by Ruskin Bond
The tiger was still eating when he heard the men coming. He had not expected to be disturbed so soon. With an angry ‘Whoof!’ he bounded into a bamboo thicket and watched the men through a screen of leaves and tall grass.
The men did not seem to take much notice of the dead buffalo, but gathered round their leader and held a consultation. Most of them carried hand drums slung from their shoulders. They also carried sticks, spears and axes.
After a hurried conversation, they entered the denser part of the jungle, beating their drums with the palms of their hands. Some of the men banged empty kerosene tins. These made even more noise than the drums.
The tiger did not like the noise and retreated deeper into the jungle. But he was surprised to find that the men, instead of going away, came after him into the jungle, banging away on their drums and tins, and shouting at the top of their voices. They had separated now, and advanced single or in pairs, but nowhere were they more than fifteen yards apart. The tiger could easily have broken through this slowly advancing semicircle of men—one swift blow from his paw would have felled the strongest of them—but his main aim was to get away from the noise. He hated and feared noise made by men.
He was not a man-eater and he would not attack a man unless he was very angry or frightened or very desperate; and he was none of these things as yet. He had eaten well, and he would have liked to rest in peace—but there would be no rest for any animal until the men ceased their tremendous clatter and din.
For an hour Ramu’s father and the others beat the jungle, calling, drumming and trampling the undergrowth. The tiger had no rest. Whenever he was able to put some distance between himself and the men, he would sink down in some shady spot to rest; but, within five or ten minutes, the trampling and drumming would sound nearer, and the tiger, with an angry snarl, would get up and pad north, pad silently north along the narrowing strip of jungle, towards the junction of the Garur stream and the Ganga. Ten years ago, he would have had the jungle on his right in which to hide; but the trees had been felled long ago to make way for humans and houses, and now he could only move to the left, towards the river.
It was about noon when the tiger finally appeared in the open. He longed for the darkness and security of the night, for the sun was his enemy. Kundan and the boys had a clear view of him as he stalked slowly along—now in the open with the sun glinting on his glossy hide, now in the shade or passing through the shorter reeds. He was still out of range of Kundan’s gun, but there was no fear of his getting out of the beat, as the ‘stops’ were all picked men from the village. He disappeared among some bushes but soon reappeared to retrace his steps, the beaters having done their work well. He was now only one hundred and fifty yards from the rocks where Kundan Singh waited, and he looked very big.
The beat had closed in, and the exit along the bank downstream was completely blocked, so the tiger turned and disappeared into a belt of reeds, and Kundan Singh expected that the head would soon peer out of the cover a few yards away. The beaters were now making a great noise, shouting and beating their drums, but nothing moved; and Ramu, watching from a distance, wondered, ‘Has he slipped through the beaters?’ And he half hoped so.
Tins clashed, drums beat, and some of the men poked into the reeds with their spears or long bamboos. Perhaps one of these thrusts found a mark, because at last the tiger was roused, and with an angry desperate snarl, he charged out of the reeds, splashing his way through an inlet of mud and water. Kundan Singh fired, and his bullet struck the tiger on the thigh.
The mighty animal stumbled; but he was up in a minute, and rushing through a gap in the narrowing line of beaters, he made straight for the only way across the river—the suspension bridge that passed over the Ganga here, providing a route into the high hills beyond.
‘We’ll get him now,’ said Kundan, priming his gun again. ‘He’s right in the open!’
The suspension bridge swayed and trembled as the wounded tiger lurched across it. Kundan fired, and this time the bullet grazed the tiger’s shoulder. The animal bounded forward, lost his footing on the unfamiliar, slippery planks of the swaying bridge, and went over the side, falling headlong into the strong, swirling waters of the river.
He rose to the surface once, but the current took him under and away, and only a thin streak of blood remained on the river’s surface.
Kundan and others hurried downstream to see if the dead tiger had been washed up on the river’s banks; but though they searched the riverside for several miles, they did not find the king of the forest.
