How books 'de-sign' our perceptions, right? The childhood read, Aesop's Fables, tells us that the fox is wily, while his bigger brother, the tiger, is not at all like the large-hearted King of the jungle, the lion. The tiger we meet in 'The Jungle Book ', Shere Khan, is equally vicious, nasty, cruel, always bothering the man cub, Mowgli.
Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger we meet in Yann Martel's 'Life of Pi', is a big brother of Shere Khan. In the early part of the novel, there is this incident wherein the father releases a goat in his cage just to let Pi Patel and his brother understand the cruelty of the animal, and he does rise to the occasion! The vicious cruelty he shows on that occasion accompanies the boy-hero throughout the impossible voyage.
When they finally reach the shore, despite Pi's multiple acts of kindness throughout the voyage, Richard Parker in a very self-centred way just vanishes in to the forest, without even a glance backward! William Blake's tiger is a much better presence for sure. His unique beauty becomes a symbol of divine creativity.
As for the real tiger (beyond story books and novels such as R.K.Narayan's, and many, many more), the zoo cannot contain his ferocity. I have never been to any tiger reserves, though I have watched videos, seen pictures thereof.
Yet his is a presence which is very much necessary for the entire natural 'chain of being'. However, mercilessly hunted for the body parts, this dangerously attractive species has now been reduced to just four thousand, though just a century ago, there were hundred thousand tigers.
Yet given the glamour related to tiger conservation, the tiger's current situation is much better than many other endangered species'. How to help the power and the glory of the tiger survive, now that mankind is encroaching the forests in a big way, is the real question. It needs urgent answers. Otherwise, tiger days would come and go, but real tigers would be fewer and fewer, soon only to be found in a story book!
Pratima @ I like the story about the ass, the tiger and the lion. The ass fights with the tiger over the issue that the grass is blue. The tiger takes him to the king of the forest to settle the issue. While the lion agrees with the donkey, he fines the tiger. Hurt, the tiger wants to know the reason behind this apparent injustice. Says the lion, "the fine is imposed for arguing with a fool over a non-issue, and much worse still, bothering me about it, and wasting my time!" What a unique moral indeed! Quite some lesson truly, absolutely worthy of emulation in real life!
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