A Tiger for Malgudi by R. K. Narayan Read Free Book Online

come on ...’and he poked with the staff and laughed when I protested. ‘Ah, what a beautiful voice. If you were a singer, you could enchant an audience of thousands without a mike,’and laughed at his own joke. Others laughed with him too. I learnt later that they were obliged to laugh at his jokes, being his subordinates. As I went along I learnt that he was the owner of the circus. He was the one who met me when I was trapped, and he was to be my commander for years to come. He now poked the staff through the bars and was greatly amused when I jumped about in pain and confusion. He said with a guffaw, ‘Ah, you are a promising dancer too!’He turned to his assistant and said, ‘Let us advertise - a tiger Bharatnatyam, something that no circus has ever attempted.’
    ‘Yes, sir, that’s an excellent idea, sir,’said Captain’s ‘yes-man’ who was always by his side agreeing with everything he said, his second-in-command.
    ‘We will teach this fellow every accomplishment in due course,’ said Captain. ‘But our immediate job is to drive him into the other cage, which is going to be his new home.’He prodded me with his staff and hit me to the accompaniment of stentorian commands; I was to hear the voice again and again in the years to come. Also he drew the staff along the cage’s bars, creating a rat-tat noise which confused me. When I tried to understand what it meant, he withdrew the staff and jabbed my side with it. I was miserable and did not know where to keep myself. He gave me no rest, but drove me round and round with that staff in the narrow space till in sheer desperation, edging away from the probing stick, I dashed on and found myself in another cage, where the door immediately came down. This was my first act of obedience. Captain now withdrew his staff and said, ‘Ah, good. Stay there.’He said to his yes-man, ‘Take the other cage for cleaning - awful mess, stinks to the high heavens.’
     
As night fell, I could see more clearly. I heard a lion roar, and the voices of other jungle fellows; and over all that, of course, human talk in different keys. I saw only empty grounds before me and a glow of lights somewhere. I was bewildered and did not know why I was brought here, or what they were planning to do with me. Captain and his yes-man would come off and on, stand looking at me, say something between themselves, and then leave. It was irksome to stay in that cramped space all day and night - my only activity being lying down and getting up, and again lying down and getting up, stretching myself to the extent possible, and turning round and round, grumbling and whining. But no one cared. Being used to the vastness and freedom of jungle life, I found this an impossible condition of living. I could do nothing more than pace up and down in despair.
    For three days I did not feel hungry. On the fourth day I felt a stab of hunger and did not know what to do about it: how was my hunger going to be appeased? This was hell, as defined by my Master, an endless state of torment with no promise of relief or escape. I still had no conception that food could come one’s way without a chase. These were the stages of knowing attained through suffering. I can hardly describe that kind of suffering, an emptiness, a helplessness, and a hopelessness behind the bars. Now, of course, I have got used to it, after years of circus life and then the zoo. But at that time I just had no conception of that kind of life. Bars of iron, unbending and perpetually pressing against one’s face. I had had no contact with any sort of metal in my life; now this combination of man and metal subdued me - metal which in various forms served the evil ends of man as prison bars, traps, and weapons. I desperately tried to smash the bars again and again and only made my head bloody. When Captain viewed me in this state, he only laughed and remarked to his aide, ‘All these stupid creatures are alike! They all expect the bars of