Shades of Meaning (Tadoba Tiger Reserve)

In India, no means yes and sometimes yes means no. The infamous head bobble has confused me countless times and caused me to receive some unexpected dinner orders. And the same ambiguity that the head bobble represents struck again as I questioned local guides and villagers in Tadoba Tiger Reserve about their experiences with tigers. For every answer, I found a counter-answer; for every no, there was a yes.

Over the last few years, Tadoba has been labeled by the Indian media as a place of “bloody trails”, where 50 villagers have been killed by tigers since 2006. I visited Tadoba to hear first-hand about the attacks and try to find commonalities that might indicate correlative factors to explore with my dissertation research. With Sahas translating my questions into Marathi, I held interviews with forest department safari guides as we bumped along dirt roads or sat over steaming cups of chai. We also spoke with people in villages inside and on the border of the reserve, conversations which grew into village-wide discussions as people gathered out of curiosity. Working as a foreign researcher has its challenges, but attracting attention is certainly not one of them; in Sahas’ words, I am a “crowd magnet.”

The interviews portrayed a spectrum of conflict. The media is exaggerating the truth – no one has been killed in the park. Yes, one death occurred in Tadoba years ago. No, three deaths occurred this year, all in winter. Yes, we are happy to live in the park because the tigers never bother us. No, we wish we lived elsewhere where we did not have to collect bamboo for livelihood. Yes, leopards eat our goats and dogs. No, tigers and leopards don’t come near the village.

Different people, different perspectives, different answers. Is it true that villages outside the park experience more tiger attacks than interior villages that have higher densities of carnivores? Why have the attacks been focused on the eastern side of the park? And, if the records are true, why don’t locals living in the area know about the high number of tiger attacks? Luckily for my PhD, I’ve left Tadoba with more questions than answers. But if I want to get anywhere in solving this ecological mystery, I may have to study mindreading in addition to Hindi.