Eighteen tides and a tiger

A book review published at goodbooks on 22nd June, 2017.

Book

Title: Eighteen tides and a tiger

Author: Anjana Basu

Details

Language: English

Pages: 140

Price: Rs 250/-

ISBN: 978-81-7993-649-8

Publisher: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), 2017

The text on Goodbooks here. Thanks are due to the team at goodbooks.

Review Text

Sunderbans is today one of the few tiger reserves, if not the only, which retains an air of mystery. This is not only on account of its landscape – ecologically distinct from other tiger reserves in the country – but also on account of absence of the intensive jeep safaris (tourism) and extensive camera-trapping (research) that one has begun to associate tiger reserves with. Historically too it appears not to have been a hunting ground unlike some of its well-known counterparts. April 2017 brought the news of Indian Wolf having been photographed here for the first time! On the one hand debates over tiger numbers continue while on the other new threats emerge in form of power plants and shipping routes. A landscape which presents unparalleled opportunities for a story; opportunities the author does not exactly capitalize on.

The story premise is appealing. A young person from an urban area and interested in tigers comes to intern with forest department at Sunderbans (Bengal). He brings with him fond memories of the time he spent at Corbett (Uttarakhand) – another tiger bearing landscape - and we therefore have some comparisons of the landscapes. This young person then has an adventure, one that he would remember for long. Woven around this adventure are tigers, people and beliefs people have about tigers. Author brings in different facets including those like the local boat being better for tigers than the hi-tech boat. The mystery around Bonbibi and Dakhin Rai has been netted with the story and the author leaves the reader with a tinge of mystery towards the end as well. In someone, who has not visited the landscape, the book manages to kindle a curiosity about the area and an urge to visit it at an early date. Where the author falters however, despite the positive design, is her black and white take on wildlife conservation and the world around it. Little in the world is black and white; especially in a landscape like Sundewordrbans.

Beginnings are crucial – be it a report, an article or a chapter in a book. Here neither the foreword nor the note in the beginning help the book. Forward begins with ‘people cannot differentiate between a man-eating tiger and a normal tiger’ and note with ‘this is a very different book from In the Shadow of the Leaves and Leopard in the Laboratory’. These set the tone for the pages to follow. One that is high on clichés but lesser said about the nuances the better. Lines like ‘anyone who writes about tigers has at some point to tackle issue of Sunderbans’ do not exactly help.

The cover is eye-catching and pleasant too look at but the illustrations could have been better; especially given that one comes across tiger images far more than those of other species. Editing could have been better. Multiple terms – ‘tiger reserve’, ‘tiger sanctuary’, ‘restricted area’, ‘core area’, ‘national park’ and ‘buffer zone’ have been used. It would have helped to either clarity the terms or avoid them altogether. In the current form they tend to confuse, especially given that some of them overlap each other, and absence of map does not help the case either. Similarly ‘forest department’ and ‘forestry department’ appear to have been used interchangeably as have ‘ghagra’ and ‘skirt’.

Some of the sensationalization could have been avoided. Lines like ‘highest concentration of tigers anywhere’ appear to make little sense, 85, as mentioned in the book itself, is the tiger population. The book however does not make it clear whether the numbers include those in Bangladesh as well. It does state that Bangladesh Sunderbans has a larger area than ours. Similar for lines like ‘animals drank only in the morning or at twilight’. Besides, lines like ‘tigers have never troubled us, we stay clear of core areas’ make one wonder whether tigers recognize the human made boundaries! Other species occurring in this biodiversity rich area have been almost neglected and where crocodile (for example) has been mentioned the line begs clarity.

Wildlife conservation in India has been critiqued for being elitist, tiger focused and protected area centric. This book unfortunately falls in these traps. Khan sahib has a prefix ‘the’ each time he is mentioned, he owns a ‘sprawling mansion’ and has a ‘khansama’ at his service. He drinks ‘jin’ while the locals drink ‘sickly smelling stuff’. A forest department personnel ‘pushes aside’ tourists to make way for his boss. None of this is questioned or looked at critically and the principle character too makes ‘right noises to the influential grown ups’. A book on wildlife does not need to preach morals in any case but it may do good to be sensitive to the socio-cultural-economic situation in the landscape and country.