All language subtitles for My.Tiger.Family.2024.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-playWEB.en

First magical moment when I saw
a tiger in Ranthambore,

it was absolutely mesmerising.

It's a moment where you lose
yourself somewhere within yourself.

This is the best place in the world
to see wild tigers.

For centuries, India's rulers
battled over Ranthambore Fort.

ROARING

Today, it's home to a family
with an extraordinary story.

It's about what you don't know
is going to happen.

And that's the great joy
of Ranthambore.

TRAP CLANGS SHUT

TIGER GROWLS

March 1984.

A day that rewrote tiger history.

I was helping my brother-in-law
Tejbir film a tiger

as it watched sambar deer
feed in the lakes.

What happened next shocked us.

No-one had ever filmed a tiger
killing in deep water before.

But then, no-one had really filmed
wild tigers at all.

And I was there, in the heart of it.

In the jungles of
northwestern India...

..there is a magical fort...

..called Ranthambore.

It has stood for more than
a thousand years.

There are three lakes,

a few hundred feet from each other,

and it's full of wildlife.

Something happening every minute.

More wild tigers live in India
than anywhere else on Earth.

And this is one of their
most important strongholds.

And when a tiger walks through
the lakes...

..the sound, the magic,

the explosion of activity.

So, yes,
the lake's a place to die for.

But in 1976,
when I first came to Ranthambore,

it wasn't known for tigers.

Back then, no-one really knew
anything about wild tigers,

myself included.

I'd grown up a city boy.

I was very busy in Delhi
making documentary films.

My first marriage was collapsing.

And one afternoon
I just walked out of my house,

leaving everything behind,

and caught a train to Ranthambore.

I went on a whim to escape the city.

It took me nearly a day to meet
Fateh Singh,

the director of the park.

And he looked me up and down
and said, "What do YOU want?"

I said,
"I want to go to the forest."

He said,
"But nobody goes to this forest.

"It's an unknown area."

When I was passing the old gate,

as you went past the gate

and you crossed the rise
of a hill,

there in the distance
was Ranthambore Fort,

looking at you.

And it grabbed me.

And that moment changed my life.

I wasn't a scientist or
a naturalist,

an activist

or a conservationist.

I was simply a film-maker

who fell in love with
the beauty of this place...

..and with its tigers.

For the next half century,

I've had the great privilege
of being amongst them.

All tiger life revolves around
the female.

And across the decades,
five tigresses

became like family.

Now, for the first time,

I'm able to piece together the story

of their matriarchal clan,

and tell you how these five revealed

the secret life of tigers.

None are closer to my heart than my
first Ranthambore tiger, Padmini.

She lived through
some very dark times.

Not that long ago,
people estimated that

there were 100,000 tigers in India.

When Europeans and their guns
arrived in the 18th century,

a massacre began.

It makes me sick to think of
the maharajahs,

the queens and kings
who flushed out tigers

and hammered them with their guns.

I mean, one of our maharajahs,

just one single man,

killed 1,300 tigers

and boasts about it.

The kings, the rulers,
the emperors, the rich,

they all had tiger skins
in their house. I mean,

even the Duke of Edinburgh
and Queen Elizabeth

had gone to Ranthambore
and shot tigers there.

In the early 1970s,
the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi,

banned tiger hunting.

A census had revealed that

there were just 1,800 wild tigers
left in India.

And she set up Project Tiger.

It was a wildlife conservation
programme with one aim -

to protect India's remaining tigers.

In this land where the tiger roams,

it is not only an animal,
but a symbol.

For thousands of years,
India has had a culture

that goddesses ride a tiger
to defeat evil.

The tiger is sacred.

The guardian of the forest.

In 1973,

we set aside nine areas
of the country for tigers.

The old fort of Ranthambore,

with its lakes and forests,

was the smallest of these
special tiger reserves.

And then began
a long, difficult task -

rehoming the many people and cattle

that lived within the boundaries.

Such sacrifices were made
for the tiger.

Now, in the heart of Ranthambore,

it was thought that just 12,
maybe 13 tigers remained.

