The Jungle Omnibus Read online

  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!

  RAINDROP

  This leaf, so complete in itself,

  Is only part of the tree.

  And this tree, so complete in itself,

  Is only part of the forest.

  And the forest runs down the hill to the sea,

  And the sea, so complete in itself,

  Rests like a raindrop

  In the hands of God.