—5—
The tiger shaped our every move for months.
Reports of its size and ferocity filtered back to us, more and more alarming.
It was the biggest tiger that had been seen in a decade!
The biggest seen in fifty years! None larger had been spotted since the British had arrived!
Who knew what exaggerations were actually true.
What was known was that it had developed a taste for humans.
First the girl, then a boy and his father from the forest when they were collecting figs.
Their bag was abandoned, and only a blood smear, along with a hat and a single sandal left behind on the dry dirt showed where their bodies had been.
Adults shushed each other when we children were listening, or rather, when they knew we listened.
That summer, Tanveer and I, and sometimes even Gurdaya, became adept at lurking around the edges of a gathering, imagining we were tigers stalking the ladies in their finery, the fat men with their cigars. We heard plenty.
Because our mothers had become fast friends, working on some project for the poor that we didn’t care about in the slightest, we were often together, and the nearness of our houses gave us easy access.
The friendship between the maharani and Mother was not common, but it had been born of Mother’s healing arts.
She was often called to any number of duties among the women of the community, low and high, but she had developed a reputation for treating an Indian of any caste.
The maharani had heard of my mother’s talents with back pain, and had found some relief with her.
So the children became friends, too, sharing stories to terrify each other, playing games in the courtyards and pretending to be masters of the forest, with Tanveer’s cat and an old black dog, my pet birds—two parakeets and a mynah I was attempting to teach how to speak—and an orphaned baby monkey that my father had rescued.
I loved the cat wildly, her purr and long whiskers, her soft orange fur unlike any of the fur of the dogs my father kept for hunting.
Because of the birds, my mother counseled me that I should not bring a cat home, so I loved when I could curl up with Shera.
She liked to come with us to the playroom and up to the roof.
Once, she trotted into the room and proudly dropped a rat at my feet.
When I bolted, terrified, Tanveer laughed. “It is a gift. She likes you!”
The cat helped me understand the body of the tiger. I drew Shera over and over, and then more drawings of the tiger. I was obsessed with her.
Every story, exaggerated or not, fueled my imagination.
I drew a thousand tigers, and tiger paws, and tiger snouts.
I found illustrations in storybooks to copy, tracing them out carefully, refining my knowledge.
Tigers had a broad nose, with eyes tilted upward.
Their paws were white, with claws marking each toe.
It was a challenge to learn the structure of the nose, with odd compartments, until we studied Tanveer’s cat and mastered the triangle shape.
The maharaja’s summer residence was only a short distance from our house, both located in the hills to avail the inhabitants of the cooler temperatures up high, but when we traveled to and fro that spring, an army of servants traveled with us, all of them armed and watchful.
A sepoy—an Indian solider serving with the British—few miles distant had seen the beast and reported it to be gigantic.
Just before the monsoons, there was to be a gathering of politicians and wives at the maharaja’s residence.
My father would attend, along with many other officials and a handful of princes.
To the east, the state of Bengal had been divided, and the experiment was rocky.
Of course, we children cared little for politics, and all I wanted was to play with my friends.
I carried with me a satchel loaded with paints and sketchbooks and plums plucked from our trees, something to share as I’d been taught.
As we traveled, I peered hard into the trees to see if I might catch a glimpse of the tiger, slinking through the shadows.
But we arrived without incident. Tanveer and Gurdaya met us at the door, and we children wheeled away to their playroom. In her own world, Gurdaya was far more friendly.
“I brought my paints and pencils,” I said.
“We have those things,” Gurdaya retorted. “Do you think us poor?”
“Gudiya,” Tanveer said, his nickname for her. “She’s only being kind, to share.” He turned his smile on me. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” I said. “I also brought plums, but perhaps you have them as well.”
Gurdaya snatched a plum. “My favorite!” She sank her teeth into the flesh, swirling around in happiness. The light from the window caught in the thin tissue of her scarf, across the planes of her face.
I smoothed my hand over my sketchbook and picked up a pencil, struck by some magic in her spin, her braid flying out sideways, the scarf lifting in delicate purple light.
Her face intrigued me, the angles and the planes and the softness of her lips.
I tried to show it in spare lines, a curve, a sharp mark for her nose, the sidelong angle of her eye.
It wasn’t what I hoped. I missed some essential something, but by then she had collapsed near the table, legs akimbo. “Is that me?”
