The Mother
Once upon a time,
in a forest far away, lived a mother tiger. She was a fierce tigress, with
large teeth and nails. She was a great hunter, and could kill big deer and
buffaloes without any difficulty. She raced down fast animals, she wrestled
with the strong ones, and she always had enough to eat.
She lived in a mixed jungle. There were wide grasslands with tall grasses
that ended in a dense jungle of towering trees. The trees covered the rest of
the land all the way up to the hills. The hills were not very high, but were
rocky. Many thousands of years ago, people used to live on the top of the
hills. They had built stone houses there and had painted inside the caves of
the hills. Now, no one lived there except wild animals like bats, scorpions and
other cave-dwellers.
Mother Tiger was one of them. She hid in one of the caves.
There she gave birth to her babies and looked after them till they were
big enough to go out and hunt for themselves. She had to be very careful.
Tigers, the males, could be very troublesome if a tigress had tiny babies to
look after. They often killed these cubs! Sometimes, tigers were not very nice
animals to have around after a tigress had babies.
Mother Tiger was very big, but she was not as big as the biggest tigers.
She was very strong, though, so even the big tigers feared her. All the other
animals in the forest were scared of her too. They told each other and their
babies to run far away if they could see, hear, or smell her anywhere close by.
They told stories of her strength, how she had once fought the crocodile in the
river who had tried to take her baby away when it was drinking water at the
riverbank. Crocodiles, sly animals, hide just under the water with only their
noses and eyes above and wait for animals to come to drink. Then, quick as
lightning they attack, grab a leg of the animal and drag it under water.
When the crocodile had tried to grab Mother Tiger’s baby she had dived
into the water to save the cub. There was a terrible fight in the water. Mother
had not been able to save the baby and even she was injured in the fight. She
limped out of the water and hid herself in the tall grass on the banks. The entire
jungle had waited to see what happens to her. Two days later, the crocodile had
floated up, dead. Mother Tiger had come out of the grass after three days, and
soon, she was as strong as ever.
She was quick too. The old langur monkey had learnt that, too late. He used
to swing down from the trees to trouble tigers sleeping after a heavy meal. On
that day the langur had decided to trouble Mother Tigress. She was sleeping
under the big sal tree after a meal of a deer. The langur had carefully
reached down from the tree and pulled her tail.
With a snarl, Mother Tiger had lunged so suddenly that everyone watching
was taken completely aback. But it was not easy to catch a langur. With a great
leap he had jumped across to the next tree and jumped from branch to branch to
escape.
Mother Tiger, to everybody’s surprise, had sprinted to the tree beyond
that and started climbing it with great bounds. The langur, in his hurry to
escape, had not seen this. As a result, he had leaped right into the jaws of
Mother Tiger.
The stunned family of langurs had watched her carry the limp body down
and eat it. They kept far away from her since then.
Birth
That year, the
winter had been terrible. The trees were bare and the grass, dry. Spring was
not a happy time for most animals either, because the spring rains did not
come. Small pools dried up in the heat, small streams that ran through the
forest either became very thin or dried up too. Most animals and birds were in
deep distress. They had to travel long to find green grass and leaves to eat,
and they had to walk miles to the nearest lake or stream to drink water. It was
not so bad for the hunters, though. They lay in wait near the places the grass
eating animals came to drink and could hunt them for food.
They were happy.
Mother Tiger was not happy. She had given birth to two male cubs in a
cave in the hills. They were tiny. They had not opened their eyes yet. She
could not leave them alone for a long time. Two tigers had followed her to the
hills from the grasslands. She knew they were hunting for the cubs.
She had looked for water to drink at night. She had gone out of the cave
repeatedly to the different places where water could be found. All the places
were dry. She knew she had to go down to the stream at the foot of the hills to
drink. She could manage without water for one more day, but no longer. She
licked dew from the grass and leaves in the morning. She had to travel to the
stream. But she could not leave the cubs alone for that long. The tigers were
not too far away.
