Everyone loves a jungle story. The call of adventure in the wild is one of those lures that few people can ignore, especially if the stories are about tigers or leopards; even more so, of the stories that are about some man-eating carnivore.

India has some of the richest tropical evergreen forests in the world. In fact, the rainforests in the south of India are comparable in biodiversity with the Amazon. And for the past many decades, just as protected, too. Of course this was also rich ground for many great hunting stories: at least from decades ago when the British had hunted legally.

In the book “The Catcher in the Rye,” the protagonist, the iconic Holden Caulfield, says at a point that the mark of a good book is when you know, after you’ve read the whole book, that you would enjoy being friends with the author.

Over time, I’ve become a great believer in that. Because I believe that the mark of a good author is that he inspires you to think more, be more. A good book is more than the sum of the words written in it.

Some books are written for just their face value, like text books, and some books are written for more than just to inform: They are written to inspire. They edify as well as they inform. The more ways in which a book inspires you, the more it influences you in your life.

Such an author is Jim Corbett. And anyone who has read any of his writings about his adventures in the wild would agree hands down.

Although Corbett can never be exaggerated enough as one of the greatest hunters India has ever had, as a writer, he is greatly understated. I’ve been a habitual reader ever since I can remember, but Jim Corbett’s writings have crept onto me like no other author’s have. I’ve been exited by the dangerous expeditions, thrilled by the spine-chilling adventures, and so many a nights I’ve spent reading, re-reading and re-re-reading a Corbett, completely enchanted by the story telling and the bold ventures of a man who time and again in his text would almost seem like a myth.

The most famous of his books have to be, of course, his hunting stories: “Man-Eaters of Kumaon” and the enchanting tale of the “Man-Eating Leopard of Rudhraprayag.”

But I’ve most enjoyed reading his other accounts about the world he lived in: up close and front to the British-Indian government, participating in the two world wars, while at the same time being a true lover of India at heart.

Perhaps my liking of Corbett is due to my esoteric fascination of the wild and adventure. But I’m sure that anyone who has ever lived in or traveled to India or South Asia and have tried to understand it, would find the honest and sometimes just-too-modest accounts of a Sahib to be simply irresistible. And after having seen sights that “would cause a stone to weep” and have himself become the hunted on many occasions, Corbett still says a tiger “is a large hearted gentleman” from whom mankind has nothing to fear.

For avid tiger fans like me, those very words like that cause goose bumps.

Sunil is a graduate student in Lyle School of Engineering.