It was 1997. Half a century had passed since India gained independence. It was a year when patriotic fervor was at an all-time high, aided in no small measure by a slowly burgeoning media landscape (just six years back, Dr Manmohan Singh and P V Narasimha Rao had liberalised the Indian economy, opening the sluice gates of a flood of content, especially cable television, the internet being still in its infancy).
1997 was my 14th year of existence. As a child of the 1980s and 1990s, I was an avid consumer of television, newspaper and magazine content, besides books of course.
My interest in wildlife went back to my childhood when my parents bought a book that detailed India’s wild denizens. From then, there was no looking back and I got more books on the topic, reading (and re-reading them).
It was in those days that United States-based channels like Discovery, National Geographic and Animal Planet first started beaming into Indian living rooms, the majesty and grandeur of global fauna. I was bowled over. Never did a day go when I was not watching at least one of the networks mentioned above.
And it was during this time that I one day chanced upon Valmik Thapar.
I still remember watching the first episode of Thapar’s seminal 1997 documentary series, Land of the Tiger. The opening shot showed him watching an Asiatic Lion pride from a distance, emphasising to his viewers, “This is not Africa”.
For me, who had till then mostly seen only white, Anglo-American men and women anchoring or narrating documentaries even about India and the Global South, Thapar came as a pleasant surprise. He was brown like me. Not just that, he was tall, bearded and burly, with a voice, tone and tenor I had never heard before.
The series saw him chronicling tigers and other wildlife in his beloved Ranthambore as well as other parts of the country. Often, he appeared on the programme in the company of the late Fateh Singh Rathore, another legendary figure in wildlife circles then and now.
Although I did not know it then, I was to cross paths with Thapar on at least two other occasions in the years to come.
Both these chances came in the decade that has just passed. On one occasion, I got to interview him for Down To Earth, the magazine I have been working for now since the past one decade. The interview was on phone.
I called. He picked up. I was nervous. How would Thapar, who belonged to a prominent pre-Partition clan of Old Punjab and counted on historian Romila and journalist Karan Thapar as his kin, speak to me?
From what I remember now, Thapar justified my fears. He told me in a voice that sounded strict to send him the questions on mail. And the phone immediately went dead.
I did as I was told. Surprisingly, he answered the queries and sent them over quickly. Which showed that while he was a no-nonsense person, he was not a nasty sort.
And then I saw him in the flesh too. I don’t remember the year now. I had come across an announcement of an interaction with him in Delhi’s tony neighbourhood, Greater Kailash. It was winter. I put on my best furry attire and went.
Mr Thapar had come to the venue in the company of his wife Sanjana, of Kapoor Khandaan fame. By then, he was much greyer and walked with the aid of a stick.
I asked him a question about whether China was the biggest threat to global wildlife due to Traditional Chinese Medicine. I heard a few sniggers in the small audience behind me. But to my surprise, Thapar seemed to agree with me. When the demand for wildlife products stopped from China and the Far East, the killing would stop too, he said.
That was the first and the last time I saw him. Today, on the morning of May 31, came the news that Thapar had passed at the age of 73. He had been diagnosed with cancer last year.
This piece is not intended as much as a critical appraisal of Thapar’s legacy but rather as a personal tribute to a man who in his own way inspired me (and many others, I believe) to reflect on the mystery of Nature and the environment. His books, his television programmes, his very comments in that unique voice of his showed that Mr Thapar had charisma like the animal he loved so much, the tiger.
And while he too may have had his critics like all of us do, Mr Thapar, as per his contemporary conservationist, Ullas Karanth, was not rigid.
“What impressed me most about Valmik was, he did not flinch from speaking out on what he felt was right. He also intelligently changed his position on issues, when rational evidence was presented, a rare trait in most individuals driven by pure passion,” Karanth said in a statement on May 31, as he reflected on his camaraderie and personal rapport with Thapar.
Mr Thapar may no longer be with us. But in the galaxy of India’s conservationists, his name will surely find a place and inspire the generations who come next.
As Karanth noted poignantly, “The Tiger’s Roar has gone silent, but we will all continue to hear its echoes.”