by Mary Morris
Then a red street dog comes and stands next to me. I watch as the dog looks both ways, ventures out, dodges a few vehicles, ignores one or two screeching brakes, and makes it across. He looks back at me, then, it seems, waits. He is my guide. If a dog can do this, well, then I can, right? So I look the wrong way, and a rickshaw almost runs me down. I try again, stick out my hand like a native, and take a step. I walk into traffic as cars weave around me. I put up my hand as if I could really hold them back, but I keep going. And, to my surprise, some of them stop. I continue on step by step until at last I make it to the other side.
The dog disappears down a narrow street. I forget about the bagel shop and I follow. At first the street is lined with makeshift appliance stores, including one with a sign in the window that reads “I Fix Everything.” Oh, if only he did. Open stands sell baubles and scarves. Others sell roti. I am hungry and think I’d like one but then think better of it. I’m returning home sick enough as it is. Catching one last glimpse of the dog’s tail, I turn down another alleyway.
I find myself in a maze of tin-roofed shacks with burlap doors, blankets slung up as walls. People are lying on cardboard beside small fires upon which black pots steam. Men shave with knives in broken mirrors. The more I move within the slum the deeper I go. It is a labyrinth that seems almost without exit. Half-naked children flock to me, and I’m wishing I had something to give to them. I share the few cough drops that I have. I keep going with no idea which way to turn. Two bare-chested young men stop, and I say the name of the main street, the one I had left behind. They point in a direction that doesn’t quite make sense, but it is possible I’ve gotten turned around.
A young woman appears behind a burlap door and she too points, indicating for me to make a left. Soon the whole neighborhood knows I am here and, as I dodge between blankets and shacks and steaming pots and naked children, I make my way. I am almost at my journey’s end. I think of all I have done and seen in this past year. I have walked farther than Dr. Patel ever thought I would. Not without pain and stumbling, but still I have come so far. And I have seen my tiger. Perhaps not the ferocious tiger of my dreams, but the flesh-and-blood tiger was never really the point, and I’m not sure I understood that until now. It was always about the journey, never the destination.
I think of my first trip to Europe with my mother. The highlights weren’t the Colosseum or the Eiffel Tower, the Swiss guards or the Buckingham guards. They were my mother’s first bite of peach melba at the Hotel de Vendôme, my stroll alone in the Borghese gardens, my mother’s laughter as the bus driver greeted his two paramours, the shock on the waiter’s face as she hurled her fake pearls into the sea. The truly important things happen in these moments. It is my mother who sent me on this journey. Not this trip to India but the one that has become my life. She has given me many things over the years—jewelry, china, silver. One day a few years ago she handed me her mink coat (which I have worn once). These things never meant much to me—perhaps because they meant so much to her.
I recall that first passport, holding it in my hands. I remember the moment the French customs official placed a stamp in its virgin pages and welcomed me to France. I cannot say that my mother and I have always had a smooth ride, but out of all that she has given me, or tried to give me, or pawn off on me, it is my passport and the world it opened up for me that has been the greatest gift.
My guides understood. I came to see everything. Yes, I saw a tiger. And a lot of other things. Now as I wander through this slum where strangers who have nothing are showing me the way, I recall a quote from Haruki Murakami: “What I was chasing in circles must have been the tail of the darkness inside of me.” I think I’ve caught up with that tail at last.
111
TO THE TIGER WHO SLEEPS AT THE FOOT OF MY BED
(circa 1974)
Every night as I crawl into bed,
I have to be careful not to disturb
The tiger who sleeps at the foot of my bed.
He is a fat, yellow tiger with black stripes.
Three-inch canines, whiskers for radar
That detect my slightest move.
He is luminous as the alarm clock,
Glowing on the bed stand in the dark.
As I sleep, I must never rustle
The sheets or rise before he rises.
If he prowls, I close my eyes;
The prowler hates the voyeur.
Once when I was a child,
I kicked him in my sleep
And he rose from beneath the bed
And pounced on me as I lay on my back.
Since that night we’ve grown used to one another.
We’ve lived without mishap.
Always hungry, he lies
Curled at the foot of the bed,
Sharpening his claws on the posts,
And I am careful not to disturb him
For he has threatened to go away.
