Tiger, My Son

Thirty seconds from now, I will be falling flat. I didn't know today was THE DAY. I freely fall on the ground forcing the dirt to shoot up into my nostrils. I lay there listless, unconscious surrounded by a bevy of strangers. Pain is a strange feeling. Sometimes it makes you scream, sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes uneasy but always makes you remember your mother. So, pain wakes me up as I am hit with another bamboo on my head. Even before I react to the wound, I find myself hanging mid-air, my each leg tied to a different tree with a rope.

I am trapped. I am. I scream, I roar, but these mean bastards hardly understand my language. Every human soul walking below my floating body was laughing out loud. I do not know why. Do they not see me screaming in pain? God, no, they are coming closer. If there is a God, I'll be saved today. But hardly anyone has ever predicted the future to perfection. As I thought I would get a breather, exactly then the unimaginable happens. I am brought down to the ground and stabbed 36 times, in succession by each of them until their feet are drowned in my blood. They split me open, you can see through me but unfortunately I am still alive. The decision of my soul to leave my body gets stronger with time.

Pain has broken all its records and reached a level from where even my mother can’t soothe it now. I try to ward off these men with all my might , I scream, I weep, I yell....not in sheer pain but on learning that it’s my skin that has made these humans do this to me.

Somebody please explain these men that I am not crying because they are axing my legs but because I have a 2 month old, son, who is waiting for his mother to get him his daily diet. As I lay here helpless, I wonder what he would be doing alone. I imagine him playing with flies sitting on his nose and bees trying to bite him around his ears. He always loses to the latter. I love you son. Mumma really loves you. Baby, you have to realize that your mother will not return now. She is going exactly where your father did. You have to grow up alone responsibly, you have to make new friends son. You will have to learn everything by yourself from today. These humans want to wear me around their neck, so who knows, maybe I will be an expensive fur coat by next week.

I conclude there is no God, as I know I will not be saved. But, as last tears trickle down my eyes, I pray, I pray that whatever my friends, my husband and I have been through, my son, Tiger, does not have to go through the same. Everyone has a heart, don’t know how it got skipped from humans, and my heart beats for my son. I will miss you son, I will.

If anyone sees a beautiful cub running around... please save him, please, he is Tiger... Tiger, my son.



Note: Its already quite late to write an ‘awareness’ blog when there are only 1411 tigers left in India, but this roar isn’t because Tiger is our national animal but because I want my future generations to see a real Tiger. So, let’s roar for them now so that we see them roaring in future.