And they only ever came out
at night.

I didn't think
I had a hope of seeing one.

But I went out anyway

with some of the park guards

and a searchlight to try.

Anywhere and everywhere,

just couldn't find tigers.

The director of the park,
Fateh Singh Rathore,

had slowly become my tiger guru.

He knew every inch of
this tiger reserve.

Huge twirling moustache.

Very tough,
with a great sense of humour.

And one day,
we drove too close to the water.

So we were floating
in the shallow water of a lake.

A head appeared.

It was my first Ranthambore tiger.

We called her Padmini.

I was 23,
and I'd never felt such a connection

to any living thing before.

How sad that these few photos

are the only record
of my times with her.

But she deserves her place
in this history.

She went on to have five cubs.

Four survived.

And it was the beginning
of Ranthambore's clan of tigers.

She led that clan.

She was like the godmother
of all the tigers

I've known in Ranthambore.

And she was the mother of
my next tiger,

the one who brought me the most joy.

Noon.

The beginning of
Ranthambore's golden age.

In the 1980s,

Ranthambore was a place transformed.

Tigers shed their nocturnal cloak.

They suddenly had no fear of man.

And the visibility,

the low savannah grasslands here,

meant you could see tigers
and watch their behaviour

like nowhere else on Earth.

Noon was my favourite.

She was called Noon because
she was really active at noon.

Noon was a delight.

She was absolutely
the opposite of Padmini.

She was the new generation of tigers

that had grown
without the fear of man.

I watched Noon drive away
other females,

fight them over prey,

force out her sister.

FIERCE GROWLING

I began to understand that the few
square kilometres around the lakes

were her territory.

She had claimed the richest tiger
turf, one teeming with prey,

and now the hunters and people
were gone it was a tiger paradise.

Pure magic.

It was around this time
that I bought some land

on the edge of Ranthambore.

More and more,
this is where I wanted to be -

alongside the tigers,
learning more about their lives.

Ah, wow.

This is Noon's mate.

A big male called Genghis.

One day, back in 1983,

he had appeared suddenly
by the lakes.

From where, we don't know.

No-one was monitoring the tigers
in those days.

What we did know was that males
move around much more than females.

As adults, they leave their family.

They seek out new big territories

that give them access to several
females and lots of prey.

Areas like the lakes.

I remember a day a few months
after he arrived.

LOW GROWL

Sambar deer had congregated
in huge numbers to feast

on succulent water plants.

But deer weren't the only animals
in the water.

There are about 120 crocodiles
in the lakes.

It's one of the only places
in the world where sambar deer

face both predators.

We thought tigers only hunted
them on land,

but then we saw Genghis make
that extraordinary kill.

I couldn't believe that I was seeing
an enormous tiger

rushing into the water,
killing a sambar.

And we were lucky.

This was the time to record
for the world

what Ranthambore was giving

because so far the world had
no real, wild pictures of tigers.

And Ranthambore's tiger population
was growing.

There were 13 tigers
when I first arrived.

Now we thought there were 45.

They were the best days
of my life...

..days, I thought, would never end.

I thought I would have
another season with Genghis.

I didn't know,

but that was the last time
I saw Genghis in my life.

When it happened,
it was like a nightmare.

Sometime in 1991,

I was with Fateh Singh,
my tiger guru,

and we were wondering what happened
to a few of the tigers

that we were watching.

We could no longer find them.

Fateh Singh felt that
they were missing

and maybe they could
have been poached.

And I said, "No, not possible.

"Who would poach these incredibly
beautiful animals?"

But then began our year of horror.

Poachers started to be
caught with skins.

CLANK

It knocked Fateh Singh and me out.

We just couldn't believe
that this was a possibility.

ARCHIVE NEWS: The price of bones is
soaring as tiger numbers plummet.

India's tigers are being murdered
so the Chinese can turn their bones

into folk cures for fevers
and rheumatism.

I think the population
all over India is going down.