112
ON MY LAST AFTERNOON in India, I take a walk by the sea. I pass a spot where dozens of cars and pedestrians line up, seated in their cars or on a wall, all watching or waiting for something. That famous Bollywood star lives right across the street in a flat on the first floor, and he often appears and waves at the crowds. So they are waiting for a sighting. This man is known to beat his girlfriends. He is also the celebrity who one night, drunk, ran over four bakery workers who were sleeping on the sidewalk. He is out on bail. Still, the crowds huddle to see him.
The tide is out. Lovers, hand in hand, walk among the rocks. Some are even married, but they have no place to go. No privacy to be alone in their own homes so they come here to make love or just to talk. At times they forget themselves and some have been stranded as the tide comes in. Some have even drowned. Now when the tide comes in a bell rings to warn them and wake the lovers from their stupor.
Stray dogs, homeless children, and urinating men greet me. Memorial benches line the sea walk. In memory of a mother, a father, a friend, a child. And one just reads GOD IS GREAT.
* * *
—
That night I’m in a car, leaving India, heading home. The cab has picked me up an hour and a half before I have to be at the airport (which is two hours before my flight). I am assuming that this is plenty of time. I am moving through a world of advanced skin-care treatments, Vodafone, ATMs, and jewelry shops with armed guards in front of them. We drive on, but soon we are stuck in a kind of market of saris, socks, cell phones, clock shops, sweetshops, chai stands, place mats, floral arrangements, ceramics, natural cleansing juices, dried fruits, seeds, milk, gold filigree, chemists, Cozy Corner coffee shops, caps, silicon pillow stuffing, fleece jackets, sexy underwear and teddies, Hindu gods, spices, nuts, vacuum cleaners, lightbulbs, banana leaves with something in them, fried bread, blue jeans, a miasma of pedestrians, double-decker buses, scooters, rickshaws, taxis, SUVs, a Hindu processional that includes drummers marching through the streets, all clambering under the “bye pass” [sic] which is also the main road to the airport.
We are stuck in an immense traffic jam. Motionless. We don’t move for ten, fifteen minutes amid this froth of life. Suddenly to my left two boys, wearing illuminated red devil horns, start banging on the car window. They make faces, pointing at their horns, which flash on and off. To my right a girl who cannot be more than four or five pounds on the window as well, begging for alms. She presses her sobbing, snotty face to the glass and points to her brother, a boy of no more than two who lies shrieking on the median strip of the road. On the one side are the devils; on the other this begging child. Rolling down the window, to my driver’s dismay, I slip her whatever rupees I can spare. The devils recede, taunting me. The child drifts away, her palm print still on the glass.
For forty minutes or so we don’t move. An old impatience rises within me. I am still, after all—and will always
be—my parents’ child. Impatient, irritable. “Quite contrary,” as my mother liked to say. How can I possibly make this plane? I badger the driver until he diverts and races down narrow roadways, past huts made out of cardboard and tin, until we are on the “highway” whose service area is lined with tents and their residents cooking, eating, shitting, chatting, bathing, begging, staring, sleeping, rocking their children to sleep. Just the mad stream of life forever going on.
Perhaps now I see the secret gift. For a while I stopped. I was afraid. I didn’t know if I could go on. And if I could go it alone. Whether I would take another step or remain immobile, I was stuck wherever I was. Now something besides my ankle has healed. It seems as if I’ve been chasing my own tail. But some of that darkness has lifted. The demons have dropped back. I don’t know what lies ahead, but I know I’m not afraid anymore. I am filled with gratitude. And, yes, in fact I have been lucky.
I am shaken by this fragile world. It is so easy to break and be broken. It is much harder to mend. There, sitting in traffic, between the devil and those motherless babes, I cannot know what I know now. I will make my flight. I will get well from whatever sickness is stuck inside my chest. My ankle will get stronger and carry me on, though never as it had before all this began. I will never run again and probably never skate again and I will always be unsteady and in some pain, but I can keep walking. I can go on.
