When the Forest Breathed You Into Being

O flame-struck sovereign, you walk the spine of this earth like a verse the gods never dared to finish. In your silence, I hear the ancient pact, between claw and root, fang and soil, between the first rainfall and everything that bloomed after.

You are not merely tiger, you are the breath the forest holds when the wind stills at dusk, the ripple of muscle under golden dusk-light, the hush before the leap that writes death with dignity.

Fifty seasons and more, we have counted you like prayer beads, each sighting a miracle, each absence a wound. Project Tiger, they named it. But to me, it was always a love story: our desperate wish to not forget how wildness looks in its finest form.

You, who walk without footprints, who vanish like memory into undergrowth, you are both ghost and guardian. Your eyes burn amber not from hunger, but from knowing you are the last sentence in a book we are still learning how to read.

From the tide-stained mangroves of the Sundarbans to the shivering canopy of the Nilgiris, your shadow is stitched into the fabric of place. Not just a predator, but a philosopher of motion, teaching us that true power moves with restraint, and listens before it strikes.

And now, as your numbers rise like a slow sunrise, I dare to believe in beginnings again. That maybe reverence can outweigh greed, that maybe children yet unborn will know your roar not as echo, but as lullaby.

So let this be more than commemoration. Let this be covenant. We, your flawed, forgetful kin, will kneel before your grace, not in fear, but in awe. And we will guard what you guard: the pulse of the wild, the dignity of silence, the right to simply exist.

Bengal Tiger, you are the question the jungle keeps asking, and the answer, hidden in plain sight.