He had not provided anyone with a trophy. His skin would not be spread on a couch, nor would his head be hung up on a wall. No claw of his would be hung as a charm round the neck of a child. No villager would use his fat as a cure for rheumatism.
At first the villagers were glad because they felt their buffaloes were safe. Then the men began to feel that something had gone out of their lives, out of the life of the forest; they began to feel that the forest was no longer a forest. It had been shrinking year by year, but, as long as the tiger had been there and the villagers had heard it roar at night, they had known that they were still secure from the intruders and newcomers who came to fell the trees and eat up the land and let the flood waters into the village. But now that the tiger had gone, it was as though a protector had gone, leaving the forest open and vulnerable, easily destroyable. And once the forest was destroyed they, too, would be in danger…
There was another thing that had gone with the tiger, another thing that had been lost, a thing that was being lost everywhere—something called ‘nobility’.
Ramu remembered something that his grandfather had once said. ‘The tiger is the very soul of India, and when the last tiger goes, so will the soul of the country.’
The boys lay flat on their stomachs on their little mud island and watched the monsoon clouds gathering overhead.
‘The king of our forest is dead,’ said Shyam. ‘There are no more tigers.’
‘There must be tigers,’ said Ramu. ‘How can there be an India without tigers?’
The river had carried the tiger many miles away from his home, from the forest he had always known, and brought him ashore on a strip of warm yellow sand, where he lay in the sun, quite still, but breathing.
Vultures gathered and waited at a distance, some of them perching on the branches of nearby trees.
But the tiger was more drowned than hurt, and as the river water oozed out of his mouth, and the warm sun made new life throb through his body, he stirred and stretched, and his glazed eyes came into focus. Raising his head, he saw trees and tall grass.
Slowly, he heaved himself off the ground and moved at a crouch to where the grass waved in the afternoon breeze. Would he be harried again, and shot at? There was no smell of man. The tiger moved forward with greater confidence.
There was, however, another smell in the air—a smell that reached back to the time when he was young and fresh and full of vigour—a smell that he had almost forgotten but could never quite forget: the smell of a tigress!
He raised his head high, and new life surged through his tired limbs. He gave a full-throated roar and moved purposefully through the tall grass. And the roar came back to him, calling him, calling him forward: a roar that meant there would be more tigers in the land!
SECTION-II
Exciting Encounters
A Crow for All Seasons
EARLY TO bed and early to rise makes a crow healthy, wealthy, and wise.
They say it’s true for humans too. I’m not so sure about that. But for crows it’s a must.
I’m always up at the crack of dawn, often the first crow to break the night’s silence with a lusty caw. My friends and relatives, who roost in the same tree, grumble a bit and mutter to themselves, but they are soon cawing just as loudly. Long before the sun is up, we set off on the day’s work.
We do not pause even for the morning wash. Later in the day, if it’s hot and muggy, I might take a dip
in some human’s bath water; but early in the morning we like to be up and about before everyone else. This is the time when trash cans and refuse dumps are overflowing with goodies, and we like to sift through them before the dustmen arrive in their disposal trucks.
Not that we are afraid of a famine in refuse. As human beings multiply, so does their rubbish.
Only yesterday I rescued an old typewriter ribbon from the dustbin, just before it was emptied. What a waste that would have been! I had no use for it myself, but I gave it to one of my cousins who got married recently, and she tells me it’s just right for her nest, the one she’s building on a telegraph pole. It helps her bind the twigs together, she says.
My own preference is for toothbrushes. They’re just a hobby really, like stamp-collecting with humans. I have a small but select collection which I keep in a hole in the garden wall. Don’t ask me how many I’ve got—crows don’t believe there’s any point in counting beyond two—but I know there’s more than one, that there’s a whole lot of them in fact, because there isn’t anyone living on this road who hasn’t lost a toothbrush to me at some time or another.
