I am absolutely certain I will keep this one for posterity. Reading this book was akin to reliving a long-cherished dream. It is short, filled with vital information and is beautiful in the way it captures the essence of a magnificent beast. This is a book that every nature lover would love. Thapar writes with great lucidity and erudition and you can sense his deep love for the forests and the tigers in his writing. It is also a delightful read if you have any interest in the tiger. It is perhaps the first one to record the family life and myriad facets of the behaviour of the wild tiger in such details. The Secret Life of Tigers is an important book. All we can do is delay it for as long as possible. Human greed has now ensured that the tiger will certainly be extinct. Years and years of mindless hunting and poaching has brought the tiger to the brink of extinction and now there is no coming back from it. Sample this: at the turn of the last century, we had about 40,000 tigers in the Indian wild and now we have barely 1500 left. Thapar concludes the book by presenting a grim picture of the tiger’s destiny in our country. These were such captivating images that spending some time at Jogi Mahal is now one of my life’s goals. The tigers drink from the lake, rest by its banks and hunt whenever they can, sometimes even in the lake waters. There are a few scenes where you can almost see the tiger, with its great yellow and black stripes, inserting its canines in the throat of the deer and bringing it down.Īnother part I loved was Thapar sitting in the verandah of Jogi Mahal (an old government rest house inside the forest premises), overlooking the Padam Talao, and observing the tigress Noon along with her cubs for days. Descriptions of the tiger hunting its quarry are thrilling. I felt like I was right there beside Thapar as he observed and documented the lives of these tigers. * In protected and undisturbed habitats like Ranthambhore, the tiger can flourish and reveal facets of its family life that few can imagine possible.Īside from revealing some important information about the life of a tiger, this book is also charming to read. There is a heart-breaking scene in the book where a tigress kills all three of her cubs by choking them because she couldn’t provide them with food and couldn’t carry them along any longer with her. * As protective as tigress is about her cubs, she can be forced to end their life in certain circumstances. In fact, this book, through proper evidences shows that the resident male plays a role in raising the family. * The resident male who fathers a litter doesn’t always abandon its family. * Tigers live in family groups that maintain links even after cubs reach adulthood, thus demonstrating the possibility of sustaining kin links over long periods of time. The Indian tiger was driven to its solitary or nocturnal nature in order to survive the ruthless hunting that it was subjected to for decades in the country. It can hunt with its cubs and even its kin, depending on the bonds it forms with them. I have noted down a few new points that I learned about the tiger after reading this book. This book, however, helped shatter many of them. First published in 1989, the entire book is written in the forests of Ranthambore, under an open sky, where Thapar, along with Fateh Singh Rathore (former Game Warden of Ranthambhore), track the families of these three star tigresses and with it producing some hitherto unknown secrets about the animal.Īs an eternal fan of the tiger, there were plenty of myths and legends associated with it that I had grown up with. While following these tigers many secrets are unfolded and several myths are busted about the legend of the Indian tiger.Ī noted naturalist himself, Thapar paints a vivid and charming picture of the forest life and the magnificent tigers roaming about it. It chronicles the lives of three tigresses and their cubs inside the Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan and records for the first time the role of the resident male tiger. The Secret Life of Tigers by Valmik Thapar is a mesmerizing book that took me right inside one of my dreams. Sometimes I see myself inside a forest, watching a tiger go about its business from close quarters. I dream about these gorgeous and mystical animals all the time. As a child, I would gape wide-eyed at those nature documentaries on BBC showing the life of the Indian tiger. I have been deeply fascinated by the tiger for as long as I can remember. Book Review: The Secret Life of Tigers by Valmik Thapar
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