I think the primary reason for this
is poaching and the bone trade

to meet the Chinese demand for
medicinal derivatives.

I think the tiger faces...probable
extinction in the next decade.

Fateh Singh had no time
for poachers.

If he found a poacher, he'd charge
after him, take him to jail.

He believed that that was the only
way Ranthambore would survive.

And he was beaten up himself.
He nearly died.

His driver jumped on his body
to save him and took the beating.

This is a letter my tiger guru
Fateh Singh wrote at that time.

"It is a massacre.

"When the police chief showed me the
skin, I could not control myself.

"Tears were rolling down my cheeks.

"It's heartbreaking and sometimes
I feel guilty that I taught them

"to have faith in human beings.

"All the tigers were shot
at point blank range,

"just innocently looking
at the man with the gun."

I think both Fateh and I felt
that over the years we'd worked

very hard with the tigers,

they'd lost their fear of man,

and they treated the poachers
in the friendliest of ways,

and they lost their lives.

Because by now we had learned
to identify individuals

by their stripes,

we could say with certainty
that 30 tigers,

tigers that we knew, were gone.

Around the lakes, just 15
terrified tigers remained,

and I was determined to do
all I could to keep them alive.

SHRILL WHISTLE

I entered the arena of government,

sat on endless committees.

I started a charity
with local people.

I wrote books, I made a TV series.

I'm Valmik Thapar.

It was the most time I'd spent away
from Ranthambore...

..but then my next lake tigress
drew me back in.

Of all the tigers, she's the one
who would teach me the most

about the tiger's life.

We called her Machli,
which means fish,

because she had marks
like fish bones on her cheek.

She was born during the crisis...

..and for the first two years
of her life,

she had stayed with her mother,
as all tiger cubs do.

HE WHISPERS INDISTINCTLY

Now Machli was nearing adulthood,

I guessed soon she would need
a territory of her own,

but when and how
would she carve one out?

Tigers communicate
with each other silently.

They leave their scent
in their territories.

This can attract conflict
or repel conflict.

And through this process
of territorial marking,

they talk to each other.

Fateh and I watched the pair
closely, certain their time together

was coming to an end.

The lakes were rich with prey,

but there was only enough
for one resident tigress.

Would her mother force Machli out?

The bond Machli once shared
with her mother was gone

and replaced with aggression.

DEEP GROWL

This time Machli was the one
to back down.

At the edge of the lakes
is my favourite place,

Raj Bagh -
the ruined garden of the kings.

Now tigers hold court here.

I suspected Machli would soon
try to overthrow her mother

so she could rule these ruins.

Her mother, too,
sniffed out the threat.

To me,
Machli seemed a little afraid,

but she stood her ground.

FEROCIOUS ROARING

I wasn't sure who'd won
the confrontation,

but shortly after this,
Machli's mother left.

Maybe it was the threat
of constant conflict.

Maybe she sacrificed her territory
for her daughter.

Either way, Machli now ruled here.

Later that year, Fateh and I
realised that a new male

had arrived at the lakes.

He soon picked up Machli's scent.

We called him Bambooram,

and gradually he got closer to
Machli, leaving markers of his own.

Then one day Machli approached him.

He was aged six or seven
and in his prime.

It wasn't long before Machli muchly
decided she was ready to mate.

GROWLING

The ferocity of tiger mating
always impresses me.

COMBATIVE ROARING

I was excited by the thought
of a new generation.

It was like a new dawn.

The dark days of hunting and
poaching had long gone, I thought.

This was the chance for the clan
to truly thrive.

It was a very happy time for me.

I'd met my wife, Sanjana,

and had a son, Hamir,

named after one of
Ranthambore's greatest rulers.

And soon,

Machli herself had a litter.

Two cubs.

HE WHISPERS: This is family life
amongst the tiger.

This is the beauty of Ranthambore.

They're both male cubs.

She's really looking after them
at the moment.

Oh, wow. Look at him.

Learning the ways of the mother.

It was an absolute delight
watching these boys grow up.

And then one day we heard rumours
that trouble was headed their way.

