FEARFUL SYMMETRY

It is high summer in India's Bandhavgarh National Park. Dominating the dawn landscape is an 900-foot-high ridge, dramatically ringed by steep cliffs. Below this, a network of dry watercourses bisect lesser tree-covered ridges, leading down to a wide valley choked with tall, reed-like grasses and still hiding small pools of precious water. Here the chital and sambur deer and wild boar come to graze and drink and where the tiger waits to ambush its unsuspecting prey. The air is tinder-dry and the grass crackles noisily beneath the feet of the elephant. The early sun has washed the landscape with golds, reads and ochres. Then he emerges, stalking straight ahead, his eyes total intent; as William Blake says, the animals "fearful symmetry."