The astounding story of the tigress who was adopted by a forest officer
Saroj Raj Choudhury was an officer with the Indian Forest Services. If you are imagining a huge well-built man, with a handlebar moustache and a rifle strapped to his shoulders, you could not be more wrong. He was a man with a round face, ever-smiling, with a gentle gait. (Also, carrying guns inside Indian forests is permitted only under exceptional circumstances - nobody wants to fire a bullet into an animal, even by accident). Saroj Raj Choudhury saved many creatures and plenty of trees in his lifetime. One of the animals he saved was a tigress cub and she became a part of his household. What followed thereafter, is the story I share with you in this week’s edition of ‘The Lighter Side’. Happy reading!
It was a cold evening in October, 1974. A few tribals living in the Similipal forests of Odisha (a state located in eastern India) were returning home from an expedition. On their way back, they found a seven-week old tiger cub near the river Khairi. The mother tigress was nowhere to be found. They knew that if they left this frail and weak cub without someone to protect it, it would not last too long in the forest. So they did the best thing they could think of - they carried the cub to the house of the field director of the Similipal forest. This was a man named Saroj Raj Choudhury.
He took the little cub into his home and fed her meat with his own hands. His wife, Nihar Nalini Swain, was no less caring. In no time, the tigress cub became a great friend of the couple. The cub roamed freely in their bungalow, jumping on to beds and chairs exactly as a pup or a kitten would do. Now that Saroj and Nalini had a pet scampering around, they had to give it a name (the next best alternative to trying and roaring as its tigress mum would do). Saroj and Nalini decided to call the cub ‘Khairi’, after the river in the forest where she had been found.
Khairi was playful and gained strength rapidly. While she was growing huge and massive, she still loved to snuggle into the bed next to her ‘parents’, and fall asleep with her paws and tail spread across the length of the bed (imagine her tail rubbing against your nose while you are asleep!).
I must mention that Khairi was not the only wild creature growing up in their home. Saroj Raj had rescued a blind hyena, a bear cub and a deer - who were all growing up together in the courtyard, along with Khairi. While they all had the freedom to run around and play together, they never needed to hunt, since the couple fed them their meals regularly. And so came together a most unlikely group of friends, playing together, completely oblivious to the relationship that their wilder kin shared in the wilderness.
At one point, the couple thought it was time to let Khairi out into the forest (maybe it was because they now had hardly any space left to sleep themselves on the bed!). Also, they wanted her to live the natural life of a tigress.
So one fine morning, Saroj and Nalini opened the gates of their courtyard. Sure enough, Khairi scampered out into the wilderness of the forest.
By evening, the couple were already missing Khairi terribly, and wondering what she was up to. Had she met her kin? Was she learning to hunt? They didn’t have to wait too long. At midnight, Saroj Raj was woken up by loud roars from the courtyard gate. Khairi was back and asking her ‘family’ to let her in. Unwilling to be rude to her, Saroj Raj opened the door and she bounded onto him and gave him a loving hug with a gentle swipe of her paw. She was careful to never hurt anyone, for she did know her strength and how sharp her paws and teeth were. Khairi insisted on snuggling next to Nalini and finally went off to sleep. Khairi was not keen on leaving her ‘loving home with her foster parents and many animal friends’. This became her permanent home.
One day, a good friend of Saroj Raj, M.K. Ranjitsinh (the first director of Project Tiger), was visiting them. He was sleeping in the guest room, when Khairi came sauntering into his room. Khairi decided that sunrise was about the time when everyone ought to be woken up (tigers can be weirdos too). So she used her tail and went tapping M.K.Ranjitsinh on his forehead to wake him up. He wanted to snooze in a little bit more and pulled his blanket to cover his face, and asked Khairi to go out for sometime. Khairi was not going to have any of it. She wanted to play with her new friend. So she decided to yank the blankets away from him, and used her teeth gently and let the blankets slide off him. He remained fast asleep on the bed and did not show any signs of getting up. Khairi decided to give one more go at waking him up and jumped on him, hoping that the extra 200 kg on him would do the trick (duh?). M.K.Ranjitsinh most unwillingly got up (after Khairi got off him, of course) and indulged her with a hug and some play-time. What was most remarkable about Khairi was that she knew the exact pressure with which to pull a blanket (and not tear it), when and how to jump on a human (without tearing their flesh or break their bones).
Saroj Raj Choudhury and Nalini Swain continued to live in their big bungalow in the forest, with their assortment of animal family, showering them all with love and affection. Saroj Raj, while an ardent animal lover, also took this opportunity to conduct field research. He kept a careful log of Khairi’s activities, what she ate, how she reacted to different foods (where else was a human going to plan a tigress’ diet), how her skin looked (who else was going to get to stroke a tigress to sleep), her mood swings and reactions to stimuli (who else was going to watch a tigress run around and play in a courtyard). This log or journal maintained by Saroj Raj has remained of huge help to many researchers worldwide.
One evening, when Khairi was playing with the deer, she accidentally hurt the deer, thus killing it. Saroj Raj dug a grave for the deer and buried it. In attendance for this funeral were the forest rangers and the entire animal family (including the hyena, the bear and Khairi). After the funeral, when everyone else went their way, Khairi sat by the grave for three days and nights, without touching a drop of water or a morsel of food . Perhaps she felt guilty, perhaps she missed her friend - we’ll never know what went through her head in those three days.
Still sad after the deer’s death, a few weeks later, Khairi was running in the forest just outside the courtyard. She did not notice a rabid dog running towards her and was bitten by the dog (which carried a disease called rabies). Rabies is a deadly disease, and in 1981, there was no cure. The disease could spread from an infected creature to humans and animals around as well. As Khairi’s condition rapidly deteriorated that day, Nalini was left with no choice but to let Khairi die an early death, as painlessly as possible. Unfortunately, Saroj Raj was in Delhi that day, and could not come home in time to bid his ‘daughter’ good-bye.
Shortly after Khairi’s death, Saroj Raj Choudhury himself passed away. His friends and wife believe that he never really came to terms with Khairi’s passing away so suddenly.
Khairi and Saroj Raj Choudhury’s legendary bond is one of the stories I have discussed as part of ‘What’s New Today’ podcast series on wildlife. If you love more such stories, click on the button below to listen to the ‘Wildlife Series.
Whenever I read ‘The Jungle Book’ or ‘Tarzan’, I do know in my head that these are stories made up by their authors. I don’t start thinking that there really is a human child being cared for by a wolf in a jungle nearby. I hardly dare believe that a little boy sitting on a bear’s stomach can be heard singing ‘Bare Necessities’, nor do I imagine him swimming happily near crocodiles. But, what is extraordinary about Khairi’s story is that every bit of it is real. Her life in a bungalow next to a forest, cared for and loved by a family, roaming and running with her friends - bears, hyenas, deers and even crocodiles - all of these are carefully documented with pictures and testimonies of many people.
P.S: Nalini Swain passed away recently in an old age home in Cuttack, Orissa. She continued to cherish memories of her life with Khairi and Saroj Raj Choudhury, till her end.
P.P.S: I am getting ready to record our end-of-year podcasts on ‘What’s new today’. We will cover stories from science, books, movies, countries & wars from 2023. If you would like to be a part of it (and are aged 8-16), let me know!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s extraordinary story on Khairi. If you think a friend of yours would also enjoy reading it, sharing this story with them is uber-easy! ———> That little button called ‘Share’ does the trick :)