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One fine day in mid July Tara was declared the last living tigress in the seven-mile forest. She was fifteen and Satkosia was the only home she had known.
Long before Tara was born, this was an enchanted land. Spread along the banks of the Satkosia gorge, carved by the force of the majestic Mahanadi river, and surrounded by low lying hills.
Many Royal Bengal tigers roamed these forests.
Under magnificent canopies of sal, simul and bamboo rested baby deer. Porcupines raised their quills in play.
Herds of elephants bathed in the river and their trumpets rang through the forest.
The song of the Hill Mynah filled the valleys beyond.
Deadly yet shy King Cobras laid their eggs in nests of leaves and twigs.
And down below in the gorge, swam freshwater turtles and long nosed gharials.
The earth bore rich treasures in its womb. A gift and a curse in equal measure.
The Mining Corporation said ‘Here lies the finest iron ore in all the land. It will be used to make steel for taller buildings and faster cars, refrigerators and washing machines, cargo ships and surgical scalpels. It will make India a mighty nation. With more rockets and missiles, microwaves and trains, skyscrapers and forks, bridges and razors.’
And just like that, mines and power stations sprang up.
Crowding the periphery of the forest were over two hundred and fifty villages, inching carelessly towards its core.
Tara’s family continued to decline until there were fewer tigers than the fingers on your hands.
Some said, a corridor linking the seven-mile forest to the nearest tiger reserve was the last hope. Crucial for the migration of tigers from one forest to another, in search of mates.
But powerful people stood in the way.
Iron Ore mining had a lot of supporters. Tara’s corner wasn’t so full.
Some well-meaning conservationists made a last ditch attempt at reviving the lost fortunes of the forest.
From a jungle far away in the heart of India, they brought two tigers. A handsome, healthy male - Mahabir. And a beautiful female tiger called Sundari.
They hoped that the tigers would find love, have cubs and the cat population of Satkosia wouldn’t die out.
Now, you might find all this rather odd. No one asked Mahabir or Sundari - ‘Do you mind being taken to a strange land miles away from your home where you know no one and nothing?’
No one asked the people living in the seven-mile forest - ‘Do you mind if we let a couple of big tigers loose in your backyard?’
The conservationists said, ‘Mahabir hasn’t marked his territory yet. It’s okay to sedate him and take him to another forest. He will claim it as his own. He’s still young. And wait till he meets Sundari.’
The villagers in the seven-mile forest were not so optimistic.
Someone had spread rumours that the new tigers were man eaters. This wasn’t true of course.
But a false thing repeated enough times becomes the truth.
‘We will shoot them’, threatened the villagers.
‘What if they attack us when we go to the forest to pick firewood?’
‘What if they take our cattle when they are grazing?’
The villagers had many questions.
Tara didn’t know the fate that would befall her friends-to-be.
Mahabir would lose his life at the hands of poachers who wanted his skin and teeth.
Sundari would be sent back to the place she came from, after a few risky run-ins with the forest dwellers. But she would never be able to return to her own home in the forest. Sundari had developed the habit of straying too close to human habitation and now it was no longer safe to release her in the wild.
Tragedy was a frequent visitor in Tara’s life. She had lived through a super cyclone that uprooted 34,896 trees, left her forest roofless, and her prey dead. She’d lost her cubs in the storm. The birds tweeted that they’d seen rangers carry them away with feeding bottles in their mouths, their wet bodies shivering. They were alive but lost forever.
Maybe they were growing up in a zoo somewhere.
In the years that followed, Tara watched the timber mafia fell trees and carry away truck loads of wood. Even the elephants weren’t spared by the poachers. They took their tuskers and buried their giant carcasses in the forest.
Everything disappeared from Tara’s world one by one - tigers, elephants, trees, cubs. What remained was a forest stripped of its majesty.
Tara was bored and friendless. She whiled away her hours flicking flies off her ears, resting in a barely shrouded spot in a bamboo grove.
On the arms of trees towering high above her head, monkeys swung from branch to branch playing games all day. Creating a riot. Cradling babies, teasing each other. Their days were full.
Tara was all alone. Some days she wished she had someone to play with, to roll over in the grass. A tail to chase, fur to groom, whiskers to lick. Dawn turned into dusk and day turned into night but Tara found no friends in the forest. No one else with royal stripes and skin of yellow gold. No one else who spoke in purrs and low roars.
In this vast world, Tara was entirely alone.
And then one day, Tara too disappeared.
The forest department set up camera traps throughout the forest. They checked the footage for days and found nothing. She had left without a trace.
Who knew where she’d gone?
The disappearance of the last tigress of Satkosia caused some panic in powerful circles.
There were talks about moving a few villages out of the core area to give the forest room to grow again. The villagers were not happy. Why should they have to lose their homes? The forest was home to them as much as it was home to the tigers and elephants.
But the story of Tara going missing had stirred something and its ripple effects could change the destiny of a dying forest.