The cubs are safe

The three cubs of the dead Bamera Tigress have been found alive. They are well and the forest department personnel are taking care of them.

Death of a tigress

19 August, 2009. Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve. A caravan of jeeps is passing through the village called Patour and I am also a part of it. We are driving along the old road towards a culvert, below which a tigress in her prime is lying dead. This is the Bamera Tigress having about eight months’ old three small cubs. The cubs are too small to survive in the wild without their mother, so their fate is also sealed.
We reach the spot as a crowd of forest personnel and villagers silently watch the guards bringing out the dead tigress laden on a wooden stretcher. The postmortem shows no conclusive cause of death and the whole matter is referred to the lab. Although, the incident seems to be the result of the two human killings by this tigress some months before. Apart from that, the Bamera tigress had also become an ardent cattle lifter.
There is rain in the air and a loud rumble of lightening sweeps across the grey sky. I watch the beautiful striped body of the tigress disappear in the roaring flames of the funeral pyre. The lush green forest in the background shimmers in the rising smoke.
I am sad, feeling a queer vacuum inside, but I am more determined than ever to save the tiger.