by Ranjit Lal
‘Some tigers are so ungrateful,’ she said with tears in her voice and shaking her head. Hasti nodded.
‘Yes, they forget…so quickly.’
‘After all, I risked my life by leaping at those horrible vultures. And now…and now…’ She choked back a sob.
Hasti controlled a giggle. ‘Yes,’ she agreed sorrowfully. ‘If we hadn’t attacked those birds, little Phasti would not have been with us today.’
‘Let alone made her first kill.’
‘And now, she won’t even share it with us…’
‘Not even a mouthful…’
Phasti looked at them. She was a tender-hearted little cub. Besides, she had proved her point—she’d made the first kill. She inclined her head.
‘Okay, you may have some,’ she agreed. ‘But no gobbling or running away with a haunch…’
Later, happily reclining under her mother’s chin (Zafraan had generously let her have the spot) Phasti snoozed while her mother licked her affectionately.
‘Baby, you’ll be a good huntress,’ she murmured. ‘But you’ve got to toughen up. Otherwise, you’re going to be taken advantage of all your life.’ She nuzzled her. ‘But tell me, how was it that you didn’t stumble or trip when you were leaping at the fawn? You jumped clean as a whistle.’
Phasti shook her head. ‘Mamma, I think I just forgot to! I was only thinking about how delicious it would be and how hungry I was and that I just had to get it! I didn’t think about tripping or stumbling or anything like that.’
‘Well done, baby!’
‘Thanks, Mamma!’
‘Sheer luck!’ Masti said to Hasti. ‘Sheer luck and nothing more.’
‘Yeah, she just happened to be in the right place at the right time.’
‘Besides, Mamma cheated.’
‘Yes, and she favours her!’
‘And that Zafraan had to go and suck up to her.’
‘Such a lazy slob.’
‘Wait till he has to hunt for himself.’
But in the days that followed, it became clear that little Phasti had the knack of always being in the right place at the right time while hunting. She was best at making herself invisible in the grass and wriggling really close to the prey and she had an uncanny ability to know in which direction the prey would bolt. While on the hunt, she neither tripped nor caught her tail in bushes, nor stumbled, she was indeed graceful as a leopard. Sometimes of course, she got into trouble, when for instance she picked on a young wild boar, which suddenly turned around and charged her. (Fortunately, her mother was nearby and one swipe from her paw settled the issue.) Hasti and Masti didn’t seem able to take a hunt seriously, as for Zafraan beta-jaan, he was always sliming his way around his baby sister after she had killed and hardly expended any energy on hunting himself.
Proud of her brood, who were growing wonderfully well, Raat-ki-Rani began bringing them out on to the forest tracks, familiarising them with their home. Her girls would stay with her for maybe two years; Zafraan—if he learned to hunt for himself, would leave the family when he was about eighteen months to mark out his own territory.
‘I mean, if all this is Papa’s, why should I have to find my own territory?’ he asked his mother. ‘Won’t all this be mine one day?’
‘Maybe,’ his mother said laconically. ‘But not as long as your father’s the boss tiger here!’
‘Mamma, does he even know about us, let alone care?’ Masti asked.
‘I mean, we don’t even know what he looks like!’ Hasti added .
‘Is he handsome?’ Phasti asked.
‘He must be a great hunter,’ Zafraan said proudly.
‘Yeah, like you!’ Hasti grinned.
‘I haven’t seen or smelt any trace of him for some time now,’ their mother said. ‘He’s probably touring his border outposts, checking on infiltration.’
She was right. Rana Shaan-Bahadur was indeed patrolling his vast territories and had disappeared from sight, having temporarily suspended his appearances at the Sher-kila. Khoon-Pyaasa, bloodthirsty as ever, lost track of him and decided to take his revenge on whichever tiger he first came across. There was also the matter of the photographer who had caused all the trouble and shame, that needed to be settled. It was a matter of honour and prestige. He knew she was still in the park, driving everywhere in her Gypsy, taking more pictures. Then he had a stroke of luck. He learned at which Forest Rest House she was staying.
‘Simple! We go there and kill her!’ Pappu said. But Khoon-Pyaasa shook his head.
