A life in the service of the wild and wildlife

Valmik Thapar was a conservationist who spoke his mind on policies regarding protection of the tiger and India's forests

- Jaisal Singh

Valmik Thapar's untimely death at 72, after a battle with cancer has elicited an overwhelming outpouring of shock, grief, adoration, and respect, at home and abroad. Privately, as well as in the media. He became India's most visible face, globally, of wildlife conservation, especially after his highly acclaimed presentation of the BBC series, Land of the Tiger, in 1997, one of the most captivating showcases of India at her finest. By then, Thapar had already spent over two decades in the wild.

Heartbreak sent Valmik to the jungles of Ranthambore. His first marriage had fallen apart in 1976 and he decided the best way to heal was to take himself away, out of his comfort zone, out of the urban jungle of New Delhi where he had been brought up, and into the wild, about which he knew very little. That instinctive decision would not just heal him, but change the course of his life, and the life of many a tiger.

He had heard about Ranthambore from his sister and brother-in-law—my parents—who filmed a documentary, The Jungle Life of Rajasthan, there a couple of years prior, and had pitched their tent under the great banyan tree at Jogi Mahal.

All three of them were now captivated by this special place and also by the man who was then the game warden (later, field director), Fateh Singh Rathore, with his Stetson, aviator glasses, and luxurious moustache.

When I arrived on the scene a few years later, Fateh kaka was at the hospital in New Delhi and gave me my first tot of honey, soon after I was born. It was with this pioneering trio, Valmik, Fateh kaka, and my father Tejbir, that I spent my formative years in Ranthambore, living under the canopy of the great banyan and Jogi Mahal, sleeping out in the open on charpoys with only mosquito nets for protection as the tiger's roar, the raspy sawing of leopards, the bark-like alarm calls of sambar deer, and the cacophony of langur monkeys echoed off the walls of the medieval fortress.