Do I hear a snigger? Oh, I know I am stating the obvious. But I just cannot help myself! Did you know that out of the world’s 1.5 million animal species we have 75,000 right here in India? We cover only two per cent of this planet’s land mass, but possess five per cent of all living organisms on earth!!

Why…you are wondering…am I rattling off these figures? Just to drive home the message that here in this subcontinent, human beings have lived with all these animals for at least 50,000 years. And they have constantly interacted with each other. Sometimes as friends, sometimes like foes. But always as partners who shared the same habitat…the same land.

Of course, humans affected the life of the animals around them — as hunters, as cultivators. But also as protectors. Because both depended on each other to survive.

But no longer. In this issue of Gobar Times, I present you Shere Khan, once the awe-inspiring sovereign, now a hunted beast who is fast going extinct. Why? Because his lair has been taken over by human beings. Not by those who once shared the forests with him, but the ones who want to build highways and towns there. And the ones who would rather see a tiger dead than alive! They make huge profits by selling its skin, bones and all its organs, you see.