Here’s to all the saved tigers — flesh & blood, and metaphorical

Deluge in Assam, protests in Hong Kong, riots in Puerto Rico, shootings in California… but, among all the disasters, one single headline blazed at me in flaming letters — “Tiger population in India doubles four years before the deadline.” And, what do you know, on Global Tiger Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India is one of the safest habitats in the world for tigers. With 3000 of those marvels of creation roaming in our forests, does tiger conservation become the only project where India has doubled its target, four years in advance?  

I thought with gratitude and admiration of the thousands of doughty wildlife rangers, who covered “more than 300,000 miles on foot to collect dung samples and take photographs from thick green canopies” (The New York Times).  Modi — now on the brink of a new kind of stardom with his forthcoming debut on Discovery channel’s “Man Vs Wild” series — reaffirmed the government’s commitment to protect India’s national animal. The Environment Minister even crowed, “The whole world is watching India take giant leaps!” 

We don’t know if the whole world is watching India, or our tigers for that matter, but conservationists should be happy. Not without anxieties, though, as poaching — albeit diminished — continues. Increasing the number of tiger reserves makes little sense when forests keep getting razed for mindless development. Tiger-human conflicts have also not abated. Tigers turn into cattle thieves and man-eaters. Villagers beat the trapped animal to death — didn’t we see this in the horrific Philibhit video?

When I interviewed him 10 years ago, Valmik Thapar (our best-known Big Brother to the Tiger) said, “After 35 years in wildlife, serving on 150 committees of Central/state governments, I have failed miserably.” Neither the government nor forest service knew their job. “They want no change, no tourism and no projects involving local communities.” But now on BBC, Thapar showed more optimism, yet still with a caveat of ‘long way to go’. He added that training methods for officials in forest regeneration and wildlife management remained “abysmal”. The new census shows uneven progress in some states. Several tiger sanctuaries have no tigers at all. With no vision to promote wildlife tourism, villagers continue to see the tiger only as a predator on their life and livelihood, not as an asset to be protected as a source of revenue.  

Why save the tiger? Naturalists will give learned answers about its crucial role up on the food chain, and in “preserving the health and diversity of our ecosystem”. The Mahabharata tells us the same thing with a simple metaphor: “Do not cut down forests, do not banish tigers. Without each other, both perish.” Here, uncle Vidura is actually telling the exiled Pandavas, “Stay united or perish.” It also warns that since all lives are interdependent, the planet’s survival depends on the balance of all living forms.

From prehistoric times, humankind has been spellbound by the black-and-gold beast. Look at cave paintings, tribal arts, folk ballads, regional legends! Starting with the tiger mount of the mother goddess, Hindu mythology revels in the image. The ultimate praise for puranic heroes is to be called “nara-shardoola” or “O tiger among men!” Tigers flourish on temple walls and murals.  At a distance of 50 km, my city, Chennai, boasts of an eighth century rock-cut Tiger Cave. At its large, yawning semi-circular entrance crouches an ambush of tigers. (What a perfect collective noun for tigers, unless you prefer the alternative “streak”!)

Without metaphors and images, the human mind cannot make sense of the world. Obviously, the tiger represents beauty, aggression, might, majesty and mystery. Each civilisation has repeatedly used and discovered newer meanings in the striped wonder. Whether India, China, Japan, Indonesia or Siberia — different cultures have each made their own tigers out of “symbols and shadows and literary images” as the Argentinian poet Jorge Borges put it, to give visual shape to their deepest fears and highest aspirations. That is also the tiger we want to save. Not just the flesh and blood tiger, but the tiger of dreams which empowers and regenerates our mental systems.

I remember a playwrights’ workshop in Sweden, where participants had to strike a match and talk till it got burnt out. As mine flamed, I asked, “Have you seen a tiger? No? I have. In a forest. It was 20 feet away. A miracle. On the day I was born, there were 40,000 tigers in India. Fields stretch, factories smoke and houses jam the land where forests once grew. The rivers where tigers swam are dried up or dammed. In my lifetime, the tiger will be extinct.”

How exhilarating to know that the Bengal tiger may continue to prowl in the wilderness and save our ecosystem! And to believe that the golden beast with emerald eyes may continue to haunt our minds, and fire our creative visions.

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist