It was the year 2012, deep inside the forests of Kabini.

By then, we had already endured four dry safaris.

No sightings. No movement. Only dust, silence, and the quiet running joke among wildlife travelers that every failed drive simply increases the dry count by one.

That evening felt no different.

It was 5:40 pm.

The light was thinning.

The forest department deadline hovered above us.

Time to return to camp.

And then the forest asked us to wait.

A massive male tusker stepped onto the track and blocked our path.

For fifteen long minutes, he stood there eating patiently, utterly unbothered by our presence, as though we were no more significant than the grass beside him. The jungle curved gently around his stillness. Time itself seemed to pause.

The guide leaned forward and whispered to the driver.

We had to exit on time.

Reluctantly, the driver turned onto an alternate route.

That single decision changed everything.

As the jeep rolled through the narrowing trail, the forest opened ahead of us.

A tiger “Temple tank male” appeared.

Head on.

Walking straight toward us.

Not a glimpse.

Not a dash.

But a full-bodied encounter.

Each step carried weight.

Each movement declared ownership.

He stopped to spray-mark his territory, muscles shifting beneath dust-gold stripes. The air tightened. The silence vibrated. The guide and my friend, an experienced wildlife photographer, quickly positioned the jeep so each of us had a clean angle.

For twenty uninterrupted minutes, the tiger owned the road.

He walked.

Paused.

Marked.

Looked through us rather than at us.

We clicked our shutters, barely breathing.

When he finally disappeared into the trees, none of us spoke. We didn’t need to.

We knew we had witnessed something sacred.

Till this day, I have never experienced a moment like that again.

Not because I never saw another tiger.

But because I have never again stood so perfectly aligned with time.

The Missed Photograph

Imagine standing deep inside the jungle.

You have the camera.

You have the lens.

You have the moment.

And then the tiger appears.

Not on a screen.

Not in a documentary.

Right there.

Alive. Breathing. Once in a lifetime experience such sightings are rare.

But your settings are wrong.

The focus hunts.

The shutter lags.

The light lies.

Before you adjust…

the tiger is gone.

The moment did not fail you.

You failed to meet the moment.

Life works the same way.

Love stands in front of us, but we are emotionally out of focus, blurred by old heartbreaks and imagined futures.

Respect arrives, but ego shakes the lens until appreciation feels like competition.

Opportunity appears, but fear whispers “you’re not ready” until readiness becomes regret.

We say life never gave us a chance.

But often life stood right there.

Waiting.

Without preparation, even miracles pass unnoticed.

This is why people miss relationships.

Misread intentions.

Lose friendships.

Walk past destiny.

Not because life withheld them.

Because their inner settings were misaligned.

An unprepared mind sees danger where there is affection.

An insecure heart sees control where there is care.

A wounded ego hears insult where there is guidance.

The tiger is majestic.

Fear is what makes it look threatening.

Preparation is not control.

It is calibration.

The quiet discipline of tuning the inner lens before the moment arrives.

Life does not wait for our emotional firmware to update.

Moments do not pause until confidence loads.

The guru appears only when the student is ready.

Not because the guru arrives late,

but because readiness sharpens recognition.

The lesson shows up as a colleague who challenges you.

Love arrives as a conversation you almost avoid.

Destiny opens as a door you nearly walk past.

And when the mind is unstable, we call it bad luck.

But the ancient truth remains unchanged:

Opportunity visits everyone.

Only the prepared recognize it.

The tragedy is not that life is unfair.

The tragedy is missing a divine moment

because we never learned how to hold the camera steady.

Kabini taught me this long before philosophy did.

The tiger did not appear because we chased it harder.

It appeared because we waited, aligned, and were ready when the forest decided to reveal itself.

Life works no differently.

Destiny does not announce itself.

The guru does not knock loudly.

The moment does not repeat.

It simply walks toward you.

And when it does,

may your hands be steady,

your focus true,

and your heart finally prepared to click.

📸🐅