Suddenly on the other side of the road, a pure white horse appears. It pulls a cart painted in brilliant colors and decorated with wreaths of flowers and tinsel, upon which a bride or god might sit. Shiva himself, that god of destruction and birth and renewal, might perch upon this cart. None of this makes sense. Yet everything is clear. In the night amid the jam of trucks and rickshaws and motorcycles and pedestrians, as I am close to missing my flight, this pale creature, like a vision from another world, gallops by.
AFTERWORD
IT HAS BEEN a dozen years since my accident and almost a decade since I traveled to India. In these years, the tiger, especially in India, has seen a strong resurgence in the wild, thanks to strenuous conservation efforts that include anti-poaching campaigns, creating new buffer zones and tiger reserves, and moving villages when need be (this remains a controversial practice). Through education and a focus on responsible tourism, India has made tremendous progress. A recent counting has estimated that there are approximately three thousand Bengal tigers in the wild, a 33 percent increase since 2014, when the last tiger counting was completed.
At the same time, a billion and a half people cohabitating with an apex predator that needs huge territory hasn’t been that easy. The struggle continues between beast and man. Recently, angry villagers savagely killed a tiger that had attacked people, and a video of this killing went viral. And a tigress who had killed many people had to be hunted and killed when relocating her failed.
Yet clearly there is progress. Zoos and circuses such as SeaWorld are cutting back and/or eliminating their animal acts. Through good wildlife management, poaching is down. Yet the Chinese still believe that tiger bones and tiger blood will make them potent. They breed tigers for this purpose as well as trapping them in the wild. And hunters continue to want trophies. There are places in the United States where for a sizeable sum you can go on “safari” and shoot tigers.
Still, I am hopeful. The numbers are encouraging, and progress is being made. I am less optimistic about tigers in other parts of Asia, especially Sumatra and Malaysia, where there are only approximately another thousand left in the wild. For a greater understanding of tigers in general and the Amur, or Siberian, tiger in particular, I highly recommend John Valliant’s outstanding book The Tiger.
And on a personal note, I am long past the point when the doctor who gave me his second opinion said I’d need an ankle replacement. Though, as I expected, I’ve never skated again, I walk miles every day. As long as I am able, I will never stop.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First I must begin by thanking my incredible guides in India—Ajay Bahare and Vibhav Srivastava—and my drivers Dinesh, Sudhir, and Sonu. This book wouldn’t have been possible without their help and, beyond that, their dedication to wildlife. The readers who helped me along the way were amazing. Thanks go to Dani Shapiro and Caroline Leavitt for their advice and enthusiasm, Barbara Grossman (who perhaps loved this book before I did), and Marc Kaufman, who read this when I was in need of his quick critical eye and did it in a day and discussed it with me in great detail. To my friend Maria Friedrich, who told me that I would one day see the silver lining, and to Naresh Fernandes, who gave me shelter and kindness in Mumbai. And to my doctor and his staff (whose names I have had to change here), whose professionalism and caring enabled me to heal and move on.
To my amazing editor Nan Talese, who is pretty ferocious herself and who has stuck with me for more than thirty years, and to the terrific staff at Knopf Doubleday, including Nan’s assistant Carolyn Williams. I want to thank my wonderful agent, Ellen Levine, who has stood by me since day one, and her assistant, Martha Wydysh.
Thank you to my daughter, Kate, and her husband, Chris, whose love and support mean the world. And, as always, thanks to my partner, husband, fellow journeyman, best friend, first reader, finest critic, who, as always, read every word with patience and care and talked me through this book—and all the others—every step of the way. Without Larry nothing would be.
And finally I want to thank all those who work for the conservation of these extraordinary creatures in the wild—and all creatures who are at risk. It is my deepest hope that we find a way to keep the world wild and give these animals the room they need and the respect they deserve.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Morris is the author of eight novels, most recently Gateway to the Moon; three collections of short stories; and four other travel memoirs that trace her solo journeys, including the travel classic Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone. Her numerous short stories, articles, and travel essays have appeared in such places as The Atlantic, Narrative, and The Paris Review. Morris is the recipient of the George W. Perkins Fellowship from Princeton University and the Rome Prize in Literature. In 2016 The Jazz Palace was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction. Morris teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. For more information, please visit her website at www.marymorris.net.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.