I was at the Ranthambore National Park this weekend. My experience with tigers is abysmal, to say the least. I have such poor luck that even in a zoo, the tiger would be sleeping inside when I reached its cage!

Have been to Corbett several times, to return back empty.

And I had been to Ranthambore several years back – again to not witness anything.

Basically – I didn’t have much expectation from the trip.

Tigers are hard to sight.

30 mins into our safari – we reach a pond. There are only 2 more jeeps there and murmurs of a tiger can be heard.

We stay put.

Lo and behold – from the bushes emerge not one but two tigers. We are told they are kids – Jai and Veeru, and would soon be heading to the pond to quench their thirst.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, we have jeeps coming in.

I stood there, wondering

There surely must be people in these vehicles, for whom this is their very first time.

Some of them would have just started their safari.

And they just walked into this surreal scene of 2 baby tigers simply hanging out in the wild.

They will go back to their world and most certainly will share the “fact” that sighting tigers was cake walk. Happened with ease. Don’t know what the big deal is that people make it to be.

Tigers are easy to sight.

Right there is a life lesson.

Even when people witness the exact same situation, their reactions will be different.

Because they come from a different bias, a different history, a different context.

And most of it will never be visible to us, made available to us.

The goal then is not to wonder why people behave so differently, but to probe – what is the story they have been telling themselves all these years?

What is their narrative?