Live and Die Roaring

B2, the famous tiger of Bandhavgarh National Park, passed away recently.

B2, the famous tiger of Bandhavgarh National Park, passed away recently. B2 was much loved by the park’s guards and officers. Many had started calling him ‘Betu’, an endearment for ‘son’. B2 was camera friendly. He had no fear of humans, and park officials rightly feared that he was in perpetual danger from poachers. B2’s mother Mohini had succumbed to wounds from a vehicle accident—in effect, killed by men. Mohini was well known, but not as well as B2’s grandmother Sita. Sita put Bandhavgarh on the international wildlife tourism circuit. She had even made it to the cover of National Geographic, before poachers got to her. B2’s siblings, B1 and B3, were also killed by human intervention: B1 was electrocuted and B3 killed by poachers. Though B2 is now dead too, it must have come as consolation to his admirers that he died like a tiger—an old tiger who succumbed to injuries he took while trying to defend his territory from a younger tiger.

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Alok Singh