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them in self-reliance, the parents put their cubs in the way of work, but
nothing more.
At last it rained so hard that I lost sight of them for more than a fortnight.
It was about the beginning of August while the postman and I had gone
across to the village of Sundari for the mail, that we heard of four tigers
there who had killed three head of cattle in a week. This whetted my
curiosity, and as soon as the mail was received the postman and I set out for
the jungle. It did not take us long to find and recognise the family. The cubs
had grown by now, the boy was almost as high as the mother, though not as
long, his footprints resembled hers so closely that you could not distinguish
them. Only one thing betrayed the cub, his step was not so long as the
mother's. She took much wider strides. So when we saw two sets of identical
pugs, with four in each of greater compass, we concluded that mother and
son walked beside each other, while the daughter invariably kept the
company of her father.
Having sighted their lairs, I went back to Tajjabpore with the postman.
Then I hastened back to my four striped beasts. They moved ever closer to
our village. In a couple of days they had come perilously close to it. As they
emerged from the thick jungle I perceived that all was not going well with
the family. The father was becoming increasingly jealous of the son. Every
time the mother's back was turned, the old fellow attacked the boy with the
intent to kill. At one time he came so close to slashing the boy's throat with
his paw that the latter yelled for help. Then from nowhere leaped mother
between them, and attacked her husband. They fought and fought, but at last
she won. After that severe tussle he ran away--never to be seen again.
Her job was now doubly difficult; she had to kill both for her two children
and herself. But you know a tigress! She took no half measures; she forced
the boy to fill his father's place, and he had to go and stalk the prey while
mother waited at a given point to leap and kill.
One afternoon close to nightfall they changed plan. She and daughter did
the stalking. They brought a big buffalo up to him and lo, he leaped! But
instead of falling on its neck, he fell on its rear, and with a terrific kick of his
legs the black bull cleared himself and ran. Not one of the three could catch
him, so that night they went without food. Next evening the same thing
happened, but when on the fourth occasion the mother and daughter drove
up to him half a dozen big buffaloes whom he could not attack, the mystery
of the situation cleared. She was giving him his last lesson. After this the
family would break up, so he must learn to stalk and kill all by himself.
What was most surprising, she was giving him the hardest thing to do first,
but by failure at the great one he was learning the easier tasks with infallible
power and skill. How different that is from our human way of training
people, with the easiest always first. In nature animals cannot afford such
long drawn-out step-by-step training. Animal children cannot be segregated
in the school- room from the sharp experiences of life. They have to be
educated in the heart of life itself. The easy and the difficult befall them
without any sequence. It is a pity that in civilisation man has made the
business of education so sequestered and slow.
However, to return to our tiger reaching his final initiation. I have already
intimated that all three of them had gone without food for four days. Hunger
was tearing their vitals. They were so famished that they curtailed their
daylight sleep. Sister and brother, the fifth day, killed a baby monkey at the
water hole. But it could not assuage their hunger. Late that afternoon when
the sun was setting, they came out towards our village on the river bank and
sat there looking at the bars of light vibrate and die on the high waters of the
night of the full moon. In the village men and women sang as they finished
their day's work, and Papias (Indian thrushes) sang in the sky-pa .... p .. i .. a
.. ! The green jungle throbbed like an emerald cast in a garnet crucible.
How swiftly the tropical twilight passes! In a half-hour the moon had
risen, sending currents of cold white fire through the waters and every bough
of the trees. The three beasts of prey prowled around the village. But no
cattle had gone astray, and men carrying torches were the only living
creatures who passed and repassed on the roads. One of these men was
myself. Seeing us, the tigers retreated from the village into the woods. I too
went thither after putting out my torch, but circuitously. Hardly had I
reached the edge of the jungle than I heard something start. With the celerity
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