The Tiger & The Deer

The Barak River was peaceful now even as the drizzle of rain was persistent. The foliage was green as the rains in the past few months had coaxed the shrubs and trees to grow without any inhibition.  The weather was wet but fine, for the people who lived here. It was cold.

500 metres away but at a pretty good height of around 100 metres high, that kept it safe when the river swelled and overflowed, was a  hall with a roof and pillars but no walls. A band of students sat in their chairs that had desks attached. They were silent, some scribbled in their books some looked at their phones while some looked at their teacher who stared pensively outside at the rains. The classroom was one of the many in the ashram.

The teacher, who was in his forties, suddenly broke free from his reverie and looked at his pupils who consisted of seven girls and eight boys who were all near their twenties.

“The weather is sublime,” the teacher who was addressed as Swamiji, said to his class.

All of them nodded and some said aloud, “Yes, Swamiji!”

The Swamiji looked at them, smiling and said, “Today we shall explore a new dimension of truth.”

“Do you mean to say that truth…truth…has many dimensions?” Chandrika, the girl from New Delhi, asked very seriously.

The Swamiji looked at her and said, “Yes Chandrika, truth has many dimensions.” He stopped and then looked around the class. “But we shall take a look at this one dimension and it will answer, hopefully, all our questions.”

The class went silent and all looked askance at the Swamiji.

“Before I proceed, let me ask you how your experience was with your visits yesterday.” The class had visited temples, mosques and churches in Silchar. They had found the experience, in their words, - cool, serene, divine, uncomfortable, okay and so on. They repeated it to the Swamiji. It was a cacophony of shrill voices. The Swamiji raised his hand, palm open and the class went silent.

“So, it was… interesting, heh?” He laughed out aloud. “What did it magnify for you?” he asked Vijay Kumar, the Marwari student from Jaipur.

Vijay stood up but was silent and his demeanor stated his discomfort. “…I--” he started but stopped immediately. But the teacher waited patiently. Then after a few seconds Vijay found his ground. “It was okay. For me it was the first time in a Masjid but church is fine. Temples are like second home but nothing like a Jain Temple.” He was silent after he spoke and the teacher finally motioned him to take the seat.

The Teacher looked around and said, “We feel comfortable in our own place of worship.  For that matter we are the most comfortable in our homes. There are degrees of comfort… this comes from adaptation, absorption and doctrination.” He was silent for a moment. He was letting the thought percolate into the brains of the youngsters.

“Doctrination is what is important about religion. Your first initiations as an infant is religious – to those whose parents are religious or socially bound to norms – and it continues till you grow up and you become one of them. Let me tell you a story.”

“Once upon a time,” the Swamiji’s voice was soft and melodious. “…Once upon a time in the forest a tiger was chasing a deer… an Impala, and both were running fast. Really fast! This was in the swampy regions of the Sundarbans…  The deer was but a few 100 feet away and the tiger almost had him before the deer galloped into the wetlands and was flying away. The tiger followed him but seconds later it hit a soft spot and his feet sunk under his own weight. It was the treacherous trait of the land. He was stuck in a sinking sand area. 

The deer meanwhile had dashed to safety among the trees. He looked back and did not see the tiger. His heart leapt with joy at his escape from the jaws of death. He wanted to seek more safety in distance but he felt elated. And the dopamine and the adrenaline creates confusion. Our deer decided to check what had happened to the predator-.”

“Stupid deer,” Jayesh said loudly, making the teacher stop midway.

“Great you are listening …. Jay,” The teacher admonished him lightly. “We never use negative words in our life. Can you rephrase that - Jay?”

“Naïve deer?” Jay was quick on the take.

“Naïve is fine Jay.” And then he continued his tale. “Our naïve deer decided to check on his predator and slowly retraced his steps. He peered through the bushes and heard the tiger cry out in fear. He could see the tiger was stuck but it hid still thinking it might be a trick. It was not so naïve after all…

The class laughed at the idea.

