--
“Deja Vu confirms a
faithful path worth taking.”
―
It's said that every time you visit a forest it looks different, even the same spots with the same trees also gives you a different feel in a single day & Tadoba is no exception to this law of the wilds! Yet interestingly, you find similarity between the events as the place is the same, timing is the same, you are some but the characters may be different & in the back of your mind you keep thinking, you have lived these moments earlier, right here yet the excitement is the same, rather its more with every trip! As in forests few things don’t change such as some tree along the road which has witnessed so many incidences, the tree has stood over the markings of different tigers as average age of a tiger in the wild is fourteen to fifteen years & that too a tiger can keep a particular territory (read as defend the territory) hardly for six or seven years i.e. when its in prime age. As the tiger or tigress grow old, younger tigers take their respective place but the tree remains the same, witness of the transition & same is with a water body in that territory. The dusty paths are one more witness of tiger’s dynasties & all of these are part of our Déjà vu moments as they become the canvas of our stories! That's why we discussed the Deja Vu effect where you feel like you have experienced a set of incidents earlier also & this Tadoba trip gave me many of them, here are few of them!!
Cut 1:
Choti Tara sitting on Pandharpauni water hole road which was earlier territory of legendary Maya tigress & where I have clicked Maya with her cub nearly ten years back, in the same pose I saw Choti tara & her sub adult cub. Road was same, pose of sitting of maya was same, the cub walking towards her affectionately, was same; even two gypsies in the frame on the background, was same. The only difference was, it's Choti Tara this time & slight change of angle for clicking for me. When I saw Maya, she was facing me & the cub’s face was hidden behind, here Choti Tara’s face was hidden behind the cub but the entire setting was the same, a perfect Déjà vu!
Cut 2 :
At 97 No. water-hole I saw a young male Tiger lazing on a hot noon. This particular water hole is the favourite hanging spot of two/ three male tigers as mainly of-late Mowgli named tiger has made this place as his personal pool! At fir we thought its Mowgli only but when the tiger looked at us, we realized it's much younger eyes looking at us, these eyes lack hardness of stare which comes only by the battles you have to fight to survive for long in the forests, which Mowgli has & our guide said, Sir, ye naya male hai, young hai, isse Collerwala kahate hai! I have clicked Mowgli just two years back & seems slowly the young male is trying his luck with the place as his territory & that’s how forest life moves on. Seems Mr Mowgli is also busy in expanding his territory but the look, the pose the way neck cocked up at the sound of alarm calls of & the rise from the water & the walk, for a movement except size everything was getting repeated & I have lived another Déjà vu moment in Tadoba!
Cut 3 :
It was a hot summer season ending noon, sky was cloudy yet mercury was up & forest was silent. I have agreed to come for this trip for only one reason, to watch Choti Tara grooming her sub adult female cubs & this might be her last litters as she is already nearly fifteen years old & both these cubs are females means when they will grow full then they only will take CT’s (choti tara’s nickname is CT) territory, pushing her in outer jungle where her survival will be very difficult considering age is not on her side now! This thought which does makes me sad, but it made me push aside my workload & I signed up for the trip. And CT didn’t disappoint me, giving us a full show which made me live multiple Déjà vu moments along. I have been clicking & watching Choti tara since last ten years, from her first cubs which includes today’s king of tadoba, Chota Mataka. And present two queens of Tadoba are also CT’s daughters i.e. Bijli & Roma. On the background of lush green grass cover around Pandharapuni water hole while CT walking towards our gipsy & the sub adult cub trailing, I relived the same scene nearly nine years back, with then the cub Chota Matka walking behind her, a perfect Déjà vu!
And then to get CT head on where she was looking in my camera, her eyes which were never glowing but warm (rather loving always), I remembered all those times when I have kept looking at her through the lens, while she walked head-on towards me & I can see her as a young female, then as a matured lady & today, she is nearly age of a grannie (from tiger’s life span aspect), tired she is & fragile, yet the eyes carries same warmth & confidence! Guys, I have been visiting forests for more than three decades & forest has taught me the brutality of life or say practicality which has helped me in my own life back here in our concrete jungle! Yet this time when my eyes got locked with Choti Tara’s eyes & the look she gave me, like she was telling me, “are you happy now, after clicking me; I am ageing, I know I don’t look anymore the way you have seen me in my prime, now my skin is not shining & my muscles are loose & my bones are weak, my face isn’t beautiful the way it used to be, but my will to give my best is still the same. I will be leaving my legacy here forever in the form of these two girls of mine & they will carry on, take care of them, click them also with the same love & affection the way you have for me” & she disappeared in the woods crossing our gipsy! That was the ultimate Déjà vu of locking eyes with CT, & when I felt camera vision was blurred, I tried to wipe the lens & realized it was not lens problem but my eyes had become watery by the Déjà vu effect of Choti Tara. I wiped tears from my eyes & came out of forest praying for one more Déjà vu to live with CT though I know this is how the wildlife is yet as Mr Hodge has said, Déjà vu is a faithful path, so I am sure I will see CT once again! Apart from Déjà vu moments, I got to see (read as study) the way a tigress teaches her cubs to make their territory, going ahead first, selecting a right tree & then scratching it with nails & urinating for scent & making the cubs follow this! And all this when the mom knows that she will be the victim of this training, that’s what a tigress mom is!
Btw, if you are wondering with names like Mowgli, Collerwala, Maya, Charger, then these are not human characters but a lot more than that, these are tigers whose home is Tadoba & though forest dept doesn’t acknowledge or approve naming tigers but then, the Déjà vu can’t be with the numbers but only with the names & faces behind those names, so be it! Oh yes, needless to say, right from chinkara grazing in the fields along the Samrudhhi Highway to Pied King Fisher’s acrobatics in air to experiencing wonder full Father-Son relation among tigers (Charger & Veerappan), a lot of learnings were there too!
Here are some of the Deja Vu & other moments of Tadoba,
plz check the Flickr link along…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/coexistance_is_the_key/albums/72177720327613768/with/5466058964
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Sanjay Deshpande
Sanjeevani Dev.
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