‘Not immediately. She will lead us to the other tigers, too. She knows where they are. She takes their pictures. We kill the tiger and then we kill her. If we kill her first, we won’t know where the tigers are and there’ll be hell of a hullabaloo anyway. Let her find them for us!’
The beautiful raven-haired Ayesha too, it seemed, had an uncanny knack of tracking down and finding tigers she could photograph. She simply kept her binoculars focused on the Diclo-Fenac Squadron (and an ear out for the alarm call of peacocks), knowing that they would eventually lead her to a kill.
Early one afternoon, she followed the flight of the squadron; one by one the great birds wheeled down out of the sky and settled heavily on a tree at the edge of a ravine. She drove her Gypsy quietly to the spot and peered into the ravine. A clear silver-blue stream curled through the rocks, tinkling into large pools.
Ayesha gasped and gripped her binoculars tightly, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing. A family of tigers—a mother and four cubs—was reclining in and around the pool; the tigress lying chin deep in the water, the cubs splashing around as they played. Nearby, the skeleton of a nearly completely eaten wild boar glimmered and shimmered with bluebottles.
‘I’ve found you!’ Ayesha whispered. ‘At last! You’re beautiful and what a lovely family you have!’
Alas, she too had been tracked and followed… Pedalling furiously along the tyre tracks of her Gypsy was Khoon-Pyaasa, hot on her trail. He winced as the cycle bounced over the ruts and he stood up in the saddle to protect his still tender bum from the jolts. It is not possible to go very fast in the jungle in a motor vehicle, there are just too many distractions and Ayesha was co nstantly stopping to take photographs of this and that, so Khoon-Pyaasa really didn’t have much of a problem keeping up with her. He saw the Gypsy parked beneath the tree and disembarked from his bicycle, some distance away. Then he peered down into the ravine, to see what she was looking at and photographing so avidly…
A ll that afternoon and evening, Ayesha photographed the family of tigers. With delight she watched the cubs play, mock fight and pretend to hunt each other. She watched Zafraan sidle up to his mother and settle down beneath her chin; she watched the others rough and tumble all over their mother; she saw Raat-ki-Rani lovingly groom her cubs. Occasionally, the tigress would glance up at her, but she didn’t seem upset by her presence. Very cautiously, and step by step, Ayesha began descending into the ravine, so that she could get closer. Raat-ki-Rani watched her and gave a low growl when she thought she had come close enough. Ayesha stopped and hunkered down. From this spot she’d get some gorgeous pictures, especially since the sun was turning the animals to pure gold.
Eventually the sun slipped behind some craggy outcrops, and the ravine lay deep in shadow. Ayesha knew it was time to return—being close to a tigress with cubs in the dark was not wise. Thrilled with her pictures, she climbed up the ravine and drove off in her Gypsy, her heart singing.
From behind a huge lantana bush, Khoon-Pyaasa watched her go. He had scanned the ravine thoroughly, walking up and down its length from the top. The walls were almost sheer, impossible for anything or anyone but a mountaineer to climb up. There was only one narrow winding path leading into and out of it, which Ayesha had used and along which the tigers would have to walk to get out and return to the forest. It would be so easy.
Twenty minutes later he shot Raat-ki-Rani clean through the head as she led her family around a narrow bend flanked by high
rocks. He’d shimmied up a convenient tree and it was the perfect spot for an assassin. The tigress was flung backwards by the impact of the bullet, but landed on her feet. Then, eyes blazing she roared and charged. Fifteen feet high on his branch, Khoon-Pyaasa yelped with terror and wet his pants. The furious tigress gathered herself for her leap, and as she became airborne, died. But the momentum of her leap enabled her to rake Khoon-Pyaasa’s bottom with her claws. With a shout of fright he fell out of the tree and landed on the back of the dead tigress. Somehow he gathered himself, frantically got on to his bicycle and gibbering with terror like a monkey, rattled off at top speed. His bum was going to be very sore for a long time.
The cubs had instinctively bolted and scattered at the sound of the shot. Hasti and Masti had fled back down into the ravine, and Phasti just vanished headfirst into the nearest lantana bush. Zafraan leapt up at the rock-face, fell back and followed his sisters into the ravine.
Khoon-Pyaasa did not stop cycling till he reached his village.