She decided to move them that night to another cave some way down the
hillside beside a large pool at the end of a waterfall where could go quickly,
drink water there and come back.
She started after the sun had set and the jungle had become dark. It was
never fully dark in a forest. There was always some light from the moon and the
stars. Tonight the moon shone brightly. Mother Tiger started off with one cub
in her mouth. She reached the dry bed of a stream, hid him in between two rocks
and quickly went back for the second cub. She carried him next. This way,
carrying the cubs one by one, she brought them to the crack in the rocks. Then
she started again and reached another cave she had used many years ago, but not
recently.
She was careful as she came close to the cave. No one usually used it,
but one could not be too cautious. Sometimes bears, jackals, or even a python
could be sleeping there.
There was no one. Mother Tiger brought her cubs in one by one. She
rested a while, as they sucked milk and slept. Then, she went out for water.
She heard one of the tigers roar once, high up on the hill. She had fooled them
for now. Let them search for them in the hills.
But, she knew they would not remain fooled for long. Tigers are the
greatest hunters. They could find their prey most easily, even if they hid
away. Mother Tiger knew she would have to move them again.
Growing Up
Days passed, and
weeks. Mother Tiger kept on moving the cubs here and there every now and then.
The tigers were still looking for them, so she started moving further and
further away. She remembered that there was a part of the forest which was not
very crowded with animals because it was near the edge, and a road went through
the forest at that part. Big trucks, buses and many cars passed during the day,
making it dangerous for the animals. To make it safe for them, the government
had ordered that only some government cars, those belonging to the men who
cared for the forest and animals would be allowed to drive through that part at
night. That is when most animals came out without fear.
She moved her babies there.
They had become bigger. They had opened their eyes some weeks ago. They
liked to play with each other and with their mother’s tail when she was
resting. Mother Tiger had started to teach them how to follow animals without
showing themselves. They were not good at it, so she had to leave them behind
when she went hunting. She brought back food and taught them how to tear it
apart, throw away the bad parts and eat the good flesh. Soon they would be able
to hunt for themselves.
They did not know, but the caretakers of the forest were keeping a
careful watch on them. These people wanted more animals to live in their
forest. They kept a close eye on how the cubs were growing up and how their
mother was caring for them. They were not allowed to interfere with the lives
of the animals, unless they were injured or dying, but they watched them
carefully and with great interest. They worked for the government, in the
Forest Department.
“These cubs of Mother Tiger will grow up to be magnificent beasts,” they
told each other. They called their Officer and showed him the cubs.
“Beware,” warned the Officer. “They need to be protected from the tigers
and nasty human hunters who come to kill wildlife. The tigress will take care
of the babies from the killer tigers, but you will have to protect them from
people.”
“You don’t worry, Sir,” promised the guards. “We will protect them from
poachers.”
The men were not happy that Mother Tiger had brought the cubs so close
to the road. It was safe at night, but not during the day. The cubs were
growing up and would soon start to roam. They did not know the dangers of
traffic, and if they ran in front of a fast moving bus or truck, no one would
be able to save them.
Mother Tiger was smarter than the men had thought her to be. She knew
when to take the cubs away again. They were soon going to be too big for the
big tigers to come and kill. Then, inside the deep forests, she could teach
them how to hunt and feed themselves. After that, she would be free to go and
have more babies.
Death
The long, hard
winter had given way to a long, hard summer. Then the monsoons had come and had
almost gone. The cubs were now more than six months old. They had stopped
drinking mother’s milk. They had started going with their mother when she went
out hunting. They were learning to stalk – they could come up quite close to
the animals without letting them know, and needed to learn how to rush and hunt
the animal they were following. Mother Tiger decided to teach them that next.
