COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan : The Sunday Statesman: 22-December-2013

' TIGER, TIGER!'
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _

" The Indian Tiger is famed all over the world. When the people of other countries think of our wild beasts, they think of the tiger at once, and everyone knows this animal in our country. It is even to be found on our 10-rupee notes. But it did not always live here and there is good reason for believing that it belonged, at first, to the cold northern parts of Asia and came to India long, long ago.

Even now, after so many hundred years of living in India, the tiger does not like our blazing sun and lives in thick forests where it is shady and cool, and hunts by night. It is also very fond of water and is a fine swimmer.

However it has lived so long that we can rightly call it ours. It is also found in many other Asiatic countries, in Manchuria and Burma for instance, but there are no tigers in Ceylon.

It has been said that the magnificently striped coat of the tiger is useful to it when it goes hunting. The stripes, it is said, look so like the streaky, upright light and shade on the tall grass that the animals it hunts missed seeing it. I must say I have never thought this true. For one thing, the tiger hunts by night when the light is so poor that the pattern of its coat is not to be clearly seen and when there is no strong light and shade, moreover a tiger stalking its prey takes very great care not to show itself till it is near enough to pounce. Tigers have marvellously sharp hearing and good sight, especially at night, but their sense of smell is not so sharp.

There are no black tigers, but there are white tigers, near Rewa. These are not pure white, but very pale, with the stripes in pale brown.

And not for the important question. If a lion and a tiger fight, which will win? Honestly, there is no sure answer to that question. A large lion and a large tiger are equally matched, but most people think the tiger will win, size being equal.

It lacks the protective mane of the lion, around the throat, but it is more agile. An American professor has tried to answer this question by going into all cases where the two beasts have fought, in captivity, but it is not a fair way of answering it. We do not know that in such cases both fighter was full-grown and in hard condition.

The lion and tiger have mated in captivity. The cubs are called ligers if their mother is tigress (the fater being a lion) and tigons when the mother is a lioness and the father a tiger. The liger is even bigger than its parents when grown but there there is nothing remarkable about it. It looks rather like a maneless lion with faint tiger marlings at places, and is wholly a man-made beast. That is why I have not drawn it for you in the tailpiece, but have given you a half-grown tiger cub instead.

That is only part of the reason. Here is the whole truth. When I had drawn the tigress in the bamboo jungle (in the headpiece-that is to show you the pattern of the coat mainly) I showed it to a fellow artist and he said many unkind thing about my tigress, how she lacked muscle and tigerishness and looked so like a striped cat. Stung to the quick by this, I have drawn a unique tailpiece for you - no one has dared to attempt a tiger (even a half-grown one) in this pose before. Here is a tiger catching a mouse! Tigers, when famished, have been known to eat frogs, and I don't think an young and inexperienced cub is above pouncing on a mouse. Moreover, my drawing will show you how a tiger (like all true cats) can turn its arms and pads inwards, and even upwards and grab all things with outspread claws. You may ask, "But where is the mouse?" No, it is not crushed into nothing between the tiger's paws. Being inexperienced, the cub missed the pounce and the mouse ran far away, well beyond this page."

-M.Krishnan

This was first published on 28 August 1955 in The Sunday Statesman

# Two sketches have not been reproduced