Looking for Eyeshine: A Tiny Wildcat and its Neighbours in Jawai

On a sweltering night in June 2023, photographer Dhritiman Mukherjee and I sit in a Gypsy in the middle of a field in Hiroli village. We’re near Chamunderi town in the Jawai region of Rajasthan, and are surrounded by rocky hillocks connected by patchy scrub forests and cultivated land. We face one such rocky hillock dotted with giant Euphorbia cacti with torches in our hands and hope in our hearts. Every few minutes, we flash a beam of light on the hill in front to spot the glowing eyes of the mysterious wildcat we’ve come looking for. Instead, we are assailed by a million insects of all shapes and sizes every time we turn the torch on. I desperately flail my hands to protect myself from my insect attackers. My rational mind reminds me that insects are great indicators of a healthy ecosystem, but my urban heart wonders, “Do they really have to get into my clothes?” The others are unperturbed. Dhritiman hums a Kishore Kumar song softly. Our naturalist and Gypsy driver, the eagle-eyed Dilip, scans the rock face. Suddenly, he spots the unmistakable sparkle of eyes between bushes. We peer through our binoculars. “It’s a leopard,” I exclaim. “Or a cat,” says Dhritiman cautiously. Both are exciting thoughts. Who doesn’t love leopards? But it could also be the rusty-spotted cat — the one we’re braving the Rajasthan heat for! The rusty spotted cat is the smallest wildcat in the world. It is around half the size of a domestic cat and is known to be one of the most elusive.

We observe the ghost-like figure skulk behind the bushes for a few minutes and are eager to ascertain its identity. It suddenly emerges from the darkness and runs across the field we are in. It’s neither a leopard nor a rusty-spotted cat, but a jungle cat — one of India’s most adaptable and commonly seen wildcats. Because of its size and appearance, it’s often mistaken for a leopard cub (and sometimes even persecuted as a consequence). 

Our excitement at seeing a jungle cat abates, and we continue to scan the hill. Minutes later, we see eyeshine, again! And a tiny face emerges from behind a looming cactus. There is a collective gasp, and Dilip voices what we’re all thinking but are too stunned to say: “Rusty hai”. It’s not just any rusty-spotted cat; it’s a little kitten. Which means the mother won’t be far away. Moments later, another kitten comes into view. Just as we are reeling with joy at having seen one of the least-known wildcats on our first day in Jawai, we notice another rusty spotted cat run from the hill to a waterbody nearby. It’s the mother. She is in the bushes with her back towards us, and when she turns around, she has a rodent in her mouth. She runs back up the hill to feed her babies, seemingly unperturbed by our presence. This is great news for us, we think. We’ll have many more sightings since our presence does not appear to threaten her. However, without torches and eyeshine and given how perfectly the rusty’s brown mottled fur camouflages with the rocky outcrops, spotting the cats in the daytime will undoubtedly be a challenge.

The next morning, as dawn breaks, we return to the same hill. Just as we arrive, we see around 50 peacocks and peahens casually perched atop the hill against a pale orange sky. Another 20 are wandering about in the surrounding fields. I’ve seen peacocks a hundred times in different parts of India, but there’s something otherworldly about seeing them in Jawai. It’s probably the combination of the landscape and the sheer numbers that you encounter them in. And then unexpectedly, as if responding to a collective inner alarm, they start a deafening, riotous calling all at once. The tranquility that existed a moment ago is replaced by complete anarchy. 

The morning experience around the hill is entirely different from the previous night. The sound of lapwings pierces the air, there’s an unmistakable sound of a woodpecker knocking on a tree, plum-headed parakeets and red-vented bulbuls flit around, and two coppersmith barbets perch on a neem tree behind us. But our focus is single-minded. We want to see the cats in the daytime, and Dhritiman wants photographs of the cat family together. As the sun rises, we spot the cats, and they reappear multiple times over the next two hours, one at a time.

Spotting the cats in the daytime makes us a little more confident, maybe even overconfident, of seeing them in the coming days. Dhritiman grumbles about them not coming out together. “They won’t go anywhere for the next few days,” Dilip assures us. We leave the hillock to return at dusk. When we come back to the spot in the evening, we instinctively sense that something has shifted. For the next few hours, there’s hardly any movement. There’s occasional eyeshine; we know the cats are there, but there’s no sighting. Sweat trickles down our backs; the heat and disappointment make us restless. After five hours of waiting, we leave, only to return at dawn the next day. But it’s the same story again — no sign of the cats. We’ve set up camera traps in the vicinity, but there’s no action on them either. The rusty-spotted cat family has disappeared.

