The White Tiger And Other Stories is a completely different book. It is a collection of spooky, scary tales compiled by Ruskin Bond. If you are a coward, it’s best to read them in daylight or else… ‘The Men Tigers’, by Lt. Col. W.H. Sleeman is a curious tale on a belief in India that men are turned into tigers by eating a root and then how does one distinguish a real one from a mantiger? ‘The only difference between the two…is that the metamorphosed tiger has no tail, while the bora, or ordinary tiger, has a very long one.’ However, there is an antidote, another root, which can turn the tiger back into a man! And all this is said to have happened in Central India.
November 2016, volume 40, No 11