There are forests that announce themselves with spectacle, and then there are forests that wait. Kanha National Park belongs to the latter. It does not perform. It absorbs. Nestled within the Maikal range of the Satpuras in Madhya Pradesh, in what is often described as the heart of India, Kanha is a living, breathing paradox — vast yet intimate, silent yet speaking, ancient yet perpetually new.
When filmmaker Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury — affectionately called Tonyda — arrived there with his wife Indrani and a group of old friends, it was not with a checklist or an agenda. It was with an openness that is increasingly rare in a world obsessed with outcomes. Over four days, he would go on six safaris, rising early, surrendering to the discipline of the jungle timetable, and allowing the forest to decide what it wished to reveal.
“Sometimes you see nothing,” Tony says, matter-of-factly. “But you still go. With hope.”
That hope, unguaranteed and unrewarded more often than not, is precisely what makes the experience meaningful.
Kanha does not promise sightings. It offers presence.
The Discipline of Waiting
Safari mornings begin before the sun has fully decided to show itself. The forest wakes gradually — mist hovering above the earth, light slipping through sal trees like a secret. The safaris run within strict windows, governed by rules that are non-negotiable. Silence is encouraged. Feeding animals is forbidden. The jungle does not bend to human impatience.
Tony appreciates that structure. “There are instructions, of course,” he says. “And you follow them. You don’t interfere. You don’t provoke. You just observe.”
The jeep moves slowly, tyres crunching over forest paths that appear familiar but are never the same twice. “Even if you take the same route,” Tony notes, “it’s different every time. The light changes. The sounds change. The mood changes.”
Ambiguity, he believes, is not discomfort — it is truth. “You can meet the same person even after twenty years and still find them ambiguous,” he says. “The forest is like that. Life is like that. We don’t know.”
That not-knowing becomes the great leveller.
When the Tiger Appears
And then, sometimes — unexpectedly, unannounced — the forest opens its palm.
On one afternoon safari, as the day leaned gently towards evening, a tiger crossed their path.
It did not roar. It did not pause for acknowledgement. It moved with the effortless confidence of a being that does not question its place in the world.
Tony remembers the moment with a mixture of awe and humility. “When you see a tiger in the wild jungle,” he says, his voice sharpening even in recollection, “you realise how insignificant we are. We don’t have any real power. We don’t have that rigour. That enigma. That charisma.”
He pauses, then adds with wry honesty, “We wear belts and shoes and think we are something. But we are nothing.”
The tiger’s movement, he says, was almost rhythmic. “It was like watching a dance,” he recalls. “Light was falling through the trees, and the tiger was moving through it — like fire. Pure energy.”
It is no surprise, then, that when asked about his spirit animal, Tony does not hesitate. “Tiger,” he says simply.
Not lion. Not king.
“I don’t want to be a lion,” he explains. “The tiger isn’t about ruling. It’s about presence. Energy. Fire.”
When pressed to rationalise it, he refuses. “I have no idea why,” he shrugs. “Not everything needs reasoning. Some things are body matters. Energy matters.”
Nature’s Invisible Architecture
Beyond the tiger, Kanha revealed itself as a carefully held balance — a living lesson in coexistence rather than hierarchy. Herds of deer moved alertly through the undergrowth, their stillness often more telling than motion. Bisons appeared with a slow, grounded authority, while elephants passed like ancient memory, unhurried and indifferent to human presence. There were warning calls — birds signalling unseen movement, monkeys leaping suddenly from trees — reminders that survival here is collective, instinctive, and precise.
Tony watched this quiet choreography with fascination. “Everything is connected,” he says. “The tiger doesn’t exist without the deer. The forest doesn’t exist without every single one of them.” There was no cruelty in this cycle, only necessity. “We call it a food chain,” he reflects, “but it’s really a balance. Nothing is extra here. Nothing is wasted.” In that moment, the jungle felt less like a spectacle and more like a philosophy — one that does not moralise, does not apologise, and does not explain itself.
The Camera as Witness
Tony is quick to downplay his skill as a photographer, even though the images from Kanha — of tigers, deer, bisons — suggest otherwise.
“I’m a bad photographer,” he insists, laughing. “I know technically how good or bad I am. I have a good framing sense, yes. I love framing. But photography isn’t just framing — it’s light, aperture, ISO. I can do it, but I don’t think I’m good.”
What he does not deny is his relationship with the act of capturing.
“I capture what I want to remember,” he says. “Not what I want to show off. What I want to remember.”
Light fascinates him endlessly — the way it filters through foliage, the way mist lifts from water bodies, the way shadow reshapes the same landscape every few minutes. “Light creates magic,” he says. “Sometimes you don’t even touch anything. You just hold the camera body. That’s enough.”