Their father had vanished,

and a new male was patrolling
the area.

We called him Nick.

Without the protection
of their father,

Machli's family were in danger.

I'm really worried about
these two cubs

because they're young male cubs.

There could be a new resident male
in the area,

so the tigress has to be
really careful.

She's got to keep them
well protected.

She has to defend them
and chase away any male intruder.

In fact,
she's bound to fight the male

so that he keeps a distance
from the cubs.

LOW GROWL

HIGH-PITCHED CRY

Nick was a huge male in his prime.

I shuddered to think what
he could do to the cubs.

He could easily kill them
in order to mate with Machli

and father a litter of his own.

A few days later,

I found Machli being pursued
by Nick.

He was definitely interested
in mating.

SHARP BARK

Would she give in?

Or would she try and fight him off?

At first it looked like she
was keeping away from Nick

so he couldn't get behind her
and mount her.

But Nick was really enticed
by her scent.

He didn't look like he would
give up.

For Machli, victory.

For Nick, an injury that would
make it hard to hunt.

Now he knew the cubs had a mother

who would risk it all
to protect them.

DISTANT GROWL

A few months later, I saw
the most extraordinary moment

between a tigress and her cubs.

Machli suckled them.

Her cubs were almost two years old.

There would have been no milk
for them at this age.

Perhaps it was Machli's way
of telling them

it was time to say goodbye.

After that, everything changed.

I never saw the family
together again,

and the cubs struck out to find
territories of their own.

In 2004, I was very busy
with a Supreme Court committee,

and we were hearing regularly
that there was something going wrong

in Sariska,

150km from the Ranthambore
Tiger Reserve,

that poachers were out.

Nobody was sure about it.

The government of the day refused
to admit that there was a problem,

even though the director of the park
was crying out for help.

Every tiger in Sariska by September
2004 had been poached and killed.

Sariska had no tigers,

and then, in central India,
not so far from Ranthambore,

the Panna Tiger Reserve,
all the tigers went extinct there.

So, poaching took a massive turn.

When it happened the second time,

it was the same Chinese pressure.

It was the illegal trade

and a new demand
for ornamental tiger skins.

It was again trying
to keep your tigers safe.

How are you going to do it
the second time around?

"Scattered thoughts.

"June 2005.

"The future of the tiger is bleak.

"God help us."

THUNDER RUMBLES

The monsoon of that year
was a critical moment.

It's a time when the rains lash
the forest with incredible force.

Ranthambore completely shuts down.

The roads are washed away.

The perfect cover for poachers
to strike.

I had no idea where Machli was
or if she was still alive.

I kept busy in Delhi, working
with the then Prime Minister

to create a moment of huge change.

In the end,
Project Tiger was scrapped

and the National Tiger
Conservation Authority was launched.

This time,
because of various connections

with the Empowered Committee,
with the Supreme Court Committee,

we declared a red alert
and an emergency in Ranthambore.

200 armed men were sent in
to surround the periphery

and to flush out any intruder,

and it created a scare.

We knew that there were problems
in Ranthambore.

Fateh Singh, who had by now retired,

said that half the tigers
of Ranthambore had been poached,

that there were barely
21 tigers left,

terrified tigers who'd experienced
a second round of poaching.

I think the lake tigers must
have known what was going on.

because on the edges
of their territory,

there were vacant areas.

The tigers on the outer areas
had vanished

and the silence of death
hung in the air.

Every tiger on the lakes
would have known that.

Luckily, the area around the lakes
was the inner sanctum.

It was very difficult for poachers
to get to the lake area.

So the lake tigresses survived

because the area around
is fortified.

There are gates and entry points.

There are lots of forest guards,

so the poachers were not
going to take a risk in this area.

So the lake tigers kept on
producing cubs that would go out

and repopulate areas
where tigers had been poached.

And that's what happened -
that's what saved Ranthambore.

And that's what saved Machli.

She survived yet another crisis,

and her final litter would
grow up and spread out

all over Ranthambore and beyond.

