The man-eater’s dark career was ended. The men who had laid it low were the heroes of the
day. They were garlanded with chrysanthemum flowers and seated on the arch of the highest
bullock cart and were paraded in the streets, immediately followed by another bullock-drawn
open cart, on which their trophy lay with glazed eyes—overflowing the cart on every side, his
tail trailing the dust. The village suspended all the normal activity for the day; men, women and
children thronged the highways, pressing on with the procession, excitedly talking about the
tiger. The tiger had held a reign of terror for nearly five years, in the villages that girt Mempi
Forest.
We watched this scene, fascinated, drifting along with the crowd—till the Talkative Man patted
us from behind and cried, ‘Lost in wonder! If you’ve had your eyeful of that carcass, come aside
and listen to me . . .’ After the crowd surged past us, he sat us on a rock mount, under a margosa
tree, and began his tale: I was once camping in Koppal, the most obscure of all the villages that
lie scattered about the Mempi region. You might wonder what I was doing in that desolate corner
of the earth. I’ll tell you. You remember I’ve often spoken to you about my work as agent of a soil
fertilizer company. It was the most miserable period of my life. Twenty- five days in the month, I
had to be on the road, visiting nooks and corners of the country and popularizing the stuff . . .
One such journey brought me to the village Koppal. It was not really a village but just a clearing
with about forty houses and two streets, hemmed in by the jungle on all sides. The place was
dingy and depressing. Why our company should have sought to reach a place like this for their
stuff, I can’t understand. They would not have known of its existence but for the fact that it was
on the railway. Yes, actually on the railway, some obscure branch-line passed through this village,
though most trains did not stop there. Its centre of civilization was its railway station—presided
over by a porter in blue and an old station-master, a wizened man wearing a green turban, and
with red and green flags always tucked under his arms. Let me tell you about the station. It was
not a building but an old railway carriage, which, having served its term of life, was deprived of its
wheels and planted beside the railway lines. It had one or two windows through which the
station-master issued tickets, and spoke to those occasional passengers who turned up in this
wilderness. A convolvulus creeper was trained over its entrance: no better use could be found for
an ex-carriage.
One November morning a mixed train put me down at this station and puffed away into the
forest. The station-master, with the flags under his arm, became excited on seeing me. He had
seen so few travellers arriving that it gave him no end of pleasure to see a new face. He
appointed himself my host immediately, and took me into the ex-compartment and seated me
on a stool. He said, ‘Excuse me. I’ll get off these papers in a minute . . .’ He scrawled over some
brown sheets, put them away and rose. He locked up the station and took me to his home—a
very tiny stone building consisting of just one room, a kitchen and a back yard. The station-
master lived here with his wife and seven children. He fed me. I changed. He sent the porter
along with me to the village, which was nearly a mile off in the interior. I gathered about me the
peasants of those forty houses and lectured to them from the pyol of the headman’s house.
They listened to me patiently, received the samples and my elaborate directions for their use,
and went away to their respective occupations, with cynical comments among themselves
regarding my ideas of manuring. I packed up and started back for the station-master’s house at
dusk, my throat smarting and my own words ringing in my ears. Though a couple of trains were
now passing, the only stopping train would be at 5:30 on the following morning. After dinner at
the station-master’s house, I felt the time had come for me to leave: it would be indelicate to
stay on when the entire family was waiting to spread their beds in the hall. I said I would sleep
on the platform till my train arrived . . . ‘No, no, these are very bad parts. Not like your town.
Full of tigers . . .’ the station-master said. He let me, as a special concession, sleep in the station.
A heavy table, a chair and a stool occupied most of the space in the compartment. I pushed
them aside and made a little space for myself in a corner. I’d at least eight hours before me. I
laid myself down: all kinds of humming and rustling sounds came through the still night, and
telegraph poles and night insects hummed, and bamboo bushes creaked. I got up, bolted the
little station door and lay down, feeling forlorn. It became very warm, and I couldn’t sleep. I got
up again, opened the door slightly to let in a little air, placed the chair across the door and went
back to my bed.
I fell asleep and dreamt. I was standing on the crest of a hill and watching the valley below,
under a pale moonlight. Far off a line of catlike creatures was moving across the slope,
half- shadows, and I stood looking at them admiringly, for they marched on with great elegance. I
was so much lost in this vision that I hadn’t noticed that they had moved up and come by a
winding path right behind me. I turned and saw that they were not catlike in size but full-grown
tigers. I made a dash to the only available shelter—the station room.
