A Tiger for Malgudi by R.K Narayan Detailed summary

 

A Tiger for Malgudi was published in 1983. The novel is an unusual one which has a tiger as the narrator. The first part describes the tiger’s cub hood; his wild days in the jungle; his family life; his escape from the trap set up by the villagers; and his attack into human habitation after his family is killed by hunters in the village.

 

The novel begins with the narrator, Raja, a circus tiger, who has been brought to a zoo. He is allotted an end-cage, as a special consideration to his Master, who appears later in the novel. The people walking past his cage treat him the same as they do the other caged tigers, not realizing that this special tiger thought of himself as different from the other tigers as he possesses a soul, can think, analyse, judge and remember like humans, only lacking the power of speech.

 

The tiger spent his early days in the Mempi hills where he dwelt in a cave, near a rivulet, with his mother who protected and fed him. His cubhood was carefree and like humans, he deluded himself that the idyllic days would never end. But when the mother died, he had to take care for himself. Hunger brought him out of his cave but he was bullied by bigger animals. Somehow he managed to keep himself alive and grew into an adult. Due to his stature and strength he started thinking of himself as the “king of the forest,” above the lion who did not deserve the title as he was a slothful creature and moved only to hunt for food, whereas he was much stronger than the lion.

He recollects his past life in the woods. Every creature in the jungle trembled at his approach and made way for him, except the monkeys and the birds that lived on trees and didn’t fear him as he could not reach them. Like human beings, who can communicate without words, their feelings of sympathy, warning, abuse, insult, love and hate, the jungle animals, too, warned each other when he was approaching.

 

The tiger soon came across a tigress who was to become his mate. Out to hunt deer in a meadow, he saw a tigress sitting in the middle of the road blocking his passage. Despite his loud warning roar, the tigress refused to move even an inch. A terribly bloody fight happened between the two of them in which both were grievously injured and lay inert on the ground. A jackal, who was a witness to the fight, advised them to stay in piece. Taking the advice, the tiger went near the wounded tigress and gently ministered to her injured eye. The tigress too was a changed being from then on and followed him quietly. Thus began their friendship. Soon after came their offspring—four cubs—who were a delight to watch, suckling their mother, while the tiger rested in the shade of a bamboo cluster, occasionally catching minor game to feed the cubs. When the cubs grew up and ventured out of the cave, they were constantly guarded by the parents to save them from being harmed by the bears, bisons, eagles and pythons.

 

One day, the tiger saw his mate go down the river bank and climb up the other. The cubs somehow escaped his watchful eyes and followed their mother. He realized too late what had happened and followed them. When he heard strange noises around him, he roared to call back his family but in vain. Still following his family, he soon reached human habitation and, to his utter horror, saw his mate and cubs lying dead in a cart being pulled by a line of men singing and dancing around it. The tiger was shattered to the core at the loss of his dear ones. Anyhow, hiding behind a rock, he saw a set of men arrive in a jeep to take away his dead family. Those days he was untamed and wanted to tear and kill every man present there but somehow held back.

 The death of his family taught him to take revenge from the village folk by chasing and poaching their cattle for food. Every two days, he took away a sheep from the flock. The villagers did not suspect him for their loss and advanced ignorant theories. He now discovered that hunting in the village was far more easy and untiring than the jungle-hunting. The villagers, too, discovered they were losing their cattle more regularly and set up an enclosure, with a door, in the centre of the village to trap the culprit. The tiger one day entered the enclosure but as soon as he captured the lamb, it’s bleating woke up the villagers who ran out with flaming torches, small tools and axes. In his haste to escape, the tiger lost sight of the door and ran in circles inside the stockade, confused and blinded with the fire from the torches and the frenzied shouting of the villagers. He had never imagined that human beings could be so devilish. Fortunately, just then the fence enclosing the stockade caught fire from a torch. The villagers broke open the enclosure to save their sheep and that gave him a chance to escape from the trap. After that misadventure he did not raid the villages. He realised that men, who looked small and harmless, was stronger than tigers and held some strange power to control even the fiercest of animals. He decided to return to his cave at Mempi.

The villagers also had learnt a lesson from this episode. Henceforth, they not only guarded their sheep better but also decided to approach the authorities for help. Their spokesmen met the Collector and gave him exaggerated accounts of how the tiger was killing both men and their sheep. On being questioned by the Collector, they gave confused and different versions about the size of the tiger.

The Collector told them to submit a written petition on a stamp paper.  Confused by it all, the villagers had to visit the Collector’s office once a week, spending both time and money, and then too managed to meet only the Collector’s clerk who always directed them to undergo more official formalities. Through these delay in the procedures of the government R.K Narayan manages to criticise the system slightly.