When I first went to Ranthambore,

it was a tiny patch
of 300 square kilometres.

Today, adjacent to it
are three tiger reserves,

and we have 5,000 square kilometres
where tiger populations can go to,

where tigers can migrate to -
that's success.

That required hard work
by a bunch of people.

And one of those people

is my colleague
Dr Dharmendra Khandal.

He has data of 20 years
of Ranthambore's tigers...

..and that enables us to really look
back and work out for the first time

exactly how Ranthambore's tigers
are related.

Today, we know that Machli's genes

are in 75% of all
Ranthambore tigers,

including my next tiger, Krishna.

one of Machli's daughters

and a tigress that shook my being.

She ruled the lakes for a while

and had four little cubs of her own.

It's very rare to find a tigress
with four small cubs.

And there was an incredible
afternoon when she took her cubs

and walked to the palace den.

To get to the palace den you have
to cross a little bit of water.

And that's where a few big
crocodiles lie,

waiting to get their chance
on anything that passes.

She carefully negotiated the water,

carrying the weakest cub
in her mouth

while the others followed her.

She lost one of the cubs.

LOW GROWL

It brought tears to my eyes
that day.

One of the cubs that survived
still lives around the lakes today.

She was named Arrowhead
because she had two pointy eyebrows,

like two arrows on her forehead.

She's family.

She always surprises me,

and I see much of her today.

For a while, she ruled the lakes...

..but today, this territory
is no longer hers

and she should not be here.

Recently, she started behaving
in unpredictable ways.

I was startled when I saw,

on a camera's viewfinder,

Arrowhead arriving at the lakes

and finding a way to attack
an enormous soft shell turtle.

And she not only grabs the turtle
in the shallow water,

she picks it up and rushes back into
the grass and starts to devour it.

Was she, like Genghis
all those years before,

not afraid of crocodiles
in the lakes?

Well, what I saw next made me think

that she was not fearless,
but desperate.

Arrowhead's back in the lakes...

..and this time she chases
after a small crocodile.

She charges into the water,

misses the baby crocodile,

but she doesn't realise
she's in a deep place

and there are bigger crocodiles.

The big crocodiles pounce on her
under the water.

And I don't know how -
she manages to free herself.

And then, a short while later,

someone filmed her eating
a crocodile.

Suddenly, memories of years ago
come flooding back,

and I remembered that my nephew
Jaiswal had filmed this -

Arrowhead's grandmother Machli
wrestling and eventually killing

a four metre crocodile.

No-one had ever recorded
such a thing before or since.

Severe droughts had driven Machli
to behave in this way.

What was driving Arrowhead?

A few days later, we found out.

She had been pregnant

and in desperate need of protein
for her milk.

Now her cubs have been filmed,
just weeks old.

SOFT MEWING

Oh, they're lovely shots.
Absolutely lovely.

It's amazing.

This is really valuable,
precious footage.

They're barely able to crawl.

Wow. It's amazing.

This is the secret life of tigers.

But how will Arrowhead
keep them alive?

She no longer rules the lakes,

and she's finding it difficult
to survive.

She's desperate because
she has very little prey to hunt.

Trespassing into the lake territory,
as she'd done before,

is much more risky
with such small cubs.

Today, the lakes are ruled
by another tigress - Riddhi.

She, too, has three cubs.
Three mouths to feed.

She's one of Arrowhead's older
daughters from a previous litter.

So now we have mother and daughter

with three cubs each
in bordering territories.

What will happen?

We have no idea.

Which of them will survive?

Will they meet?

Will they fight?

Will they play?

I can't wait to see this
new family drama play out.

Today, 70 tigers
live across this landscape

instead of the 13 we began with
50 years ago,

and I wonder which of them
will become like family.

When I'm asked,
what have I done with my life?

The only answer I can give is this.

That I have been amongst
the wild tigers

that roam Ranthambore's
magnificent lakes

and helped them to thrive.

And my love for five tigresses
in particular has moulded me.

Padmini.

Noon.

Machli.

Krishna.

