Like a painted canvas, the orange and black stripes of the Bengal tigress contrasted starkly against the green leaves of the mangrove trees. I could see her hungry green eyes peer at me through my binoculars. Then she jumped into the water, and started to paddle swiftly towards us.

One of the guides in the rubber dinghy shouted to warn me, “She is in the water Manahal!!”   

“Joldi Cholo! Joldi Cholo!!” I screamed, in my strongest accented Bengali words for “Go faster!” I find that I speak Bengali much better when I am in danger. The men pumped the engine hard, as if that would make the little boat go faster. The motor whined as it struggled to pull the combined weight of 4 people and the heavy equipment onboard.

I watched her struggle to stay afloat, laboring hard against the currents. I sat paralyzed, gripping the slippery ropes as she drew closer, trying not to think of being tossed overboard, or what might happen if she swiped the boat with her razor-sharp claws. The waters were beginning to get rough with another storm approaching fast, and the boat violently rocked back and forth. She was within inches of the boat, and then she was gone.

The last of the Sunderban tigers drowned, right before my eyes.

It was a good day to die; Warm, not that humid, with everything colored orange in the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

She had leaped toward us in a desperate attempt at grabbing anything to eat. I estimated that she had not fed in over a week, cut off from food supply by the sudden rise in the sea level. Banno: that was the name we had given her. She was a beautiful healthy animal, weighing in at 500 pounds when we tagged her a few years ago.

Unlike their terrestrial cousins in the forests of mainland India, these coastal hunters usually thrived on a diet of fish. Rising sea levels had decimated their fishing holes, forcing them further inland. It was not too long before they switched to hunting humans. Like any lazy hunter, they preferred the old, the invalid and the children. The villagers hired hunters to kill as many of the cats as they could find. Although they were very good at stealth, the tigers were no match for drones and high-powered rifles that the hunters used. For a while, there was even a TV reality show on the hunt. That year, in 2025, the hunters massacred hundreds of the tigers. 

Soon, there were only 2 left: Banno and Samwise, as if they were destined for Noah’s Ark. Samwise’s tracker had disappeared a few days ago. Now I watch Banno sink, taking our hopes with her.

As an environmental journalist, I have covered all kinds of heart-rending stories- Elephant poaching in Kenya, whale-hunting in Norway, and dolphin slaughter in Japan. You may have seen my articles in National Geographic from time to time. I won the Pulitzer for the elephant-poaching piece. That article created an outrage, leading to the arrest and execution of the poachers. Furthermore, it was the catalyst for a popular uprising, leading to the overthrow of the corrupt Kenyan dictator. The elephant population recovered wonderfully after that. There is no happy ending this time. I was witness to the extinction of a magnificent species.

I think about the day I fought off 3 boys over a goat. I was eight, and I had just saved the goat from being slaughtered for Eid. My brothers were not very happy about it; they had looked forward to seeing the blood spurt out from its neck. But I would not have any of it. One little girl, I argued and fought off three of them successfully! My grandfather, a distinguished magistrate in Lahore, Pakistan, had watched the whole thing from his study. He called me into his study soon after that. No child was ever allowed into his study; that was his domain, his office where he met with his clients. A tall man with a stern, but serene demeanor, he sat me down and stared at me for a few seconds.

Then he asked calmly, “Manahal. That was admirable the way you argued with your brothers. But it is a worthless goat. What made you want to fight for it? “

Twenty years later, I still remember my reply, “Because the little goat had no chance to live without my help.” He knew then that I would passionately take up fighting for rights of the exploited. He encouraged me at every step in my life. He overruled my parents, and even paid for my air-tickets to go to study in California to pursue my passions in law and journalism. It seems like that was a long time ago. Every story that I cover, tells me how precious little we have, and how much more we could do to protect it.

With Banno dead, it feels like I lost a child. I am going to take time to recover. I am considering this call from my editor to check out this miracle man in central India. “Car Baba”, they call him.

Though it sounds a bit outrageous, I have a gut feeling that it would lead to something monumental.