 

The second part describes the capture of the tiger by a circus owner; the life he spends in the circus where he is cruelly trained and treated by his ringmaster and is made to perform in the circus and on a film set; and his subsequent escape from there.

 

A man in Malgudi, called Captain, had once bought a yellow monkey and a parrot (that could pick up numbers and alphabets from a pack of cards) from an Irishman who earned his living by displaying them in public. Being more ambitious, Captain thought about joining a circus and approached an old man, Dadhaji, who owned “Dadhaji’s Grand Circus”. Dadhaji wanted to know how much knowledge he had about animals. Captain told him that he had not encountered many animals in his life except the alley cats and mongrels (cross breed dogs) in the street of Malgudi. He disclosed that he had come to Dadhaji to learn about animals and how they were trained. Dadhaji took him in but told him to get rid of the monkey and the parrot that were fit only for street corner shows and not meant for his circus which had around 150 large animals. He told Captain to take charge of cleaning the stables and attending to the horses in return for food, shelter and pocket money. Captain readily accepted the offer and started his circus career under the tutelage of Dadhaji who taught him all about training animals and the business of running a circus.

When the old man died, Captain inherited the circus with its property, assets and animals. He soon shifted to his native Malgudi where he set up the “Grand Malgudi Circus” by bribing the authorities in order to overcome their objections to his venture.

 

Malgudi soon became famous for its circus with its animals, scores of acrobats and performers of all kinds, due to the hard work put in by Captain. Getting up daily at five in the morning he took rounds of the camps to know the welfare of his animals. He told to his wife Rita that it was the animals who brought in all the money needed to look after his family.

 

One day, while at the Collector’s office, Captain hears some villagers complaining to the clerk about the delay in catching the tiger which was fast devouring their cattle. The clerk loses his temper and threatens to call in the police. The villagers walk out of the office followed by Captain.  On being asked by him, the villagers are only too glad to talk to him about the tiger. He promises to help them catch the tiger.  

As he reaches in the village, they generated a great excitement and offer lavish hospitality to the one who has come to kill the tiger. Captain tells them he is there not to kill but to rid them of the tiger by taking it away, and asks them for their help. The villagers are unable to pinpoint the tiger’s hideout but direct him to two men in the next village who had recently been mauled by the tiger.

Camouflaging himself with foliage, he waits all night for the tiger to appear, sitting on a tree along with the forest guards. A cage with a goat inside as bait is placed to attract the unsuspecting animal.

 

The tiger had so far cautiously avoided all traps laid for him. But on that particular day, his greed for a fresh kill overpowers him. He emerges from his lair tempted by the goat, pounces on it and is instantly trapped in the iron cage. Captain, tells his companions that the trapped tiger is a magnificent beast whom he would soon train for his circus. The tiger feels confined in the small cage which is wheeled by bullocks. He soon realizes that this tiger was not an ordinary wild ceature, he too was like human beings.

When the cage reaches at the circus grounds, the tiger is amazed to see so many Animals and human creatures. Captain pokes him that makes him roar and jump in protest, and then orders him to be transferred to another cage that is to be his new home. Initially, the tiger has no idea why he has been brought to that new place with a huge circus top surrounded by smaller tents and filled with voices of jungle fellows and men. The tiger finds the restricted space of the cage unbearable after the vastness and freedom of jungle life. He can do nothing more than lie down or get up or pace up and down in despair. He feels helpless and hopeless, subdued by the iron cage designed by men to serve their evil ends.

For many days, Captain makes him suffer loneliness, immobility and hunger, perhaps to break his spirit. When he loses all his strength, his cage is moved into a large enclosure and he is set free from the cage. He sees Captain standing there with a long whip in one hand and a chair in the other. He uses the whip to lash the tiger’s face repeatedly, not letting him lie down to rest, and uses the chair as a shield between them. He pokes the tiger with the chair and commands him to “Run, run, come on!”. The tiger feels dismayed and ashamed as this event is being watched by other animals, most of whom he has seen for the first time. There is a camel, a hippo, a horse, a donkey, but no deer who perhaps escaped being in this cursed place because of its past good karmas.

As the days pass, the tiger begins to understand what Captain wants of him. His continuous lashings teach him to run round and round, without there being a reason for running, after which he is put back in the cage and given pieces of meat and a trough of water. Thereafter, he is made to learn all sorts of new tricks,  he is made to jump over obstacles of all kinds put in his way; he is forced to jump through a ring of fire although he dreads the fire after his past experience when he was nearly roasted by the flaming torches of the villagers. Every time the tiger fails to perform a new trick, he is mercilessly lashed with the whip by Captain. As a punishment, he is isolated from other animals and starved for days together till he grows weak and is ready to obey his ring-master. Sometimes he thinks of attacking Captain but the Chair always shields the man. At that time the chair appears like a powerful engine of destruction to the tiger but later when he sees chairs lying still in the schoolroom at Malgudi he realizes that a chair is nothing but a harmless piece of furniture that he could smash in a second, with his paw. The tiger gradually becomes an established member of the circus and is not isolated any more.