‘Oye, what happened to your bum this time?’ Pappu inquired, ‘and your pants are all torn.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think you’ll be sitting down for a long time now.’
‘That tigress! She attacked me after I shot her! I had to flee for my life.’
‘Did you kill her?’ Pappu tore up a bedsheet and gleefully emptied half a bottle of tincture iodine onto it.
‘Yes! Shot her through the head. Owww! Abbe, what the hell are you doing?’
‘Hold still! And the cubs?’
‘They fled. They’ll die. They’ll starve without their mother.’
‘We should retrieve her body. We’ll get a good price for her skin and bones.’
‘I’m not going back there—you go! My bum is torn to shreds and I can’t even sit down.’ He glanced at his bum. ‘What the hell have you done, tied a pugree on it?’
‘Bandage,’ Pappu said succinctly. ‘You’d better not fart.’
An hour after the terrible shot had been fired, Hasti, Masti, Phasti and Zafraan, who had found each other in the ravine, padded up the path and approached their mother cautiously.
‘That noise!’ Hasti complained. ‘My ears are still ringing! What was it?’
‘Mamma did a backward somersault!’ Masti giggled. ‘Did you see?’
‘Gave me the fright of my life!’
Zafraan shook his head. ‘That was a shot. Someone shot at us!’
‘Just look at Mamma!’ Hasti said. ‘She’s gone to sleep!’
‘Mamma’s the limit!’
‘What a time to have a snooze!’
‘Mamma, wake up! Why are you sleeping here?’
They came up to their mother and nudged and nuzzled her.
‘Mamma, wake up!’
‘She’s bleeding!’ Zafraan said suddenly. ‘Can’t you smell it?’
‘Mamma?’
‘Wake up!’
‘She’s not moving!’
‘Her eyes are open!’
‘But she hasn’t seen us!’
‘Yoo-hoo Mamma, we’re here!’
‘Let’s get out of here; it’s scary! ’
‘We can’t. Not without Mamma!’
They nudged their motionless, silent mother and nuzzled her, clambered all over her, whimpering and mewing. Then they looked at each other, trembling.
‘We’ll stay here till she wakes up,’ Phasti said in a small voice. ‘Let’s go to sleep with her.’
It was going to be a long night.
Two hours later, the cubs were awakened by a horrible liquid giggling sound.
‘Hee-yuck, hee-yuck! Just look at them! So sweet!’
‘Cutie pies!’
The cubs opened their eyes and whirled around. From the gloom of the trees they saw glowing pinpoints of green light; and then the gleam of jaws and teeth, glistening with saliva and foam-flecked pink tongues. Four hyenas lurched out of the darkness like apparitions in a nightmare.
‘Wh…who…are you and what do you want?’ Zafraan asked bravely.
‘Your lordship, they call us the Gigglers, do you know why?’
Suddenly the darkness was filled with a most malevolent giggling; it made the fur on the backs of the cubs’ necks rise; it made them shiver with fear, a fear that was sharp and icicle cold.
‘Now you know…’ went on the wheedling voice. ‘What we want is to dine on this delicious-looking fresh tigress—your former mother!’ The hyena inclined his head to wards Raat-ki-Rani and went on: ‘So if you will excuse us and get the hell out of here and let us eat in peace!’
The hyenas moved forward menacingly, joined by four others.
‘Stay away from Mamma!’ Phasti screeched and launched herself at the brute nearest to her. He giggled and turned to flee and she clamped her jaws hard on his tail. He yelped, while the others just rolled about in paroxysms of giggles. Phasti suddenly found her mouth full of bushy, smelly hyena-tail, while the animal fled yelping. She spat it out in disgust.
‘She’s de-tailed you! Hyuck-hyuck!’ A chorus of giggles rippled out into the night air.
‘Dum-katta! Dum-katta! Dum-katta!’ the hyenas giggled maniacally. But even as they giggled the animals lowered their heads and hunched their backs even more and moved towards the cubs.
‘Heeyuck-heeyuck, and babies, we’re going to take your heads off with one bite!’
‘Come on!’ Zafraan snapped, rounding up his sisters like he had never done before. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
‘But Mamma!’ Hasti protested.
