When the going got tough

Saad Bin Jung

Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse!” (To sail is necessary; to live is not necessary) Nobody knows who originally wrote that, but that is exactly how Sangeeta and I have lived. Life is nothing but a journey and it would be stupid not to set sail and enjoy it. We had everything, we lost it all. We fought back. Today we have our wildlife camps in India and Africa. We have lions sleeping two feet away resting their heads against the fabric of our tent in Serengeti. We track desert lions, rhinos and elephants in the Namib Desert with clients, apart from walking among wild elephants marauding a field or follow the grating calls of the leopard as he steps out of the jungles looking for cattle. Our children run a project for BCRTI (Buffer Conflict Resolution Trust of India) near Nagarhole and Bandipur where they track the movement of leopards outside the park. We are able to do this and more because we have successfully left behind the life of a wannabe, of lust and greed, of hoarding for the future, of vying for fame and power. All this didn’t happen over night. It took its own sweet time in coming.

Though I am part Pataudi, Bhopal and Paigah, it was my great grandfather Nawab Hamidullah Khan, the ruler of Bhopal, president of the BCCI, head of the Chamber of Princes, who paved a wary path through a difficult transition where monarchy had to embrace democracy, giving birth to the Dominion of India. The fledging republic had given constitutional assurances to the rulers in the form of a privy purse, assurances that would ensure our very livelihood. I was born in 1960 and was certainly privileged, my childhood being moulded by royal traditions. I absorbed most of the culture thrown my way but come the age of discerning good from bad and the nonconformist in me emerged. It would be a lie to say that I did not love my share of hunting stories but come what may, I couldn’t watch life fade from the beautiful eyes of a helpless deer, another helpless animal prey to the ceaseless lust to hunt, a diehard royal custom.

Whilst the family hunted, my beautiful mother would drive us deep into the family owned jungles of Bhopal, where we spent days resting under a tree, eavesdropping on the sounds of nature, just revelling in the moment. It must have been these outings and sleeping out in the open in Chiklod, listening to the warning cries of spotted deer and the occasional roar of the tiger that instilled an undying love for the forests. I am so thankful to my mother for giving me this passion. It would not make me rich, but it would certainly give me a complete life and happiness in the coming years.

Sangeeta Jung holding an Egyptian cobra.

I doubt if many will comprehend the dangers of the path we have tread upon. One day, moving camp to Central Serengeti from the short grass plains of Ndutu, we were delayed by heavy rain. The black cotton track was nothing but a vast endless sea of water, a terrifying proposition for any safari operator. Vehicles here sunk down to the chassis and with clients expecting us in Seronera that evening, we knew we would need to drive in the wake of the big truck. We got to our camp site just before sunset. The grass in the savannah, home to the mamba, was tall and engulfed us as we worked tirelessly. It was frightening.

There was no distance between the wilds and us. By nine that night, we had the client’s tents erected but the dining was yet to come up. In its place stood a naked light illuminating a cleared zone where we had flattened the grass. We were 22 in all. Hassan was busy serving dinner when from the flattened patch came the two lionesses. Luckily, Munga, the head guide, was in the driver’s seat of a vehicle parked next to the kitchen. He screamed ‘lions!’ and drove into them, scattering them. Another guide shot off after him and as he took a u-turn to head back to us, in his lights we saw, next to us, behind the parked truck, two more beasts, crouched and waiting. To the right of the kitchen was a bush behind which another feline waited patiently. Within seconds the clients were bundled into the truck as the guides went after the predators, driving them away from camp. It was a close call. Realising we could have lost a person, we set up a security perimeter and stayed up that night. Later that night, the big male lion following his ladies arrived roaring into camp and settled down on the carpet outside our tent. He put his head against the canvas flap and went to sleep, a mere two feet from where I lay.

Blast from the past: Hamidullah Khan and Jawaharlal Nehru at Jung’s parents’ wedding.

One day, guiding a safari in Namibia, I had climbed a hill to take pictures of desert elephants. Coming back with my heavy equipment, I slipped and fell, landing on my back. Two small and extremely sharp-edged stones, sharpened to a knife-edge, sliced into my back. Eight hours from any hospital, the boys back at the camp cleaned up the wound with whisky and stitched it together. It was only after I drove into town that an X-ray showed that two millimetres more and the stones would have driven clean into my heart, killing me on the spot. The wilderness is not a place for the weak at heart and it certainly prepares you for life.

In the early 1970s two things happened. First, the privy-purse was abolished breaking the back of the princes. That was when we realised that constitutional promises given by the Dominion of India turned out to be nothing but lies on a piece of paper. Gone was the debilitating security. Now we would have to compete against the world. While many of the royals, seeped in degeneracy, took to stealing from their sisters and selling their assets to survive, my brothers, cousins and I stood united and chose to make a new beginning. Second, all the jungles and their wilds, once controlled by the family, were taken away and the government, under Indira Gandhi, established harsh and rigid exclusionary laws. Democracy, with one shot, killed two birds. It wiped out an age-old tradition of the rulers, thereby stealing the people timely, able, uncorrupted and loving guidance through difficult and changing times, allowing for a vicious stranglehold of the politician and his beloved clergy on a vulnerable India. It also established an exclusionary policy of forest management when it bought in the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, an act hated by the people and misunderstood even by the judiciary. An act made draconian by a few corrupt officials leading to severe, devastating conflict.

Having lost everything in the blink of an eye, I had two options: spend the rest of my life lamenting on our loss or enjoy whatever was thrown my way. I chose the latter and grew up playing cricket and absolutely loved the game till I fell ill at the ripe age of nineteen. I was in hospital for two years. Nobody cared in my amazing cricketing fraternity and I certainly wasn’t prepared to spend the rest of my life among such a self-centred guild. I walked out. Thank God I did, for, as stated earlier, though it took its own sweet time coming, we as a family found our happiness in the wilds of Africa and India where we implement eco-tourism as integral tools for conservation and choose to devote our lives to a forgotten people and their beautiful wilds.

A member of the erstwhile Pataudi royal family, Jung is now a conservationist based in Bengalaru.