 

One day, as the tiger lays half-dead with starvation, Captain brings a visitor to his cage who is all praise for the tiger’s surgical attack on the goat which he had filmed. He proposes to make a film with Raja, the tiger. The visitor is a film producer and director named Madhusudan (he likes to be called Madan). As he wants Captain’s approval for his proposal, he often visits the camp. He tells Captain that he had written the outline of his film’s story on the same night that he had seen Raja slicing the goat’s head at the Jubilee Show.  He also informs Captain that he has already lined up a gigantic wrestler, Jaggu, for a role in his tiger-movie in which Jaggu would be shown fighting off the tiger with his bare hands to save his pet goat, after which he would capture the tiger and train him to live in peace with the goat.

Madan prepares an agreement of terms and conditions required for the making of his film but Captain finds fault with one clause or another and tells him to re-draft it. Another objection Captain raises is that he would not lend his tiger unless a location for shooting the film is finalized. Ultimately, he approves one of the three locations suggested by Madan which lay in the woods near a highway. Madan immediately gets the location called “Ginger Field”.

“Ginger Field” reminds the tiger of his old home in the woods and he becomes restless in his cage.

Day after day, with his whip and the chair, Captain makes the tiger learn the new act, surrounded by men who are always shouting to each other, specially the cameraman who even orders Captain around. Soon, Captain becomes submissive and loses his self-respect. Even after countless rehearsals, the tiger finds it difficult and very painful to lift his forelegs and at the same time tilt back on his hind legs. Each time he falls either backward or forward.

Having fed up with this Raja plans for an escape. As a result of chaos, he gives a fatal blow to the captain’s head and flees. Madan shouts to someone to fetch a gun. While escaping the pandemonium, the tiger brushes past the camera which topples down with a bang, eliciting loud cries from Madan that he is totally and completely ruined.

The third part of the tiger’s life describes his creating a sensation in Malgudi where he takes refuge in a school, resulting in great confusion and commotion; his meeting with an ascetic who saves him from being shot by the terror-stricken public, and who leads him out of the town towards the hills.

The tiger’s arrival in Malgudi from the film set, creates a commotion in the town. The people run to save their lives, hiding behind trees and pillars, and shutting and bolting all windows and doors of their homes. A tailor even shuts himself in a cupboard, while a murder convict escapes, along with his handcuffs, when the constables escorting him flee to save themselves. He wants to assure them that he is not there to kill them, as he has already had his fill on the way here and that tigers attack only when they are hungry, unlike human beings who slaughter one another without purpose or hunger.  However, the behavior of the children delights him. They run up and down the streets, shouting and screaming, happy to have been let off easily from school due to his presence in the town. Seeing him bounding out of the restaurant, they run back to the school, shutting themselves up in the school hall. He follows them to the school and takes refuge in the headmaster’s room. At his sight, the dignified gentleman jumps up on his table and heaves himself up into the loft with the greatest of speed. The tiger flings himself onto the cool stone floor with his head under a large desk and dozes off.

 

While he sleeps, there is a long consultation among the crowd that has gathered outside the school, of which he comes to know later from his new Master— the Holyman—who has been one of the crowd. When someone in the crowd refers to the tiger as ‘brute’, the Master rebukes him for using the ugly word that has been coined by man out of arrogance. Annoyed at his unsolicited advice, the people ask him who he is. The Master says that all his life he has been trying to find the answer to that profound question but has not succeeded and asks them if they know who they are.

 

A man with a gun arrives on the scene just then. He is the famed shikari— Alphonse . He orders people to get out of his way, otherwise, he says, he would not be responsible if anyone is hurt. The Master advises him not to use the uncharitable word ‘beast’ for the tiger. But Alphonse promptly shuts up this half- naked and bearded sadhu. As the tiger can be shot only if the door to the room is opened, which would be a dangerous move, Alphonse asks for a ladder to climb to the roof where he would remove a few tiles and take aim at the tiger.

 

At that very moment a jeep arrives carrying the “Save Tiger Committee” whom the Master has sent for to prevent Alphonse from killing the tiger. They inform Alphonse that the Committee has been formed to prohibit the shooting of tigers, in any part of India, to conserve their dwindling population and that they are empowered to prosecute and penalize anyone violating the ban. Alphonse reminds them that a tiger could be killed if it is established that he is a man-eater. The Committee asks him to apply for a permit and submit photographs of the tiger to establish that he is indeed a man-eater before they allow Alphonse to shoot it. Alphonse retorts that by the time this is done, the headmaster would be inside the tiger’s belly!