It was a rainy night. The last showers of the monsoon were coming. It
had started raining late in the evening. Mother Tiger waited for the rain to
stop, but there was no sign of it letting up. Finally, she decided to hunt
without the cubs. She made them wait for her in a hollow in the meadow beside
the road, and slowly crossed it to the field on the other side. Just before the
rain had started, she had noticed a herd of deer going to sleep at its edge,
where the row of big trees started. They would not move till it was morning.
She quickly reached the end of the field and waited behind a fallen
tree. She could not see the deer, but she could feel they were close by. The
rain lessened. As the white curtain of raindrops lifted, she could see the
shadowy shapes of the deer – asleep. She rushed and caught one before anybody
knew what was happening. Then, with the deer hanging from her jaws, she quickly
began to trot back to the cubs, who were waiting for her across the road.
It was dark. She could not turn her head this way and that to see if cars
were coming, but she knew that cars had lights which could be seen from a long
distance at night. Just as she reached the road, the rain became heavy again.
She could not hear the sound of the engine of the car which had stolen into the
forest and was driving without lights. A man needed to go to the city on the
other side very urgently, so he had decided to break the law and drive in
darkness. He did not care for the animals who might not be able to see his car
in the darkness. He only cared for what he needed.
Mother Tiger did not even know what hit her. The deer went flying from
her mouth. Her body went rolling to the edge of the road. The car swerved a
little, but went on its way.
The cubs waited for their mother. She did not come back.
Struggle
The next morning,
the entire road was blocked with cars from the people who protected the forest.
A truck driver, the first to enter the road after sunrise, had seen Mother
Tiger lying on the roadside and had called to inform the forest guards. The
guards came and called their officers. They all puzzled over the dead tiger and
the deer. It was clear that it was not the work of some secret hunter who kill
animals for their skin or teeth. It was very clear that a car had hit her.
The Officer were angry with the workers.
“How could you let it happen?” he asked them.
They found out that the guard at the gate had allowed a car in late at
night.
“I let him in because he was crying, Sir,” said the poor guard. “He had
said he had a sick daughter to go to.”
“You will be punished,” said the Officer. “You know there is another
road outside the forest for vehicles to go at night. It is longer, but safer
and quite quick at night.”
The body of the tiger was removed from there. It was taken to the forest
museum to be kept as a stuffed display.
The forest officers discussed what to do with the cubs. They were quite
grown up. They were lying in the field, waiting for their mother still, feeling
hungry.
“Carry the deer that their mother had caught for them to the middle of
the field, and let it remain there,” ordered the Main Officer. “They will smell
the meat and will eat it.”
Forest workers were not too afraid of tigers, so they went quite close
to the cubs and placed the deer on the ground. After the people had gone away,
the cubs rose, came close, sniffed at the food and started eating. The forest
guards and officers, watching from a distance, heaved a sigh of relief.
But, the cubs did not know how to hunt. They wandered around, chased a
few birds, deer and langur monkeys, but in the end, they did not know how to
hunt and eat. They ate some small animals killed by the jackal or the wolf,
sometimes they came upon a dead deer or wild boar and ate them, but those were
few and far between and they starved. Very hungry, they came upon a large male
tiger on his kill one day, and tried to scare him off so that they could take
away his sambar deer.
The big tiger opened his mouth wide and roared. The cubs ran with their
tails between their legs.
Hunting
The forest guards
and officers were worried. They had been shouted at by most people. First, for
letting the car into the forest at night. Next, for letting Mother Tiger die.
She was a great tigress, the newspapers wrote. She was nine years old. She had
brought up sixteen babies who were now grown up tigers in that forest. She was
a great hunter who had fought a crocodile. She was clever, she was beautiful,
she was the pride of the nation – people came from far and near to see her.
Yet, she had been killed by a careless driver, driving a car in the forest at a
time when no car should have been inside. Everybody blamed the forest officers
and guards.
The forest guards and officers were sad and worried. They loved the
animals they looked after. They loved the Mother Tiger too. They were sad that
she was dead. They loved the two cubs who did not know how to hunt. They were
worried that the two would starve to death, or become too weak, or be attacked
by a full-grown tiger or even a leopard or wolves.
