A lesson in how not to save a tiger

Sundari turned out to be Sundar, a young tiger in his prime, claws intact. Not a man-eater, though perhaps a man-hater. Representation pic/AFP

The cautionary story of Sundari is remarkable for many reasons, not least because hardly anyone even knows about it. This magnificent Sunderbans tiger, dubbed the terror of Jharkali, was all the talk in Calcutta in the mid-70s, after reports that it was a man-eater.

It has all the elements of a great story - a fearsome monster, a terrified population, a great white hunter, a thrilling capture and, in the end, a brutal lesson. To me, it is a heart-breaking example of the great harm sometimes done by humans setting out to do good - I call it maltruism. Sundari was a victim of the good intentions and ignorance of well-meaning conservationists.

Very little grows in the islands of the Sunderbans besides dense mangroves, thanks to daily flooding by salty tidewater. The vegetation, shoulder-high at its highest, creates a desolate, ghostly landscape, full of omens and vague dread.

Jharkali's villagers refer to the tiger as dada lest he feels summoned. In the fields, they wear masks painted with faces on the back of their heads to fool dada. But dada, the world's only fish-hunting tiger, has been marginalised in his own jungle for decades by creeping agriculture and settlements like Jharkali. His territory now overlaps human farmlands; incursions and encounters are unavoidable. Sometimes the tiger will lash out; sometimes a human will die.

Jharkali's villagers decided to deal with Sundari the usual way, by digging a deep pit concealed under straw and leaves. Once the tiger fell into it, they could poke it to death.

The World Wildlife Fund didn't care for such solutions. India's tiger population had dropped from around 40,000 in the 1950s to just about 1,800 two decades later. Word went out to Kathmandu, where a lanky, good-looking conservationist called John Seidensticker was tagging tigers to study them. Would he mind helping out with Sundari?

The plan was simple - a goat would be tethered to a mangrove bush. Within firing range, atop a free-standing machan about 30 feet high, would be John with his anesthetising gun. When the cat showed up, he'd fire the darts and knock the beast out. Sundari would be caged and released into a farther island without human beings.

Ten days had passed, and Sundari had come for the goat just once on a moonless night. Seidensticker had held his fire, unable to get a clean shot.

I was one of the last to arrive and made matters worse by disembarking one boat stop too early. Suddenly, there I was, two kilometres from Jharkali, ankle-deep in sticky clay, mud crabs and mangroves everywhere. The sun had set, the sky was darkening rapidly. This is when tigers come out.

I walked along a raised embankment between swamps - passing within 15 feet of Sundari.

I know this because I met another journalist, Abdi, already drunk and lurching in the opposite direction, towards Seidensticker's machan. I learned the next day that Sundari had stepped out onto Abdi's path minutes later. Man and beast had stared at each other, one drunk and the other hungry. Then the tiger disappeared.

That night, around 1 am, the drums began. It was a moment out of an Indiana Jones film. As word spread that Sundari had been captured, a ring of fire appeared along the horizon, converging on the machan as villagers approached, beating drums. The tiger, unconscious, had been bundled into a crate and loaded onto a waiting boat.

Sundari turned out to be Sundar, a young tiger in his prime, claws intact. Not a man-eater, though perhaps a man-hater. It was mid-morning when we reached the destination island. The anesthetic was wearing off, and the tiger was growling and stirring.

The crate was taken ashore and turned on its side, a rope tied to its sliding door. The boat slowly backed away, and the door slid out. The tiger was free to go.

Except that he seemed to prefer the crate. Fingers stayed poised over cameras to record the historic moment a tiger was ‘saved'. An hour passed, then Sundari quickly emerged and slunk away.

There remained the question of the crate. Being government property, it had to be retrieved and accounted for. But two days later, when the boat returned for the crate, they found it occupied. The tiger was inside.

Four days later, they found the crate vacant. This time, though, they found the pug marks of two tigers around the cage. The trail led down into the swamp, where they found signs of an epic battle and the highly decomposed body of Sundar, mauled to death.

Tigers are highly territorial, each one needing about 10 sq kms. Sundar had been saved from humans - but unwittingly released into the territory of a larger, stronger tiger.

Here, viewed from there. C Y Gopinath, in Bangkok, throws unique light and shadows on Mumbai, the city that raised him. You can reach him at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.