Meanwhile, the tiger wakes up from his refreshing slumber, stretches himself and growls with satisfaction. He sees the headmaster cowering in the attic and feels sorry for him. Wanting to assure the headmaster that he means him no harm, he puts his forelegs on the wall scratching it and growling softly. This further frightens the headmaster so much that he loses control over his bowels and bladder.

Outside in the school compound, the Master sees Alphonse and the Chairman of the “Save Tiger Committee” talking in whispers, after which the Chairman consults with his Committee members who sign some papers and hands them over to Alphonse. The papers declare that the tiger is indeed a man-eater and Alphonse is permitted to kill him. The Master suspects that Alphonse has offered a good bribe to the Committee to get the permit as he is carrying on a flourishing trade exporting tiger skins!

 

Armed with the permit to shoot the man-eater, Alphonse announces to the crowd to clear the place and move a hundred yards to the school gate. He allows the Committee members to bolt themselves up in an adjacent classroom. Alphonse takes out a flask from his hip pocket and takes a long swig out of it. Repeating the action every other minute, he soon empties the flask. As he is still feeling shaky, he puts the blame on the diluted rum he has taken. The Master approaches the now drunk and abusive Alphonse, who has forgotten all about his mission to kill the tiger and to save the headmaster. With his power of suggestion, the Master makes Alphonse fall asleep and proceeds to unlock the door to let the tiger out.

 

The tiger feels annoyed when he hears a key turn in the lock of his door, as he wants no one to disturb his newly-found freedom after his long suffering at the hands of the cruel ring-master. And suspecting that the visitor is someone who wants to send him back to the circus life, he dashes forward to kill him but falls back against the door. He loses all his energy to harm the now invisible visitor who speaks to him asking him to forget his outward appearance. The voice is that of the Master who further tells him that every creature from birth possesses aggressiveness but as old age overtakes it, it loses its faculties; and so would he lose his ferocity with time. In some mysterious way, he begins to understand what the voice is saying. He longs to go back to his jungle life and forget all about human beings and their ways.  He is then ordered to sit aside without stirring so that he, the Master, could bring down the headmaster from the attic. He obeys the Master and sits in a corner while the Master, by placing a chair and a stool atop a table, manages to reach the loft and brings down the badly shaken headmaster. The Master pushes the headmaster out of the room.

Alone in the room, the Master tells the tiger that he is going to lead him out of the room but he should make no eye-contact with the people who are by nature timid and panicky and might feel terrorized at his sight. The Master also wants him to keep his head bowed and notice nothing, lest he be distracted by the crowds on the streets. Then he cautions the people outside to move out of the way as he is bringing the tiger out. When they both come out, the crowd has vanished and only their voices are heard from where they are hiding themselves. As they leave the school gate, people on the streets stand petrified when they see a holyman moving calmly out of the town towards the mountains and a tiger following him tamely.

 

The last phase describes the tiger’s life in the ashram of the holy man who becomes his Master or Guru; the philosophical discourses of his Master about life and death, about God and self-realization; his spiritual transformation under his Guru’s influence and guidance; his reaching old age and his subsequent transfer to a zoo to spend his remaining life in peace.

The Master and the tiger pass through many villages and everywhere people stare at them dumbstruck. So quiet are they at the sight of this strange duo that the Master remarks that every town and village must have a tiger to maintain discipline. The tiger looks at no one, as ordered by his Master, who tells him that all mischief starts with the eyes. The eyes pick out objects indiscriminately which the mind follows, and the body, in its turn, is conditioned by the mind and performs the actions. This chain of activity leads man into many troubles. So one should not look indiscriminately at objects. Consequently, the tiger starts feeling guilty to look at cattle or other creatures as his rightful food.

One day, as the tiger sits by his meditating Master, he too feels his mind rise to a sublime level. He forgets about his physical self, his vision became clearer and he is filled with pure joy at the sight of the beautiful nature around him. The Master, sensing the change in him, tells him that it is difficult to imagine that a tiger could have so much poetic joy and that he must have been a poet in his previous life because “whatever one had thought or felt is never lost, but is buried in one’s personality and carried from birth to birth.”

The zoo manager arrives in a few days to take away Raja. He looks a kind man and holds no whip in his hand like the ring-master. He tells the Master that his tiger is the most magnificent animal he has ever seen. The tiger likes the man who seems to be fond of animals, as he pats his head without fear. The Master tells him that Raja only looks like a tiger but is a sensitive soul who can think and feel like a human. He requests the zoo head to treat him kindly and not to put him with rough animals. He then leads Raja to the cage and asks him to enter it, telling him that he was beginning a new life in the zoo. This is how Raja, a circus tiger possessing the soul of an enlightened human being, now grown old and lying in his cage in a zoo, ruminates on his past and narrates the story of his life to us.