At this point the dream ended as the chair barricading the door came hurtling through and fell
on me. I opened my eyes and saw at the door a tiger pushing himself in. It was a muddled
moment for me: not being sure whether the dream was continuing or whether I was awake. I at
first thought it was my friend the station-master who was coming in, but my dream had fully
prepared my mind—I saw the thing clearly against the starlit sky, tail wagging, growling, and,
above all, his terrible eyes gleaming through the dark. I understood that the fertilizer company
would have to manage without my lectures from the following day. The tiger himself was rather
startled by the noise of the chair and stood hesitating. He saw me quite clearly in my corner,
and he seemed to be telling himself, ‘My dinner is there ready, but let me first know what this
clattering noise is about.’ Somehow wild animals are less afraid of human beings than they are
of pieces of furniture like chairs and tables. I have seen circus men managing a whole
menagerie with nothing more than a chair. God gives us such recollections in order to save us
at critical moments; and as the tiger stood observing me and watching the chair, I put out my
hands and with desperate strength drew the table towards me, and also the stool. I sat with my
back to the corner, the table wedged in nicely with the corner. I sat under it, and the stool
walled up another side. While I dragged the table down, a lot of things fell off it, a table lamp, a
long knife and pins. From my shelter I peeped at the tiger, who was also watching me with
interest. Evidently he didn’t like his meal to be so completely shut out of sight. So he cautiously
advanced a step or two, making a sort of rumbling noise in his throat which seemed to shake up
the little station house. My end was nearing. I really pitied the woman whose lot it was to have
become my wife.
I held up the chair like a shield and flourished it, and the tiger hesitated and fell back a step or
two. Now once again we spent some time watching for each other’s movements. I held my
breath and waited. The tiger stood there fiercely waving its tail, which sometimes struck the
side walls and sent forth a thud. He suddenly crouched down without taking his eyes off me,
and scratched the floor with his claws. ‘He is sharpening them for me,’ I told myself. The little
shack had already acquired the smell of a zoo. It made me sick. The tiger kept scratching the
floor with his forepaws. It was the most hideous sound you could think of.
All of a sudden he sprang up and flung his entire weight on this lot of furniture. I thought it’d be
reduced to matchwood, but fortunately our railways have a lot of foresight and choose the
heaviest timber for their furniture. That saved me. The tiger could do nothing more than perch
himself on the roof of the table and hang down his paws: he tried to strike me down, but I
parried with the chair and stool. The table rocked under him. I felt smothered: I could feel his
breath on me. He sat completely covering the top, and went on shooting his paws in my
direction. He would have scooped portions of me out for his use, but fortunately I sat right in
the centre, a hair’s-breadth out of his reach on any side. He made vicious sounds and wriggled
over my head. He could have knocked the chair to one side and dragged me out if he had come
down, but somehow the sight of the chair seemed to worry him for a time. He preferred to be
out of its reach. This battle went on for a while, I cannot say how long: time had come to a dead
stop in my world. He jumped down and walked about the table, looking for a gap; I rattled the
chair a couple of times, but very soon it lost all its terror for him; he patted the chair and found
that it was inoffensive. At this discovery he tried to hurl it aside. But I was too quick for him. I
swiftly drew it towards me and wedged it tight into the arch of the table, and the stool
protected me on another side. I was more or less in a stockade made of the legs of furniture.
He sat up on his haunches in front of me, wondering how best to get at me. Now the chair,
table and stool had formed a solid block, with me at their heart, and they could withstand all
his tricks. He scrutinized my arrangement with great interest, espied a gap and thrust his paw
in. It dangled in my eyes with the curved claws opening out towards me. I felt very angry at the
sight of it. Why should I allow the offensive to be developed all in his own way? I felt very
indignant. The long knife from the station-master’s table was lying nearby. I picked it up and
drove it in. He withdrew his paw, maddened by pain. He jumped up and nearly brought down
the room, and then tried to crack to bits the entire stockade. He did not succeed. He once again
thrust his paw in. I employed the long knife to good purpose and cut off a digit with the claw on
it. It was a fight to the finish between him and me. He returned again and again to the charge.
And I cut out, let me confess, three claws, before I had done with him. I had become as
bloodthirsty as he. (Those claws, mounted on gold, are hanging around the necks of my three
daughters. You can come and see them if you like sometime.)
At about five in the morning the station-master and the porter arrived, and innocently walked
in. The moment they stepped in the tiger left me and turned on them. They both ran at top
speed. The station-master flew back to his house and shut the door. The porter on fleet foot
went up a tree, with the tiger halfway up behind him. Thus they stopped, staring at each other
till the goods train lumbered in after 5:30. It hissed and whistled and belched fire, till the tiger
took himself down and bolted across the tracks into the jungle.
He did not visit these parts again, though one was constantly hearing of his ravages. I did not
meet him again—till a few moments ago when I saw him riding in that bullock cart. I instantly
recognized him by his right forepaw, where three toes and claws are missing. You seemed to be
so much lost in admiration for those people who met the tiger at their own convenience, with
gun and company, that I thought you might give a little credit to a fellow who has faced the
same animal, alone, barehanded. Hence this narration.
When the Talkative Man left us, we moved on to the square, where they were keeping the
trophy in view and hero-worshipping and fêting the hunters, who were awaiting a lorry from
the town. We pushed through the crowd, and begged to be shown the right forepaw of the
tiger. Somebody lowered a gas lamp. Yes, three toes were missing, and a deep black scar
marked the spot. The man who cut it off must have driven his knife with the power of a
hammer. To a question, the hunters replied, ‘Can’t say how it happens. We’ve met a few
instances like this. It’s said that some forest tribes, if they catch a tiger cub, cut off its claws for
some talisman and let it go. They do not usually kill cubs.’
