CALL OF THE WILD

Tejas Thackeray, the younger son of former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, shares his passion for wildlife conservation and photography

-  POOJA BIRAIA JAISWAL

At the Amboli wildlife reserve in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district, a tiger attacked and killed a cow at midnight last December. Chances were high that the big cat would return to claim its prey, which was lying off the road that ran along the reserve. Tejas Thackeray, the younger son of former Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, crouched not too far from the carcass to capture the moment on camera. But there was no sign of the tiger.

By 6am, Tejas was told that the tiger had killed two more cows around midnight. Maybe it had its stomach full and did not need this one, after all. Only then did Tejas go back to his cottage. “That kind of mad passion for wildlife is normal for TT,” said one of his fellow wildlife enthusiasts. Tejas, 28, is ‘TT’ for his close friends.

When Tejas embarked upon his first herping trip to Amboli in 2012, looking for amphibians and reptiles, he was just a teenager. He discovered a new species of fish during that trip, which was later named Schistura hiranyakeshi. “It was a freshwater fish way smaller than our little finger and was easy to miss,” said Tejas. “It was ethereal and beautiful, unlike anything I had ever seen.” He returned to Amboli in 2017, with all necessary permits to document the fish. Tejas made public the entire process during the Covid lockdown in 2021. The pond at the Shiva temple in Amboli where he spotted the fish got the ‘Schistura hiranyakeshi biodiversity heritage site tag’ when Uddhav was chief minister.