''A Tiger for Malgudi'' is a

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

R. K. Narayan Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami (10 October 1906 – 13 May 2001) was an Indian writer known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mul ...

told by a

tiger The tiger (''Panthera tigris'') is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus '' Panthera''. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on u ...

in the first person. Deeply moving is the attachment of the tiger to the monk and the monk's care for the tiger. R. K. Narayan consulted with noted tiger expert K. Ullas Karanth on the writing of this novel. Narayan used the teaching of Buddha's enlightenment in this particular novel. The novel is set in the fictional town of

Malgudi Malgudi is a fictional town located in Agumbe in Karnataka in the novels and short stories of R. K. Narayan. It forms the setting for most of Narayan's works. Starting with his first novel, ''Swami and Friends'', all but one of his fifteen nov ...

Plot

The tiger recounts his story of capture by a circus owner, but he never tried to escape. He lived freely in the wild jungles of India in his youth. He mates and has a litter with a tigress, and raises a litter until one day he finds that hunters have captured and killed his entire family. He exacts revenge by attacking and eating the cattle and livestock of nearby villages, but is captured by poachers. He is sent to a circus in Malgudi, where a harsh animal trainer known only as "the Captain" starves him and forces him to do tricks in the circus. He lives in captivity successfully for some time, but eventually his wild instincts overcome him and he mauls and kills the Captain. After an extended rampage though town, he is recaptured, but this time voluntarily by a

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

/renunciant with whom he befriends and finds peace on the hills. The monk, called the Master, later realizing his own days are coming to an end, donates the elderly tiger to the local zoo, where he is cared for, admired by onlookers, and passes his days. He is looked at by many children and realizes that he is done something to make humans happy.

Characters

*Raja, a tiger *Captain, the owner of Grand Malgudi Circus *Rita, Captain’s wife *Madan, a film producer and director *Jaggu, the actor *Alphonso, a hunter and poacher *Master, a monk in Malgudi *Jayaraj , is a frame maker

Background

In his introduction to the novel, Narayan mentions that the idea of the novel occurred to him when he once read about a monk moving around with a pet tiger during the Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad. He was also inspired by reports of lasting friendships between tigers and human beings which became a major theme of the novel. However, what decided for him to begin writing the novel was a bookmark he saw with the picture of a tiger that said, “I’d love to get into a good book”.

References

1983 novels Novels by R. K. Narayan Books about tigers Novels set in India Viking Press books Heinemann (publisher) books 1983 Indian novels {{1980s-novel-stub