Books For Beginners
Anju Virmani
Where Has The Tiger Gone? by Dhavat Singh Uikey Tara Books, 2018, 34 pp., 550
November 2018, volume 42, No 11

What an attractive and unusual cover…the ferocious tiger is behind bars! The hard cover of this book has effective cut-outs of bars and the snarling tiger is crouched behind them, on the first page.

The Gond author/artist, Dhavat Singh Uikey tells us that the tiger is an important part of the Gond natural world. It is even worshipped by some Gond clans, but all the same it is greatly feared. Before elders enter a forest, they place a log of wood under a tree as an offering to the forest goddess for protection. Uikey’s community is called Pardhan and they became storytellers and musicians. He narrates an interesting story about how this happened. Indeed, this book is full of stories of the Gonds in their jungle habitat and their real-life encounters with fearful beasts like the tiger.

Why does the tiger eat its prey raw? There is a curious story behind it. Another story of the friendship between the tigress and cow has a tragic ending, while in the story of the Tiger-man the vicious beast is outwitted. Tiger tales form an inseparable part of Gond lore and the author has put them down in this book for posterity, before they are forgotten, he says.

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