Some of them wanted to feed the cubs. It would not be difficult for them
to buy goats, or calves and kill them for the cubs, but the opinions differed.
Some experts wanted the cubs to be fed, while others believed that people
should not try to feed wild animals. The jungle was not a kind place, they
said. If a tiger could not hunt, it would die, yes, and so it should be allowed
to die. Yet others, not wanting to let the rare creatures die, said that they
should be taken to the zoo to be fed and kept. Yet others said that wild animals
should not be taken to the zoo...
As all this went on, the cubs became thinner and weaker.
Then, one day, pushed by his hunger, one of the cubs got up and started
following a herd of deer. His mother’s teaching came back to him, his hunger
made him hide well, and then, he did the final rush and reached an old deer
before it could run. His brother watched him and then joined him for food. They
had a good meal. Three days later, it was the brother who rushed at a wild boar
and caught it before it could run away.
From that day, they regularly hunted for their meals.
Worried forest guards and officers started smiling again, newspapers
reported that the tiger cubs had started hunting and the experts stopped
arguing about their future.
The cubs stayed together, hunted together and ate together. They grew up
nicely and started living in the field and forest near the road where their
mother had died. They did not stay out during the day, but, often, as the sun
set, the last cars passing through that part of the jungle could see them
sitting on the field, watching the deer at the edge of the grassland.
The guards and officers were extra careful that no car would pass that
way after the gates were locked.
Men
It was a hot
summer’s day again. That year the rains during the summer had been good. The
villagers near the protected forest were happy. They were hoping for a good
rainfall during the monsoon too, so that their crops would grow well. As they
waited for the rains to come and got their fields ready, they also collected tendu
leaves. These leaves grow wild in the forest. They could be plucked, dried in
the sun and used to make a special cigarette that is smoked in that country: a
cigarette called bidi. The villagers were not supposed to pluck the
leaves from within the forests, but there was enough growing on the fields
around for them to be happy.
As the villagers went about plucking the leaves, two of them wandered on
to the field where the two tigers were sleeping. They had eaten well the day
before, hidden the remaining deer under leaves beside a stream, so that they
could go back and eat when they felt hungry again and were sleeping under the
shade of a tree.
The guard who was keeping a watch on the cubs waved at the two tendu
leaf gatherers, signalling them to go away from there.
“Hey, you,” he yelled. “The cubs are in that field somewhere. Don’t go
there. I cannot see where they are hiding in the long grass.”
The men were not very smart. They were not worried. They were used to
the cubs since they were small. They were not afraid, and they thought the
tigers would not harm people.
“Oh, don’t be a sissy,” they said. “We know these two and they know us.
We call them uncle and they love us. They will do nothing to us. If we go too
close, they will walk away.”
But, that is not true. Even a very peaceful tiger does not like to be
disturbed, as the cubs were disturbed by the two leaf gatherers. One of them
came so close to one of the sleeping cubs, that the poor cub woke up startled
and seeing a man so close, slapped him with one massive paw.
Tigers are extremely strong animals. The man fell down and did not move
again.
The other man had not seen the fate of his friend. He started calling
him and moving closer to the tigers. Very soon he had come close enough for the
other cub to get angry. He too walked into the paw of the other cub.
The guard, quaking in fear, ran to the nearest beat office and informed
the Officer over radio.
When the Officer came in his jeep, people gathered and crackers were
burst. The tigers got up and went away into the forest. The villagers came
rushing and found that both the men were quite dead, but the tigers had not
touched them after killing. That was because tigers do not normally eat people.
Only if tigers are very old or ill and cannot catch any other prey, do they kill
and eat humans.
The villagers, who also loved the tiger cubs and had seen them growing
up, were sad, but angry with the two foolish men who had gone too close to the
tiger. They did not think the tigers had done something very wrong to kill
people who has bothered them.
