In Memory of a Tiger Man

The tiger-tailed comet named Fateh Singh Rathore blazed across our collective skies, dousing itself in the forests of Ranthambhore on March 1, 2011 after 73 years.

I am not a superstitious person. But like everyone fortunate enough to have spent time in his company, I know, without hesitation, that Fateh will spend eternity among Ranthambhore’s tigers. He will occasionally take a little time from his beloved forest to haunt bureaucrats and government officials in Sawai Madhopur, Jaipur, and Delhi foolish or short-sighted enough to fail to do everything in their power to protect the tiger, thus incurring the Tiger Man's wrath. By the same token, whenever they take steps to ensure the tiger's future in India, they will unaccountably feel the most genial presence.

I first met Fateh, in the mid-1990s, in my living room in New York, in the pages of Geoffrey and Diane Ward’s beautiful book Tiger Wallahs: Encounters with the Men Who Tried to Save the Greatest of the Great Cats. The Wards devoted a long chapter to Fateh that will become a treasure and a refuge to those who will miss him so deeply. Anyone longing to spend a few more minutes in Fateh’s company, if only on the printed page, can find solace here. Before I had finished the first paragraph, I was mesmerised by this whiskey-swigging, ghazal-singing tiger guru who in person turned out to be as welcoming of wide-eyed American admirers as he was of the most significant Indian or international VIP.

Fateh’s campfire was a place of wonder. Night after night, stars overhead, happy humans drawn together by the warmth and passion of Fateh’s personality, the occasional tiger or leopard roaming just outside the fire’s glow... was there any more meaningful place to be on this lovely planet? I can picture that campfire as if from outer space. It is burning bright.

It was awe-inspiring to watch Fateh, with consummate grace and his unique panache, balance the demands of protecting Ranthambhore with the more prosaic comforts of his guests. I remember one night at the campfire banquet, laughing as he piled chapatis on my young daughter’s plate, dubbing her “Princess Chapati,” a name she’ll carry with her always. On her first trip into Ranthambhore, Julia sat beside Fateh in the front of his jeep, her face spellbound as she listened to his whispered interpretations of the vocalisations coming from a tigress and cubs invisible in a hillside glade.

The forest found Fateh after he had wandered through his youth, uncertain of his place in the world. Interviewing him for this magazine in March 2008, I heard from his own lips what Ranthambhore’s tiger-filled forest was like when he arrived decades ago:

The beds of the three lakes where people see all the wildlife today were farms where water chestnuts and wheat were cultivated. There was very little water for wildlife. There were shops near the Fort! Everywhere you looked, there were agricultural plots. The forest was completely denuded by cattle, by people, by lopping and browsing. You couldn’t see a blade of grass on the ground. There were 96 villages on the periphery, 20,000 people and an equal number of cattle. People used to camp everywhere. At night, if you climbed the Fort and looked out over the entire park, you saw nothing but campfires. Every hilltop was occupied. No one today can even imagine what it used to be.

If we wish to never see what Fateh witnessed in those first months and years of his work in Ranthambhore, we must follow in his footsteps, giving our own heart and soul to ensuring a secure future for tigers in the beautiful landscape that Fateh returned to Nature. Chinese folklore claimed that the wind was the breath of the tiger. When tigers are secure in Fateh’s vision of India, people of all stripes will breathe easy as well.

~ Written by myself for the April 2011 issue of Sanctuary Asia (www.sanctuaryasia.com)

~ To read an obituary of Fateh in The New York Times, click here.