We crows living in the jackfruit tree have this stretch of road to ourselves, but so that we don’t quarrel or have misunderstandings we’ve shared the houses out. I picked the bungalow with the orchard at the back. After all, I don’t eat rubbish and throwaways all the time. Just occasionally, I like a ripe guava or the soft flesh of a papaya. And sometimes I like the odd beetle as an hors d’oeuvre. Those humans in the bungalow should be grateful to me for keeping down the population of fruit-eating beetles, and even for recycling their refuse; but no, humans are never grateful. No sooner do I settle in one of their guava trees than stones are whizzing past me. So I return to the dustbin on the back veranda steps. They don’t mind my being there.
One of my cousins shares the bungalow with me, but he’s a lazy fellow and I have to do most of the foraging. Sometimes I get him to lend me a claw, but most of the time he’s preening his feathers and trying to look handsome for a pretty young thing who lives in the banyan tree at the next turning.
When he’s in the mood he can be invaluable, as he proved recently when I was having some difficulty getting at the dog’s food on the veranda.
This dog, who is fussed over so much by the humans, I’ve adopted is a great big fellow, a mastiff who pretends to a pedigree going back to the time of Genghis Khan—he likes to pretend one of his ancestors was the great Khan’s watchdog. But, as often happens in famous families, animal or human, there is a falling off in quality over a period of time, and this huge fellow—Tiger, they call him—is a case in point. All brawn and no brain. Many’s the time I’ve removed a juicy bone from his plate or helped myself to pickings from under his nose.
But of late he’s been growing canny and selfish. He doesn’t like to share any more. And the other day I was almost in his jaws when he took a sudden lunge at me. Snap went his great teeth; but all he got was one of my tail feathers. He spat it out in disgust. Who wants crow’s meat, anyway?
All the same, I thought, I’d better not be too careless. It’s not for nothing that a crow’s IQ is way above that of all other birds. And it’s higher than a dog’s, I bet.
I woke Cousin Slow from his midday siesta and said, ‘Hey, Slow, we’ve got a problem. If you want any of that delicious tripe today, you’ve got to lend a claw—or a beak. That dog’s getting snappier day by day.’
Slow opened one eye and said, ‘Well, if you insist. But you know how I hate getting into a scuffle. It’s bad for the gloss on my feathers.’
‘I don’t insist,’ I said politely. ‘But I’m not foraging for both of us today. It’s every crow for himself.’
‘Okay, okay, I’m coming,’ said Slow, and with barely a flap he dropped down from the tree to the wall.
‘What’s the strategy?’ I asked.
‘Simple. We’ll just give him the old one-two.’
We flew across to the veranda. Tiger had just started his meal. He was a fast, greedy eater who made horrible slurping sounds while he guzzled his food. We had to move fast if we wanted to get something before the meal was over.
I sidled up to Tiger and wished him good afternoon.
He kept on gobbling—but quicker now.
Slow came up from behind and gave him a quick peck near the tail—a sensitive spot—and, as Tiger swung round, snarling, I moved in quickly and snatched up several tidbits.
Tiger went for me, and I flew freestyle for the garden wall. The dish was untended, so Slow helped himself to as many scraps as he could stuff in his mouth.
He joined me on the garden wall, and we sat there feasting, while Tiger barked himself hoarse below.
‘Go catch a cat,’ said Slow, who is given to slang. ‘You’re in the wrong league, big boy.’
The great sage Pratyasataka—ever heard of him? I guess not—once said, ‘Nothing can improve a crow.’
Like most human sages he wasn’t very clear in his thinking, so that there has been some misunderstanding about what he meant. Humans like to think that what he really meant was that crows were so bad as to be beyond improvement. But we crows know better. We interpret the saying as meaning that the crow is so perfect that no improvement is possible.
It’s not that we aren’t human—what I mean is, there are times when we fall from our high standards and do rather foolish things. Like at lunchtime the other day.
