With a Big Cat Heart

Billy Arjan Singh has always lived on the edge. As a young man he was a hunter with a record that bordered on the excessive. As a conservati...

Billy Arjan Singh has always lived on the edge. As a young man he was a hunter with a record that bordered on the excessive. As a conservationist living on the edge of Dudhwa, many have found his methods equally excessive. Hart-Davis sketches a warm portrait. The treatment is sympathetic but the rough edges are included.

Singh, who shot his first leopard when he was only twelve, analyses his killer instincts: the compulsive desire to kill animals was 8216;a deep complex of redirected aggression triggered by insufficiency8217;. It8217;s an analysis, Hart-Davis says, that Singh 8216;8216;applied ruthlessly to himself for the rest of his days8217;8217;.

Billy describes his turning point: 8216;8216;I advanced to the spot, and in the flashlight saw a leopard lying on the ground. A crimson circle welled behind the shoulder and, even as I watched, the fire faded from his eyes. I had brought off a spectacular shot and acquired a fine trophy, but I felt nothing but an awful confusion8212;futility at the destruction of beauty and the taking of life for personal pleasure. I put aside my rifle, as my father had done many years before.8217;8217;

Billy8217;s life with its wide sweep is what books are made of. He had a privileged childhood. He was ten years old when he met Jim Corbett in Nainital at a tennis tournament. Later one of their neighbours in Nainital was F.W. Champion, the forest officer who went on to write With a Camera in Tigerland and The Jungle in Sunlight and Shadow.

After a stint in the Army, Billy started a farm near Pallia on the Nepal border and later set up Tiger Haven on the edge of Dudhwa. His keeping leopards on his farm and later his experiment with rearing Tara, a zoo-born tigress and releasing her in the jungle, are debating points even now.

Many have argued with his methods but few have doubted his commitment. And it8217;s the present tiger crisis that gives Billy Arjan Singh8217;s biography its moment of sadness. A book on the life and times of an Honorary Tiger when the Tiger itself lives in uncertain times. It is impossible then to read Hart-Davis8217;s book without a double tinge of loss: knowing there are few tigers and even fewer tiger men around.