Amber sun below the horizon, musty air, thick tree trunk—a coiled tiger. Head bent, nibbling sanctuary grass, pointy cannoli ears on the alert, scut jiggling—the stalked blackbuck antelope. Langurs cry kae-kae-kae from bodhi trees, shake their branches; parakeets, starlings, munias, and hornbills screech, chirp, trill, and nearby chital deer stamp their feet as the fast-twitching muscles of the big cat launch its explosive burst into the open.

The orange-black stripes become a bouncing, enlarged brown blur. With a roar, the softly thundering legs lunge, sinewy paws pounce, swivel around the blackbuck’s long corkscrew horns, and forepaws with a swipe force of 4,500 kilograms encircle its neck in a stranglehold. Four seven-inch daggers clamp the antelope’s windpipe as its shock-frozen eyes bulge, tongue fishes in and out. The buck can’t feel or see anymore, thankful its eyes can’t meet the tiger’s as the tiger pierces its trachea. Choking breath, overwhelmed with pain, legs shudder and give way as the royal bengal breaks its neck.

Ravenous four-inch talons grip the antelope as the tiger cleans out the blackbuck’s belly, hind, splashing red across the striped face. Warm blood seethes from burst vessels, seeps into the sun-baked soil and the lime green grass that the blackbuck munched before it leapt and jolted for its life in vain. Smelling the buck, itching for scraps, two striped hyenas and an Indian golden jackal watch and circle from afar, not daring to take on the apex predator while it has its meal.

Pacified, furry wet chops unhaunch from the remains and rest on pulsating pincers. Pink spiked tongue slaps around mouth, forelegs, chest, paws, and tucks in crimson blood and sticking bone, meat morsels. Content, yellow eyes moan and chuff, watching white-rumped vultures wait and flies flit on vertebrae, hollow eyes licked clean.