Sometimes, when the table is laid in the bungalow, and before the family enters the dining room, I nip in through the open window and make a quick foray among the dishes. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to pick up a sausage or a slice of toast, or even a pat of butter, making off before someone enters and throws a bread knife at me. But on this occasion, just as I was reaching for the toast, a thin slouching fellow—Junior Sahib they call him—entered suddenly and shouted at me. I was so startled that I leapt across the table seeking shelter. Something flew at me, and in an effort to dodge the missile, I put my head through a circular object and then found it wouldn’t come off.
It wasn’t safe to hang around there, so I flew out the window with this dashed ring still round my neck.
Serviette or napkin rings, that’s what they are called. Quite unnecessary objects, but some humans—particularly the well-to-do sort—seem to like having them on their tables, holding bits of cloth in place. The cloth is used for wiping the mouth. Have you ever heard of such nonsense?
Anyway, there I was with a fat napkin ring round my neck, and as I perched on the wall trying to get it off, the entire human family gathered on their veranda to watch me.
There was the Colonel Sahib and his wife, the Memsahib; there was the scrawny Junior Sahib (worst of the lot); there was a mischievous boy (the Colonel Sahib’s grandson) known as the Baba; there was the cook (who usually flung orange peels at me) and the gardener (who once tried to decapitate me with a spade), and the dog Tiger who, like most dogs, tries unsuccessfully to be human.
Today they weren’t cursing and shaking their fists at me; they were just standing and laughing their heads off. What’s so funny about a crow with its head stuck in a napkin ring?
Worse was to follow.
The noise had attracted the other crows in the area, and if there’s one thing crows detest, it’s a crow who doesn’t look like a crow.
They swooped low and dived on me, hammering at the wretched napkin ring, until they had knocked me off the wall and into a flower bed. Then six or seven toughs landed on me with every intention of finishing me off.
‘Hey, boys!’ I cawed. ‘This is me, Speedy! What are you trying to do—kill me?’
‘That’s right! You don’t look like Speedy to us. What have you done with him, eh?’
And they set upon me with even greater vigour.
‘You’re just like a bunch of lousy humans!’ I shouted. ‘You’re no better than them—this is just the way they carry on amongst themselves!’
That brought them to a halt. They stopped tryi
ng to peck me to pieces, and stood back, looking puzzled. The napkin ring had been shattered in the onslaught and had fallen to the ground.
‘Why, it’s Speedy!’ said one of the gang.
‘None other!’
‘Good old Speedy—what are you doing here? And where’s the guy we were hammering just now?’
There was no point in trying to explain things to them. Crows are like that. They’re all good pals—until one of them tries to look different. Then he could be just another bird.
‘He took off for Tibet,’ I said. ‘It was getting unhealthy for him around here.’
Summertime is here again. And although I’m a crow for all seasons, I must admit to a preference for the summer months.
Humans grow lazy and don’t pursue me with so much vigour. Garbage cans overflow. Food goes bad and is constantly being thrown away. Overripe fruit gets tastier by the minute. If fellows like me weren’t around to mop up all these unappreciated riches, how would humans manage?
There’s one character in the bungalow, Junior Sahib, who will never appreciate our services, it seems. He simply hates crows. The small boy may throw stones at us occasionally, but then, he’s the sort who throws stones at almost anything. There’s nothing personal about it. He just throws stones on principle.
The Memsahib is probably the best of the lot. She often throws me scraps from the kitchen—onion skins, potato peels, crusts, and leftovers—and even when I nip in and make off with something not meant for me (like a jam tart or a cheese pakora) she is quite sporting about it. The Junior Sahib looks outraged, but the lady of the house says, ‘Well, we’ve all got to make a living somehow, and that’s how crows make theirs. It’s high time you thought of earning a living.’ Junior Sahib’s her nephew—that’s his occupation. He has never been known to work.
The Colonel Sahib has a sense of humour but it’s often directed at me. He thinks I’m a comedian.