Tiger Tales Ustaad the man-eating tiger

                                                                        Tiger Tales

Tiger, the name itself is enough to bring a nervous sweat around the palm of our hands. An encounter with a mighty brute in the middle of a dense forest can be a nightmare for anyone. God forbid, if it’s a man-eater, very few people live to tell their tale. Now, in this section of the series, ‘Tiger Tales’, I would start with a difference between an ordinary tiger and a man-eater. Sir Jim Corbett, a household name in Kuman region of India, differs from others when they use terms, ‘as cruel as a tiger’ or ‘as bloodthirsty as a tiger’. He believes that we defame the tiger with these terms. He tells a story of a small boy, who wandered through the dense jungles and explored it. He was armed with an old muzzle-loaded gun. There were ten tigers that also roam in the forest at the same time. When tired, this young boy slept on the ground under a tree. He fought the chill only with a fire that was burning only a few meters away. At night, the boy’s sleep was interrupted for a brief period as he heard a tiger growl. Fortunately, the tiger passed through the scrub jungle. The boy got up and instead of looking for a safe location; he puts few pieces of wood in the fire and goes to sleep again. This proves that a normal tiger does not harm anyone unless it is molested. Seeing a human working in the field or taking water from the opposite bank of a stream, the tiger would only turn his head, watch over his shoulders and then disappears into the thickness of a jungle. For many years, thousands of unarmed villagers and travelers worked in the fields and used scrub jungle without being harmed by tigers. The only time, an ordinary tiger kills a human is when it is concerned for the safety of its cubs or a human enters too close for its comfort. In these cases, a tiger usually gives a warning before charging. Even if the tiger charges, sometimes his courage leaves him and he backs off. But there are exceptions.

Let us see an example of Ustaad, a nine-year-old male tiger in his prime that lived in the popular Ranthambore National Park. Ustaad fascinated tourists from all over the world and his fan club is enormous, from Australia to Ireland. Till date he has been the most watched tiger in a single day, when he sat on the ground of a resort and also when he sat in the middle of a highway with its kill, a deer. On few occasions, Ustaad preferred the cemented road that went to the pilgrimage but he never harmed pilgrims. He never charged at them. He never harmed the forest guards who went into the deep forests only with a stick. However, things changed in the year 2012, when one forest guard went too near to him in the thickness of a bush where he was resting. Ustaad killed him and he only sat near his body until other guards came back and busted crackers to rush him back to the forest. He again killed another forest guard who too went near to him while he was resting in a pond. Probably in both the cases, Ustaad was upset that the guards went too near to him. Whether he was molested or got frightened, no one can predict. After this, Ustaad was shifted to Udaipur to live in solitary confinement. Ustaad, the magnificent tiger was labeled as a man-eater.

A man-eater, when it charges, it charges to kill. It means business. It is a wrong theory that a tiger becomes a man-eater when it gets old. No. When I will discuss Chowgarh tigers in the later part of the series, we would know that one of the Chowgarh man-eater tigers was a young tiger. Mohan man-eater, Chuka man-eater, and Kanda man-eater were young tigers in their prime age. This proves that age is not the reason that turns an ordinary tiger into a man-eater. One of the main reasons that a tiger takes a fancy to human is an injury caused by the hunting parties. In the south, during pre-independence period, the hunting parties in cars used to shoot at anything they saw at evening hunting expeditions. In many cases, the bullet fired injures a leg or a jaw that makes tiger impossible to hunt his natural prey. A tiger, known as ‘Mauler of Rajnagara’ mauled around 30 people with its forepaws because it was not able to use its ‘killer teeth’ due to a stray bullet that injured the jaw. It’s a human race that makes the tiger a man-eater. When an ordinary tiger charges, it mostly uses its forepaw to hit a person on the back of the neck and this mighty blow kills a person. The tiger leaves. But when a man-eater charges, it uses forepaw to ground the person and then its sharp teeth pierces the neck. So next time, when in the tiger zone, never get down from your jeep.