 

With the rusty-spotted cats vanishing on us, we decide that evening to look for what is pretty much a certainty in Jawai — leopards. This is leopard country, after all. Over the years, Jawai has become more popular as a tourist destination, and now there are over 150 Gypsys offering safaris in this landscape. The vehicle owners have a network to inform each other about where leopards have been spotted. We hear that Neelam, the 13-year-old matriarch of Jawai, was seen on a hill in her territory nearby. To reach her, Dilip’s Gypsy zips through the roads and clambers up the hills like a rollercoaster on steroids, only with the semi-arid landscape’s thorny shrubs poking you in the eyes and scratching your face at the same time. When we get there, we are one of 20-odd safari Gypsy waiting for her to make an appearance. After an hour of waiting and changing multiple locations, just as the sun is about to set, she appears with her cub and sits on the hill opposite us, occasionally looking in our direction. Her mesmerised admirers eagerly watch every movement. We spend an hour observing this beautiful creature in her prehistoric landscape. As a gentle wind blows, I drown out the noise from the other vehicles, and for a brief moment, it’s just me and the leopards. Nothing else matters.

Twice a day we continue our pilgrimage to spot our enigmatic wildcats. But with absolutely no sign of activity and our camera traps giving us nothing, we drive around the complex landscape through villages, farms, dams, and hills, and each day we discover a completely new side of Jawai.

One evening, driving past our old hill, we spot a Eurasian eagle owl perfectly camouflaged against a rock face, its deep orange eyes gleaming as if it can look into your soul. Soon we notice two more owls in the vicinity. Given my obsession with owls, I don’t want to move from there. Dilip brings out a flask of tea. I watch my owl movie, sipping in peace, until we notice an Indian robin nearby curiously flying up and down in the same location and calling out loudly. Just then, we notice a sand boa a foot away from the robin, which puts everything into perspective. The sand boa eventually slithers away into the bushes, and the robin rests its vocal cords.

On day four, after another cat no-show, Dilip takes control of our itinerary and drives purposefully through undulating rocks and dirt tracks. All of a sudden, the landscape changes to a stunning meadow with a waterbody. We’re at Velar Lake with hundreds of birds — great and little egrets, painted storks, Asian openbills, Eurasian spoonbills, river terns, and plovers — and a blanket of lotuses. As I process the visual delight, Dilip points to what looks like a small rock near the lotuses, but is actually a baby crocodile. We spend the next few hours sitting quietly by the magic lotus lake, where designer dragonflies, skittering frogs, and baby crocodiles make regular appearances. On our drive back to camp, a monocled cobra slithers past our Gypsy, a star turtle gets on with its business on a rock, and a hedgehog scurries past.

On yet another morning of failed cat sightings, we head to Jawai Dam (Jawai Bandh). Dilip informs us of a large nesting colony of swallows there. The swallow nest colony there is an architectural marvel built painstakingly with mud, on the roof of an overhanging rock jutting out of the hill. With a hundred circular entrances of different dimensions, it looks like an art installation at an expensive gallery. Curiously though, it was frequented by bank mynas and house sparrows. Dilip reassures me that uninvited guests have not colonised the swallows’ nests, and the swallows will return in large numbers in the evening. Is it some sort of timeshare arrangement, I wonder?

While we are standing under the nest gaping at it, Raju, a local guide who accompanied us, finds a little cave-like opening under a rock nearby. He crawls into it in search of life forms and emerges looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. There are bats inside the cave, he says. Excited, Dhritiman decides to crawl in too. But just as he is about to enter the cave, hundreds of bats fly out of a hole on the roof of the cave and roost on the rocky face adjacent to the swallows’ nest. It’s like a scene straight out of Batman Begins. We watch the mouse-tailed bats hanging from the rock face against the beating sun. There is a gentle collective motion even as they are suspended by their hind claws, with their thumbs and wrists propped against the wall. It’s fascinating to observe.

Days in Jawai may be amazing, but the nights are extraordinary. There’s the incessant loud drone of mating cicadas and then stillness for a few seconds. The silence is pierced by the call of an owl or nightjar (that sounds like a door creaking). And then, all at once, the cicada orchestra resumes. Driving through the rollercoaster terrain, some nights we see eyeshine at every bend — a jungle cat, a hare, a monitor lizard, a spider, or owl. On other nights, it’s just a ghost tree standing silently under a million dazzling stars. 

While we’ve come to Jawai for cats, the landscape shares many other secrets every day. On the fifth and last day, we go back to our hill to check for the cats one final time. We’re there at 4.45 am waiting patiently but without much hope. As the first rays of the sun hit the dark grey rocks, a figure emerges from the bushes. And then another. And another. The rusty and her two kittens spend the next two hours gambolling in front of our eyes. Is this really happening? Hours before our flight back home? And just as we are coping with our feelings of disbelief and wonder, a fourth cat emerges from somewhere. It’s the father! This is just too much drama and action for my weak heart and sleep-deprived brain. After another hour of watching these secretive, enigmatic cats frolic around in front of us like they’ve known us forever, they retire to cooler confines, away from our confounded eyes.

Amidst the seeing and the not-seeing, the noise and silences, night and day, Jawai unveiled some of its most intimate secrets with us. We leave feeling infinitely closer to this ancient landscape and the creatures that inhabit it.