“After some time the deer walked closer – the tiger was half way in the wet mud, his hind legs and half of his body under the mud. Part of his tail moved above him but he was splashing around with his one front leg trying to push away but to no avail. Then the tiger spotted the tiger and it beseeched him –Please help me, I promise, I will not hunt you…  I will not kill you… I will not eat you…. The deer looked at the tiger with pity.”

The Swamiji paused. He let the class merge with the story. And the class did. Some of them imagined the deer and some felt the anguish of the tiger. Bu they were curious.

“The deer looked the tiger and said – This is how I feel, how we, the prey, when we feel your jaws on our neck, our legs.., when we see death approach us in excruciating pain. The tiger was sinking but it had to make a winning case.  He whined and pleaded – I am sorry but what can I do. I am born to eat flesh. If I could eat grass like you then I would. I would be so much happier.  But nature has made me such that I eat animals like you. Help me and I will never eat you or any of your kind… please….”

The deer was struck by the truth from the tiger’s mouth. But he was far from naïve. He looked at the resplendent tiger all yellow and black, now immobile and dying. He felt pity and said, –Alright, here is a vine that will take you to safety. Hold it with your mouth and pull and you should be safe. I was once caught like you and used a vine to break loose. But you must forgive me. I have to run. I have no mind to see whether you will be true to your words. Let the future decide that. For now, here is where we part ways -.”

He did what he said. He took hold of a vine from a nearby banyan tree and pulled as close to the tiger as he dared and then went scampering along. It took some time but the tiger managed to get out off the sinking mud.”

The Swamiji stopped talking and let the class think a little longer.

“What is the moral of the story?” he asked the class.

“Live and let live.”
“Don’t be naive.”
“You will get what you deserve.”
“Do good.”

The answers came thick and pouring. The Swamiji waited till all the students had their say. 

Then he spoke, “You are all right. There can be a moral as you say. But if you think a while and think deeply you will come to the same answer: we do as we are designed to do in life.  We can think like the deer or we can think like the tiger. That the deer saved the tiger is paramount to the story. So we say – do good no matter what the situation.”

He paused and waited for the students to say something. And they all did. Together and there was a cacophony again but he picked up on them. “True, the deer could have gone his way.”

“The point is not the end of the story, the point is one of them is the prey and the other is a predator,” It was Anita from Kerala. She spoke with an accent that was hard to miss out.

“True again…” The Swamy said. “But let’s look at the story again and why did I bring it up now in relation to your visits to the various religious places? Look at the context. He paused again.”

“-The point of the story is what Anita said to some extent. It is the whole point. The tiger hunts and preys upon herbivorous animals because biology – or evolution – has made it to depend upon them for its food source. It eats only once in a week or more. The deer eats every day.  Because it eats grass and greens that is abundant. But we know they are also fiercely protective…  so the parable of the story is we are designed to do what we do. Biology or evolution has designed as humans, tigers, deers, etc. Then we are bred, as infants to toddlers and teens and grown- ups and we are very receptive in this age. We learn and take it for the truth. Some turn out to be true and some are naïve suggestions which we disregard as we educate ourselves further. Religion, unfortunately, falls in a segment that decides an important aspect – such as our name, mother tongue, language, motherland, or state in our case, food and others that define our nativity or origins. So religion comes to us from our parents, kin, society and the system. This is not something we are born with. This is something that is wrapped around us – in our minds and or thinking and likely enough, in to our personalities. We act it out because it defines us.”

The Swamiji paused again. But he continued, “Think about it. It will take much time and effort to change your thinking. If you cannot change that is fine. But can you be more open.”

“The tiger is an animal. The deer is an animal. And we are humans. All we have learnt is that all humans are alike. Biology – evolution - has ensured that we can think. In varying degrees. We might be slow or naïve. We may have achieved different degrees of economic and social hierarchies. We may follow different religions. But we are alike. We are all humans.”

He stopped and went back to his table and sat in his chair. “Now I want you to put pen to paper or your hands to the key board and type out a report on the theme…”

The class went silent and there was a ruffle of paper and the ipads being switched n as they went about their task.