Reading a good book can make one feel the subtle happiness and enchantment. Recently, I've been through such a feeling and I want to share that with you. A Tiger for Malgudi is an amazing read for me. R K Narayan; master of verse has crafted this amazing pieace which is definitely a good read for me.
The novel tells the story of the deepest philosophy of life through the bare bones of man and tiger's relationship. The plot begins with a tiger ruminating past life via flashbacks technique of sitting in a cage at its last stage.
The main character of the plot is a tiger speaker who speaks in the first person narrative. It covers a long life story from family background to circus and a sudden interaction with a monk who later develops its personality. The story depicts a conflict between the circus captain and a tiger. The former tortured it proselytizing various techniques. The latter woes through in ego like a human being continues until the touch of a monk whom it called a master healed him.
They developed a strange relationship based on soul and love where the difference between tiger and animal disappears. Narayan picked the story during the Kumbh Mela festival in Alahabad where a monk held the animal on a cord that looked too docile to hurt and scar anyone and he claimed that they were brothers in previous lives.
The story turns into a major theme of the journey of souls through different forms to present a microcosm out of macrocosm. The interconnected ecosystem of greed on animals as well as worldly life pollutes our soul by pity-party interest that reacts to souls. The monk says to the tiger," you probably in a previous life enjoyed putting your fellow behind bars. There can be no escape from it". I can relate a famous quote by Rumi here:
"The love is from the infinite and will remain until eternity
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes
The heart that is not in love will fail the test. (The thief of sheep)"
The only solution is the discovery of soul and love to escape the labyrinth of existence. The tiger did so under the contact of a monk. The novel's metaphorical presentation of the world is a jungle where not only a tiger lives alone but also human beings dwell. The jungle is the devilish place, where the weak or the young received no consideration. We all are actors of different circuses in different forms under a skilled captain and our time slot is predetermined by the unseen.
The plot of the story touches the love for tiger population no doubt as well as shakes the spiritual life of every soul. The tiger has a family. Its members were killed while hunting. Later on the tiger itself was trapped by a circus captain and was captivated. A sudden chance let loose the tiger to roam into Malgudi. The monk rescued and made it docile not in the body but in mind also.
The tiger soul commented about sannyasi:
"Don't probe too far into the origin of a river or a saint; you will never reach the end." It accepted all the teaching of non-violence of the monk. The tiger understood "the eye is the starting point of all evils and mischief."
The last but not the least side of positive depiction of a monk who can control a tiger like a tamed child that goes beyond a mere play, "but he is endowed with some strange power, which can maneuver a tiger or an elephant as if they were toys."
Sannyasi has to discover a new relation debunking the old ones. It means that burying himself doing own funeral by himself, a death before physical death. The debate between the monk's wife and the monk's answer."My past does not exist for me, or a future. I live for the moment, and that awareness is enough for me. To attain this state, I have gone through much hardship..... I have erased my name from my mind and identity and that implies...
This is the core philosophy of monasticism pronounced through tigers. The tiger itself reached the point of enlightenment when it said, 'My sight became clearer; if I lifted my gaze to the horizon, the sun shining on the land filled me with joy... The tiger also felt for the Almighty in its color, " God must be an enormous tiger spanning the earth and the sky, with a tail capable of encircling the globe..."
So, these types of intellectual gems are strewn throughout the novel. One interesting thing is that the reader would forget that the tiger is itself speaking like an intelligent mind or a tiger man is speaking.
With💙
©chrysanthemum
[Feel free to comment and share your opinion.]