‘We can’t desert her!’ Masti agreed, looking back. Already the filthy animals were swarming all over their mother, giggling in that blood-curdling way of theirs, their jaws making terrifying crunching sounds. ‘Look what they’re doing to her!’
‘We’re never going to see Mamma again,’ Zafraan said, trying to quell a rising sob. ‘She’s gone. A shot through the head! Fatal! I saw the bullet hole!’ He gulped.
‘What?’ the sisters chorused, shocked.
‘We’d better go as far away from here as possible. It’s too dangerous to stay here.’
‘But…’ Bleakly Hasti, Masti and Phasti looked back towards where they had left their beloved Mamma.
Weary and whimpering, and still not fully understanding the enormity of what had happened, they followed Zafraan as he led the way back to their current cave hideout at the base of a cliff face.
‘We’ll stay here for a while and then move out,’ he said heavily. ‘Those hyenas will be after us.’
Phasti looked around the cave. ‘It feels weird without Mamma. I don’t like it! I don’t want to stay here. I want Mamma!’
‘Zafraan, but what are we going to do?’ Hasti looked panic-stricken.
‘Mamma did everything for us!’
‘How’ll we eat?’
‘I want to go back to see if she’s all right.’
‘Phasti, Mamma’s never going to be all right!’ Zafraan said, going up to his sister and licking her face.
‘I don’t believe you! I bet she’ll come walking through the entrance at first light. We dreamt about all those hideous hyena things…’
‘Will you please take care of her?’ Zafraan asked Hasti and Masti in a choked voice. Silently the two nodded and cuddled up to their little sister.
‘We’ll look after you, baby,’ Hasti said, ‘don’t worry.’
‘Now try to sleep.’
Eventually Phasti did fall asleep, between her two sisters. They looked at each other bleakly.
‘We’ll look after her…’ Hasti said in a tearful voice, ‘but who’ll look after us?’
Outside, at the entrance to the cave, Zafraan lay down, crossed his paws and grieved silently for his mother.
No human being had either heard, or taken note of the single shot that had rung out late that evening in the ravine, taking down Raat-ki-Rani. The Gigglers gorged themselves all night and lurched away from the remnants of the animal at first light. Later in the morning, from high up, Diclo
and his wife Fenac were quick to spot the carcass of the tigress… They went down. Within minutes the news was everywhere.
‘Did you hear?’ Lolita yowled, completely shocked as she rushed up to the other tigresses who were deciding their respective hunting blocks for the following month. ‘Someone shot Raat-ki-Rani last evening and those bloody Gigglers have already torn her apart and eaten most of her!’
‘They’re so revolting those hyenas—they make you sick! But she had cubs! I wonder where they are!’ Resham’s amber eyes shone.
‘Wherever they are, they’re good as dead!’
‘Good riddance!’ That was sweet Razia. ‘Now I can have mine in peace!’
Rana Shaan-Bahadur had reached the northern-most parts of his territory when the news reached him. Naradmunni suddenly came running up, his head lowered, his tail well between his legs.
‘Huzoor, I have heard grave news,’ he said with downcast eyes, but flicking a glance sideways for an escape route in case the great tiger decided to get after the messenger of bad tidings.
‘What?’ Shaan-Bahadur asked irritably. ‘We know that Thug has been intruding into my territory and I have challenged him to a fight on the ramparts of the Sher-kila on the night of the coming full moon. That should up my TRP ratings considerably. Make sure all the photographers and press are informed, especially that one with the beautiful tresses.’
‘Certainly, huzoor! But, huzoor, I have just heard that the beautiful Begum Raat-ki-Rani has been ruthlessly gunned down by a poacher. As you know, she had four young cubs—your cubs. No one knows where they’ve gone! They haven’t been seen since the shooting.’
‘So the bastards nailed her, eh? Really, she ought to have been more careful! ’
‘But huzoor, the cubs…’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re very young. They’ll die without their mother…’
‘What’s that to do with me?’
‘But huzoorji, forgive my saying so, you are their sire! They have your genes!’
‘And I am telling you once and for all, I will have nothing to do with them. There will be lots of other cubs carrying my genes, along with the genes of mothers who have better sense than to get themselves shot by a poacher! Look at me. I caught the stinking poacher in his own trap! Hah!’ He shook his head. ‘Just what was she thinking?’