“Serve the idiots right,” some of them even said.
The forest Officer was worried, though. He knew that the experts will
give different opinions again, and he would have to bear the brunt of it.
So it happened. The police came and then the newspapers. Journalists
came with TV cameras. Politicians came to feel sorry for the family of the dead
people. Everybody wanted to take pictures of the tigers. The forest guards had
a difficult time controlling the crowd.
With them came the hunters. These were people who used to hunt tigers
before hunting was banned. They had turned protectors and told everyone how
important it was to save wild animals, but came rushing with their guns if they
could kill a tiger without breaking the law.
The Minister called the Forest Officer and told him that the tigers will
have to be killed, because the experts had said they were man-eaters.
The Officer knew this was not true. The tigers had not eaten the men,
but he could not argue with the Minister. He had to make arrangements for the
hunter to come and kill the two cubs. He told his men to take the hunter to a
far-away place so that he would not be able to even see those two cubs, far
less kill them.
Then he called his nephew, who was a wildlife lover and asked him to
come immediately.
The nephew and his uncle, the Forest Officer sat and chatted all night
and planned a strategy. The nephew went back early next morning.
That afternoon, a friend of the nephew went to the court and appealed to
the Judge that the Minister had made a terrible mistake because he had declared
two cubs man-eaters, but they had not eaten any men. The Judge immediately
ordered that no one must hunt the tigers till he had time to see all the proof.
The hunter was promptly sent back home.
It took the Judge three days to give his judgement. He judged that the
Minister was wrong. The tigers were not man-eaters. They had not eaten any men.
So they could not be killed. But, he also judged that it was true that the
tigers had killed two men. So they could not be allowed to roam free in the
forests any more. He ordered the Forest Officer to make sure that they would
not move around freely any more.
The Officer and his nephew were happy that the tigers had not been
killed. They were also sad that the tigers would be forced to leave the freedom
of the forests.
The Rescue
The Officer made
a huge enclosure inside the forest with wire fencing to keep the tigers in.
Then he went with his special gun with special bullets. These bullets do not
hit animals hard enough to kill. They go through the skin of animals and inject
them with a sleeping medicine. He found the tigers lying in the meadow near the
road. They were resting. He approached them cautiously. When he was close enough,
he shot them, one by one, in their legs, with the darts containing sleeping
medicine. Soon, both of them were asleep.
The guards carried the sleeping tigers into the enclosure. Then the
Forest Officer injected them with a medicine to wake them up slowly. Then they
all ran out of the enclosure before the tigers could wake up fully and locked
the gate from the outside.
For many months, the tiger cubs remained within that enclosure. The
forest officer had to feed them with goats and buffalo calves because it was
not right, and illegal to push in deer and wild boars for the tigers to hunt
and eat them. Very soon, the experts started talking again. They started asking
the Minister why the government had to spend so much money on buying food for two
tigers who were kept in an enclosure like in a zoo. Why, they asked, in that
case, should they not be sent to a zoo and kept there for the rest of their
lives?
Finally, the Minister ordered the Director of the zoo of the local city
to take the cubs there and keep them for the rest of their lives.
No one opposed this. The Forest Officers and Guards were saved the
bother of bringing food for the tigers every day. The newspapers had, by then,
other, more interesting stories to print. Most experts had lost interest
because the tigers were in a cage, and not worth photographing any more.
A few wildlife enthusiasts protested. They said that the tigers were being
punished for being tigers, and for the mistake of the humans, but nobody minded
them anyway.
Ever After
So, that is where
they are today. Behind bars. From there they look above the heads of the crowd
that gather in front of their cages, at the sky far away and remember the wide
meadows and the deep forests. They do not know why they are in the zoo, and why
they cannot see the huge trees, the grasslands and the herds of grass eating
animals there.
They do not know that they have peoples’ names today. Outside their
cages, people of the zoo have painted their names on boards. One of them is called
Jai. The other is called Veeru.
