A new bigraphy on Billy
A new biography on Billy Arjan Singh
reveals new facets and rests old demons: review by
Anjali Abhyankar
New
Delhi, February 1:
Twenty-five odd years
ago, Duff Hart-Davis was just another feature writer at The Telegraph in
London, writing what feature writers write—a bit of this and a bit of
that. A chance phone call from the offices of Jonathan Cape changed all
that. The publishing house had an interesting offer for Davis: a
manuscript from an Indian author who had written of his experiences
whilst raising a leopard and a tiger to maturity. Davis took the
manuscript, half of which he read on the train from London to his home
in the country, finishing the rest the next day on the ride back into
the city. ‘‘It was pretty unreadable in the form that it was, but the
content was riveting, so I agreed to rework the manuscript,’’ Davis
recalls.
It
was pure coincidence that the Indian writer happened to be in London at
the time, so Davis promptly met him for lunch. The writer? Billy Arjan
Singh, arguably independent India’s most famous conservationist and
Tiger Man, and winner of this year’s J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation
Award. The rough manuscript went on to become Billy’s bestselling Prince
of Cats, a stirring account of how he hand-raised a male leopard in the
environs of his own home ‘Tiger Haven’, on the outskirts of Dudhwa
National Park in Uttar Pradesh.
The course of Davis’ life changed forever. From being a feature writer
with an interest in nature, he has now become one of Britain’s
best-known writers of natural history. The chance encounter with India’s
Tiger Man also led to an association that has spanned two decades and
several books. Davis’ illustrated encyclopedia Fauna Britannica
published in 2003 is definitive research material. Hailed by the Times
Literary Supplement for his ‘‘faultless writing’’, the Englishman is
currently in India to fine-tune his biography of Singh, Honorary
Tiger-The Life of Billy Arjan Singh. Published by Roli Books, it will be
on the shelves in April this year.
Culled from personal memories of times shared with Billy at both ‘Tiger
Haven’ and in London, and notes kept over the years, the book traces the
growth of Billy, the willful scion of the erstwhile royal family of
Kapurthala to his days in the Army to exciting tales of shikar and
eventually to Billy the conservationist. Like his mentor Jim Corbett,
Billy too turned from hunter to conservationist. The 87-year-old will be
presented the Getty prize on February 4.
While the book is largely chronological in its structure, it opens in
the early ’80s when a spate of man-eating and cattle-lifting big cats
ravaged the areas around Dudhwa and then goes back in time. Davis has
been remarkably candid in the book taking on controversy and myth and
revealing, in the process, a surprisingly human side to Billy. ‘‘I only
hope I don’t get sued, considering I’ve named names and been pretty rude
about some of them,’’ Davis concludes with a twinkle in his eyes.