the Author’s encounters with tigers and the profound thrill of chase and love for the denizens of the wild. These episodes of tiger tracking, though separated in time, are brought together under a common theme. The greater material of the book originates for the Author’s ancestral village Larti, that lies like an island in the middle of Sal jungles adjoining the borders of Kishanpur tiger reserve, a trans-Sharda complex of Dudhwa national Park in North India. Here Rahul spent his boyhood in association with the native hunters, wandering in search of tigers and leopards and other game animals and watching the climatic and ceaseless struggle for survival – of both animals and natives -from very close quarters. The book approaches the readers with nostalgic sentiments recalling the days of hunting, which is a less understood sport and often deprecated as being pure atavism. You may like or hate it, but tales of hunting invariably arouse interest for their appeal is basic and opposition they generates is emotional. No one was neutral to hunting in the environment where Rahul lived. Yet, he was a rather odd person who loved to follow the game in the deep forests with an intention of observing it. He spent long days and nights, waiting by the river in a hide for a glimpse of the striped cats. His observations over a long period around Larti are of riveting interest. The book mericulously traces the Author’s apparent conflict and enigma since boyhood to youth to show his transformation from an amateur hunter to an ardent conservationist.