William Blake’s marvellous poem goes:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp.
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
I am sure we had to memorise this poem in school. Definitely we studied it at university when studying William Blake’s works. And although it looks like a poem written for children with its steady rhyming, and its easy rhythm, the poet points back to the dread hand that made the tiger. ‘Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’ are questions for an adult audience.
We can come back to the poem later. Our clan, D-Khel came into focus a few days ago when the Youth Organisation were obligated to send out a notification because a tiger had been reportedly sighted in clan lands. The reports said that the tiger was sighted twice below an area we call Rüziezou. The notification added that the youths would be organising themselves to investigate the claim. They also warned that people should not wander into the areas where the tiger had been sighted.
Naga humour being what it is, someone made a meme of a person in a tiger suit, and named him Yimchung. The text accompanying the man in the tiger suit explained that Y had gone to D Khel with the sole ambition of drinking a mug of Zutho, but his appearance had created fear and confusion. Typical of the Naga mind to turn a grave situation into a tribal joke.
The notification used the two words, tekhu khutho/mevi to describe the tiger. The word khutho means a real tiger, and mevi means weretiger. The clan had considered that the sighting might also have been a weretiger. The inclusion of that term shows how the tradition of the weretiger is still very alive in the imagination of our people. In the fifties, one of my oral narrators found himself in a very vulnerable situation. During that time, he was a chaplain in the Naga army who had to look after three heavily wounded men. They had to spend the whole night in the forest until other friends brought assistance and medical help. He stayed up and tended to the sick. But as the darkness grew, they had a most unwelcome visitor. A tiger came very near the camp, probably getting the scent of blood, and circled the area, making threatening noises. The chaplain made a big fire as he knew a big fire was one sure way to keep fierce animals at bay. But the tiger would not leave. It kept its distance and continued to growl at close intervals. The chaplain wondered what else he should do. Certainly, he was a man of God, and must have said his prayers. But he was also a traditionalist and he remembered that he could appeal to the human side of the tiger, if it was a weretiger. He recalled that a weretiger would not attack a man who knew the name of his human owner, because weretigers are dual souled with their human owners, unlike real tigers. Taking courage in this new knowledge, he stood outside the camp, and shouted three names of were tigermen, and scolded, ‘This is dishonourable conduct on your part. I am looking after the wounded. Do you have no pity for me? You know me. I am X, son of my father. Leave us alone!’ Miraculously, the weretiger responded to that cultural rebuke and retreated, making sounds that closely resembled ululating.
The more logical explanation for the appearance of tigers in the hill areas in this season is the corridor that enables animals from Assam to migrate to the hills when the water levels rise. Everyone remembers the tiger that was sighted and killed in Medziphema some years ago. I hope killing newly sighted tigers is not the only solution we can come up with. May the nobility of the fearful symmetry fashioned by the immortal hand convince us to seek other methods. Other places know how to successfully tranquilise wild animals and return them to the wild. May we get there too.
