9

THE TIGER'S CLAW

dark career was ended. The
THEmenman-eater's
who had it low were the heroes of
laid
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
forests.
We watched fascinated this scene, drifting along
with the crowd till the Talkative Man patted us
"
from behind and cried Lost in wonder ! If youVe
:

had your eyefull 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
67
68 THE TIGER'S CLAW
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 on 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
Let me tell you about the station.'
*
arms. 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 me down
morning mixed
a train put
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
:
 THE TIGER'S CLAW 69

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 backyard. 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,
70 THE TIGER'S CLAW
bolted the station door and lay down, feeling
little

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 cat-like 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 cat-like 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 barri-

cading 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

dearly against the star-lit 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.
9

Somehow wild animals are less afraid of human beings

 THE TIGER'S CLAW 71

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 ad-
vanced a step or two, making a sort of rumbling noise
at his throat which seemed to shake up the little
station house. Myend was nearing. I really pitied
the woman whose was to have become my wife.
lot it
" 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 daws.
c
He is sharpening it 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 fore-paws. 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
72 THE TIGER'S CLAW
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 haunch 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

 THE TIGER'S CLAW 73

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 a 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 blood-thirsty 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

lines 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
74 THE TIGER'S CLAW
admiration for those people who met the tiger at their
own convenience, with gun and company, thfrt 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 feting 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 black deep 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."