“I’ll do better,” I said, abjectly embarrassed at the poor attempt.
“Nonsense,” Tanveer said. “You’ve caught her movement. How did you do that?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know how to say it in words—something had blazed through my imagination for a moment, the light and her limbs and hair, and I felt it in my hands.
“I like it,” Gurdaya said.
“Thank you.”
That night, Tanveer led the three of us up to the roof after dark.
The sky stretched like darkest blue velvet overhead, scattered with glittering stars.
“My father is a student of astronomy,” he said.
“I asked his permission to show you his telescope, as it is a dark night, and we shall be able to see a great deal.”
“Aren’t all nights dark?”
Gurdaya snorted.
Tanveer touched my shoulder, ever so lightly, as if to shift my attention his way. “A dark sky is a moonless night.” He gestured toward the darkness above us. “Do you know what you see here?”
I shook my head. “Only stars.”
He drew a finger along a spray of white. “That is Akash Ganga, or what you know as the Milky Way. It is made of millions and millions of stars.”
“A river of stars,” I said.
His smile flashed. “Yes. And there is Jupiter, the largest planet in the galaxy.”
“I do know the solar system.”
“Good.” He pointed again. “Mars is that little star, and Saturn. Venus is the brightest one, there, sparkling.”
“Can you see them through the glass?”
“Yes.” He showed me how to position my eye. “It is easier if you don’t press your eye right into it, but hold your head a little away.”
I struggled to see anything, and frustration rose in my chest. Frowning, I lifted my head, and looked again with my bare eyes, then back through. Nothing. I shook my head. “I cannot see anything.”
“Let me adjust it,” he said, and bent in, tapping the scope a little, a little, a little. His kurta was pale in the darkness. “There,” he said, and backed away. “Carefully.”
Moving with extreme caution, I held my eye just a little away from the viewfinder, and to my delight, there was a round ball of shining light. “I see it!”
“That,” he said with some satisfaction, “is Venus.”
I stood up, beaming. “How magical!”
He grabbed my arm suddenly, his grip tight, and pressed a finger to his lips. With his free hand, he pointed out toward the garden below, a stretch of manicured grass surrounded with encroaching oak and chestnut trees.
And there, walking stealthily around the edge of the perimeter, was the tiger. In my excitement, I covered my mouth to avoid making a sound.
We stood motionless, but below, the tiger paused as if she sensed us.
One paw hung in the air, her tail high, only visible because of the white stripes.
I was transfixed by her size, the sense of power emanating from her muscles and stance.
She paused only for a few seconds, then walked into the trees.
He was gripping my arm so tightly I felt indentations. He let go. “Sorry, but—” His face reflected my wonder, his eyes shining. “Can you believe it?”
I let the wonder and magic well up through me, spill over. I could think of nothing to express the gilded delight, but already I was thinking of how to draw her, the way she melded with the shadows, her stripes echoing the bright and dark shape of the night and the trees.
“We must tell someone!” Gurdaya said.
“No!” Tanveer said, catching his sister before she fled. “This is her world—we are the intruders.”
“I don’t want to die because a tiger has eaten me!” She shook off his grip, and made for the door.
“Gudiya,” I said. “What if you were the tiger, hungry and needing to feed your children?”
It was a last-ditch plea, but it seemed to sway her. She glanced over the wall, to the darkness. “All right. But if she attacks another person, we must tell them we saw her.”
“Yes,” Tanveer said, and gave me a conspiratorial glance.
“I am going to read,” she said. “Do not follow me.”
“Do you swear you will not tell?” Tanveer asked.
“I will not tell,” she said, and was gone.
He looked at me, and I at him. We were almost exactly the same height, eye to eye. “She will not tell, not now,” he said. “And when the tiger kills again, it will be too late.”
“When? Do you think she will?”
“Of course,” he said, ever clear eyed. “We are simply prey, after all.”
Worry rose like a miasma, blotting out my joy. “But won’t we then be responsible for those deaths?”
“No,” he said firmly. “She has a right to live in her world, even if we don’t like what she does.”
I shivered. “She is so beautiful. I want to go downstairs and paint her before I forget.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “The stars will be here another night.”
As we turned away, I looked over my shoulder. What if she did kill someone else? How would I feel?
I didn’t know.