Mihail

The elderly keeper of the tigers in the zoo, Kalu Singh Lama, stood facing the inebriated rowdies bravely. Almost at the verge of retirement from active zoo service, the wizened old man had cared for the Siberian tigers under his charge all his life like a father. He was pained at the behavior of human beings whom he had caught pelting stones at a sleeping tiger in his enclosure at Darjeeling zoo. Unable to stand the strong feelings of revulsion at the sample of ‘Civilized Society’, and oblivious of the odds against him in facing alone a group of young alcohol-primed visitors, he threw out a challenge, “Ay, don’t pelt stones at the tiger! Let him sleep!”

Finding a lone age-enfeebled figure challenging their combined might the four men swaggered down the set of steps, and one of them caught Kalu Singh by his collar. Pressing his face close to the keeper’s and glowering threateningly into his eyes, he snarled, “What do you mean? We have paid for the entrance ticket. Who are you to prevent us from having fun? Go away, old man, or else…!” and he shook his clenched fist in the keeper’s face.

For a fleeting second consternation rippled through the aged body of the old timer. He looked around for help, but there was none available in sight. His gaze fell on, Mihail, the huge Siberian tiger who had been disturbed in his rest under a birch tree in the enclosure. He was still sitting under the birch tree where he had been lying a few minutes ago. The tiger was watching them with his head raised high from a distance of about fifty yards inside the fenced enclosure.

“Mihail!...Mihail!!” shouted Kalu Singh. “Look, what these boys are doing!”

The tiger rose with a start. He turned his eyes toward the scene being enacted at the top of the stairs, and came out of the birch tree shade like a huge tawny projectile. In the twinkling of an eye he had covered the intervening distance and with the force of a cannon ball he hit the chain-link fence of the enclosure a couple of feet from the rowdies with a loud heart-pounding roar.

When a tiger roars, the volume of his roar is stupendous; and when a tiger roars his annoyance, it sounds as if his roar will blow the person away like a leaf in a gale. If one is the target of the tiger’s annoyance and the roar is let out a couple of feet away the chances are that it may weaken one’s knees and make one miss a few heart-beats. But, if the tiger is also charging on like an unstoppable juggernaut with its furious roars it is difficult to describe how one’s reflexes can react. Very few people have lived to describe what the charge of a full grown tiger is like. Perhaps, people like Jim Corbett know; Well, I don’t. The bullies harassing the poor zookeeper must be counted among those few who might be able to describe their experience.

The intervening fence had stopped the tiger. But the vision of a very large, angry tiger erupt roaring out of nowhere must have had its full impact on the four men. For a few moments they might not have even realized that the chain-link fence had just saved them from certain death.

The tiger does not know how weak and soft a human being is, and a mere blow from Mihail’s massive paws could have fatally smashed the bones of any one of them. Or, perhaps, they might not be able to describe the feelings and sensation caused by the tiger’s charging apparition, for they had not wasted a moment in making themselves scarce from the spot. I had just arrived at the bottom of the steep stairway that climbed up along the tiger enclosure when I saw the four blusterers tumbling, slipping and rolling down the set of stairs. They wobbled by and quickly disappeared in the crowds in the zoo. Kalu Singh Lama proudly narrated the incident that had just taken place, beaming at the most gentle of his charges, Mihail, the Siberian tiger who had come to his rescue, and who was now giving a peculiar purring tiger call expressing his affection and happiness at finding him unharmed.

Mihail, the Siberian Tiger at Darjeeling Zoo

I looked at the gentle giant with great admiration, who was walking down the path he had beaten hard in his enclosure during years of his regular perambulations. Dogs are known to have come to the rescue of their owners – they are known to be faithful to their masters; We have a grave of a faithful dog in the zoo who had fought off a wild leopard to save his master in the Birch Hill forest. Horses, elephants, bulls and many other domestic animals are also known to have come to the rescue of their masters or friends when in grave danger. But I had never heard of a tiger doing the same for his keeper.

The way we are brought up in our civilized society has made us peculiar animals. The impression carried by most of us who do not understand, or even care to understand, the world of animals is that all wild animals are dangerous: every tiger, leopard or other carnivore will kill or eat man on sight; every snake hiding in the bush or hanging from the trees in the forest is waiting death for any unfortunate man, and every wild elephant, rhinoceros, bison, or large herbivore will attack man. People cannot trust even harmless lizards and mice. People attack and try to kill even extremely harmless, small and less frequently seen animals in a false belief that they might be dangerous for human beings. How can one imagine that a full grown tiger can come to the rescue of a human being? Our difficulty in understanding wild animal behavior arises from our lack of appreciation of the nature of animals.

Our inability to believe in such cases is the product of our assumption that animals lack feelings for the other species of life. There is sufficient evidence that the higher life forms of the animal world harbor emotions and sentiments that human beings think are their own exclusive domain; and the animals are capable of rational thinking. The cases of friendship between Joy Adamson and Elsa, the lioness, and Joy and Pippa, the cheetah are well documented. The bond between Khairi, the Simplipal tigress of Orissa, and her foster father the late Mr. S.R. Chowdhury, and between Prince, the leopard, and Billy Arjan Singh of Tigerhaven near Dudhwa National Park is also well documented. And there are many other similar cases that either have not been recorded, or we have not read.

But if those who do not understand animal behavior commit such errors out of sheer ignorance, others who believe they understand wild animals might also call Mihail’s behavior in coming to the rescue of his keeper somewhat unusual. Perhaps, not many such cases have been documented.

Only in recent years startling visual records of the finer feelings and sentiments of wild animals have started appearing on the television channels like Discovery, Animal Planet and National Geographic.

One that I saw on 22.1.07 on the National Geographic Channel telecast on Indian Network showed in an episode titled Eye of the Leopard a female leopard perched up in a tree with a very young baboon baby and trying to save it from falling down. In another episode, in Samburu National Park, Kenya, a lioness was filmed adopting oryx gazelle fawns, five times, one after the other, in succession, and trying to bring the young fawns up as a foster mother. Every time her effort ended tragically as some male adult lion killed the fawns when they were not under her close protection. In yet another episode telecast by Animal Planet’s Natural World two wolves, one black and the other white, on the prowl, targeted a mother caribou with a day old fawn. The mother fled leaving the fawn behind at the mercy of the wolves. The black wolf picked up the fawn, but then gently put it back on the ground, unharmed, and the pair moved on to hunt larger animals. And I also remember having seen an episode where a hippo attacked a crocodile in Africa to rescue a small antelope fawn. The hippo drove the crocodile away, and then tried to help the injured fawn stand on its legs by gently lifting it by its head. How do you explain such behaviour? So what was strange if Mihail came to the rescue of Kalu Singh Lama from the attack of bullies?

Tigers vary in their temperament just as we do. Some are peaceable, some aggressive, some lordly, some coward, and some, like Mihail, large-hearted and ready to help those in distress. When treated with respect animals respond by giving respect. When sharing friendship animals respond with friendship. By no means do we spend as much time with the so-called ‘ferocious beasts’ as Kalu Singh did with his tigers. The concern for the safety of his keeper in the so-called ‘ferocious, blood-thirsty’ tiger surfaced in Mihail when it was most needed by his human friend.

Mihail’s bond of friendship with his human friend Kalu Singh Lama was a demonstration of the existence of selfless friendship in our little understood world of wild animals – a world meant for us all to share without unnecessary violence from the ‘civilised world’ of the human beings.