The author belongs to the Gond clan of the Pardhans, who are the traditional singers and storytellers of the community. He tells us that he hails from the village of Patangarh in Central India. But now he lives in the city: he too is part of the steady march away from the archetypal paradise — the forest, the once-common home of the Gond and the tiger.
The stories Singh narrates here once had a living context — of a life lived in close proximity to a fascinatingly dangerous beast that was as much an adversary as a god. As that context becomes weaker, it becomes urgent to remember and by remembering, to record.
This book, with its vivid illustrations in the Gond style and pithy stories, will aid our memory of an animal of which not many are left today.
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The narrative underlines inter-connectedness — not just of man and nature, but also among cultures. Uikey begins by telling how, before entering the jungle, the Gonds would make an offering to the forest goddess so that she protects them. People of another tiger country, the Sunderbans, separated by miles from Madhya Pradesh, where Uikey’s stories are set, follow a similar ritual.
The stories carry subliminal, sometimes subversive, meanings. For instance, there is evident sexual threat in the story of the tiger who turns itself into a man and ‘eats’ up the woodcutter’s daughters (‘Tiger-man’). In ‘The Tiger’s Gift’, the Pardhan musician decides never to sing at the house of the wealthy landowners, the Thakurs, because the great god Badadev and his tiger followers present him with riches far greater than what the mortal Thakur can ever give. In an instance of the impinging of myth on reality, this custom is followed to this day.
In the illustrations, the tiger looks both like a harmless house cat and a formidable force of nature. It is as if in being represented by human hands, the tiger has been reduced in scale — in an act of wish fulfilment for the artist — and paid a grand homage, by being granted immortality.
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Where has the Tiger Gone? Dhavat Singh Uikey, Tara Books, ₹550