On The Trail Of a Tigress

The male-dominated tadoba is abuzz with tales of a queen. Charukesi ramadurai goes in search of the elusive maya and her three cubs

- Charukesi Ramadurai

By the time I made my way to Tadoba for my first wildlife trip of the year, I had heard so much about Maya that I half expected her to pull a ‘meet and greet’ at the Nagpur airport, name placard in hand. Ever since she had given birth to three cubs before the last monsoon, Maya had earned cult status in and for Tadoba. And wildlife enthusiasts from all over the country had started making regular trips to this forest in the heart of India.

I myself had a love-hate relationship with Maya, beginning from the time she turned mother and went into hiding with the newborns; longing for a glimpse but making sour grapes-y statements when she refused to show up. Through those six safaris around the end of the rains last year, I saw close to nothing in terms of wildlife in the Tadoba jungles.

The worst was this photographer friend from Pune who dropped by every month to see how the kids were doing. And living as we are in the age of ‘If it is not on Facebook, it did not happen,’ I had the dubious pleasure of liking his ‘tiger mommy with cubs’ photographs regularly. To add insult to injury, there were the regular forest updates from Ranjit Mandal, the ever-optimistic manager at Svasara Jungle Lodge, where I had stayed on that maiden Tadoba trip.

Ah well, this time around, I know things are going to be different. The kids are nearly eight months old now, big enough to play in the open but not old enough to wander around without their mother. And so I head to Tadoba with dreams of seeing the entire family together (sans dad, of course, who did his bit and went back into the shrubbery many moons ago).