In one particularly indelible moment, a tiger crossed the frame as the jeep stood still, the forest holding its breath. “I was sitting there,” Tony recalls, “and the tiger was crossing like this… and the jeep was there, inside the forest. It felt unreal.”
Evenings Without Urgency
If mornings belonged to anticipation, evenings belonged to reflection.
Back at the resort, time slowed. Fires crackled. Conversations wandered. Music drifted — Simon and Garfunkel among other voices — not as curated ambience, but as accompaniment to thought.
“I wasn’t even consciously playing music,” Tony says. “But that’s what happens when you are surrounded by friends.”
Food was vegetarian throughout the trip — simple, grounding, and comforting. Khichuri, aloo bhaja, papad, vegetables. “Peacefully done,” he describes it. “That’s important.” There was no indulgence, no excess. Just nourishment.
Osmosis and the Forest
Tony believes forests work through a process he calls osmosis.
“They suck out your anxiety,” he says. “Your negativity.” Unlike humans, the jungle does not accuse. It does not resent. It does not compete. “A tiger won’t hate you,” Tony points out. “It will ignore you. And that teaches you something.”
Human beings, he observes, carry negativity even in moments of calm. The forest does not. It simply exists. “Why do people spend money to come here?” he asks rhetorically. “Because it cleans you. It makes you positive.”
That positivity, he believes, comes from resonance — energy meeting energy, reverberating, and leaving behind something intangible but lasting.
What It Leaves Behind
The impact of Kanha has not ended with the journey.
Tony admits the experience has already begun to alter the way he thinks about storytelling. “I’m not giving you data,” he says. “I’m giving you my realisation.”
Those realisations, he knows, will seep into his scripts. “I have two or three scripts in mind,” he says. “Some points will be incorporated. I know the scripts will become better.”
Success, by conventional definitions, does not interest him in this context. “I don’t know if I’ll become number one,” he says. “I don’t know if I’ll make a thousand crores. I don’t even know if I’ll get the money to make the film.”
What he does know is this: “The work will be better.”
The Visible Shift
Friends noticed the change almost immediately — weight loss, brightness, a sense of ease.
Tony laughs when it is pointed out. “Yes, I’ve lost weight,” he admits. “And yes, I’m glowing.”
He attributes the glow to two things. “Forests,” he says first. Then, with a mischievous pause, adds, “and contracts.”
He explains, half-serious, half-amused: “Everything should be legal. Clear. That gives peace. Forests and contracts — both give glow.”
People Matter
Would the experience have been the same if he had gone alone?
“No,” Tony says without hesitation. “Not at all. My friends, some from 50 years back and others, for over a decade, arranged the trip and I am so grateful.”
The presence of his wife, Indrani, and the group of old friends shaped the journey. “Their positivity mattered,” he says. “The guidance mattered.”
Like filmmaking, the jungle, too, is collaborative. Experience deepens when shared.
BELIEF SYSTEM
Tony is not given to grand spiritual claims. His belief system resists spectacle; it is anchored instead in observation, memory, and a quiet surrender to what cannot be controlled. “I don’t believe in God,” he says. “I don’t believe in war.” When asked what he does believe in, his answer arrives without pause. “I believe in the supreme power, and I believe in roses.” It is not a metaphor he feels compelled to explain, perhaps because, to him, belief does not require translation.
Over the years, his understanding of the sacred has revealed itself not in temples or doctrines, but in moments when nature has asserted its presence with undeniable force. In the Sundarbans, watching the tide erase land with the same ease that it gives life, he felt something close to reverence — a reminder of power without malice, authority without ego.
And at Sandakphu in 1994, standing small against a sky smeared with magical hues that refused to be still, he experienced what he later described simply as “seeing God”. Not a figure, not a voice, but an overwhelming sense of order, beauty and insignificance existing at once. For Tony, nature does not ask to be worshipped; it demands only attention. “Nature is God,” he says quietly, as if stating a fact rather than a philosophy.
There is no hierarchy in this belief, no promise of salvation — only a recognition that everything survives through balance, through osmosis, through the unspoken laws that govern forests, tides and skies alike.
The Forest as Reminder
Kanha did not give Tony answers. It gave him something more enduring — humility without humiliation, clarity without certainty, and silence without emptiness.
It reminded him that some experiences carry no transactional value. They do not make money. They do not guarantee success. They do not trend.
What they do instead is enrich. “They stay with you,” Tony says. “And they help you do something better.”
In the end, Kanha did what forests have always done for those willing to listen — it stripped away noise, returned perspective, and reminded a storyteller why stories matter in the first place.
Because before narrative, before cinema, before ambition, there is presence.
Kanha teaches that presence is everything, and in its wake, the desire to make a film has arrived fully formed.