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Tiger
Keki N Daruwalla
About Keki N Daruwalla
Keki Nasserwanji Daruwalla (born in 1937 in Lahore) is a major Indian poet and short story writer in English. He is also a former officer in The Indian Police Service, and he retired as Additional Director in the Research and Analysis Wing. He was also a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on International Affairs.
Some of his works are In Morning Dew, Under Orion, Apparition in April. The Scarecrow and the Ghost, For Pepper and Christ and Winter. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for his poetry collection The Keeper of the Dead in 1984. He also won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1987. J P Dutta's film refugee is inspired by Daruwalla's Love Across the Salt Desert.
The tiger isn't burning bright
Either in shadow or in sun.
The tiger family is thinning
Two by two and one by one.
The tiger isn't burning bright
In the forests of the night
Or in the wilderness of day.
We need to understand his plight.
The father Sheru's missing now.
Sheru has been shot and skinned.
Poachers ground his bones to powder
For some Chinese medicine.
Bones would bring them power, they thought,
Put life into some sickly man.
Their souls were sick, killing tigers
Is something we won't understand.
His skin is hanging on a wall;
His bones are packed in plastic white
And shipped out. A gecko on the wall
Is hunting insects on his side.
Once jungles trembled at his roar;
Tree tops flew up - birds disappeared!
Monkeys screamed (what an uproar!)
Now geckoes nibble on his ear!
Lord God had stamped upon his skin
In equal stripes both night and dawn.
His black-and-gold won't shimmer now.
Boar-hunter, Forest King - he's gone.
Available Answers
- 1.
Why has the tiger stopped burning bright either in the shadow or in the sun?
- 2.
What is the plight of the tiger that we need to understand?
- 3.
What do you understand by 'his black-and-gold won't shimmer now'?
- 4.
The father Sheru's "missing now.
- What has happened to Sheru?
- What have the concerned people done to Sheru's skin?
- How have these people used Sheru's bones?
- 5.
Put life into some sickly man.
- What would 'put life into some sickly man'?
- Who believed this? Is it true?
- What does the speaker say about them? Do you agree?
- 6.
A gecko on the wall/ls hunting insects on his hide.
- What does hide mean here? Whose hide is being referred to?
- Who is hunting insects on his hide? What else does it do?
- How did the tiger frighten animals before?
4 more answer(s) available.