And Arrowhead.

Piecing together the story
of their matriarchal clan

has been the privilege of my life.

FIERCE GROWLING

They have been like family to me...

..and I can only hope that
this story of their secret lives

will help others to love them
as I do,

and endeavour to fight
for their future.

Everybody's aware in the tiger world
that this year is

the 50th anniversary of the
celebration of the establishment

of Project Tiger, which has helped
in conserving India's tigers.

But, for me, that didn't interest me
in the film because I knew a lot

of other people would want
to pursue that -

what I describe as
a more political film.

But then Valmik rang me up
from the edge

of one of Ranthambore's famous lakes

and said, there's this amazing tiger
called Charger

who specialises
in charging into the lakes

and chasing all the deer out.

So I thought,
"Hmm, should I watch telly,

"play golf, smoke cigars,

"or do this one more film?"

My first tiger film was initially

not supposed
to revolve around tigers.

Because I was an evolutionary
biologist,

I wanted to do a film about
the evolution of the peacock's tail.

So I thought, I'll have to go
to India to make it.

And I took it to the BBC and
they said, "Yes, we'll take a film

"on the evolution of the peacock's
tail for David Attenborough's

"Wildlife On One series.

"But you've got to make it the tail
of the peacock and the tiger."

The key thing that stimulated me
to know that I could make a film

was Valmik's three or four books
on the tigers of Ranthambore,

which were gloriously illustrated.

The imagery,

the evocative nature
of this huge fort

that sits on the edge of
Ranthambore,

and then the tigers that run in
and out of the lakes,

through the lilies,

past the crocodiles.

It's like Disneyland for wildlife.

I did my recce
and went to Ranthambore.

It was better than I ever imagined.

It was magnificent
and is magnificent still.

But the weak link, for me,
was getting tiger footage.

Tejbir, Valmik's brother in law,
who helped me on my peacock film,

said, "We filmed tigers
in the 1980s.

"I think Valmik's got the footage."

And so I went to meet Valmik.

When he met me at the door,
there was this big figure

who I instantly knew was a star
in the making.

A hugely charismatic person.

He realised I was passionate
about conservation

and he was passionate
about conservation.

So I think it created
an understanding

where we could work together.

But the nitty gritty
of that meeting was,

"Valmik, can you find
your tiger footage?"

I had no idea what the tiger
footage was like.

We found some cliched
dusty film cans under his desk,

which turned out to have some
phenomenal tiger footage

of Valmik's most favourite tiger,
Genghis,

charging into Ranthambore lakes,
killing deer.

So that was an absolute
wonderful moment.

So, after I finished that film,
I instantly thought

this guy could present
a superb landmark series

on the Indian subcontinent.

But the key was making Valmik Thapar
into a presenter

as opposed to a contributor.

At the time we made
Land Of The Tiger,

we were both 39, 40 years old.

That created a little bit
of chemistry

where we got on very well.

But I couldn't force Valmik to do
something, I had to convince him,

which is good training,
to be convinced,

and he would challenge me a lot.

But we're still working
together 30 years on.

He will ring me up periodically
and say,

"Mike, there's this event going on,"

or, "There's this crisis going on,"

and this film is a product
of exactly that.

We definitely are friends
more than colleagues.

It goes further than that, for me.

It wasn't that Valmik
was just a presenter.

It wasn't that Valmik
was just a punter.

It wasn't that Valmik was just
a...a powerful character

fighting for the good
of India's tigers and its land.

There were more aspects to his life
that I appreciated, I think.

We may have got older
and more grumpy

and lots more bits of our
bodies ache, without any doubts,

but I don't think our passion
for tigers

and conserving tigers
has diminished at all.

Telling stories about tigers,
especially this film,

which might have quite a nice
good news aspect to it,

will both educate people and
encourage them that there's hope.

Not false hope, but it's important
to give them hope that the tigers

of Ranthambore, which have been
through two significant crises,

have come through.

And a huge part of that is down
to Valmik's enthusiasm

and bullishness to fight

and help save the tiger.