Dear Cub kids: 2010 ~ Year of the Tiger

This is my November, 2009 letter to kids in the Indian bimonthly magazine, Cub.

Dear Cub kids,

I'm thinking about tigers a lot these days.

September 27 was the 'International Day of the Tiger,' a tradition that began in 2000 when dozens of school children and their parents in Vladivostock dressed up as tigers and paraded in the streets. They were hoping to alert their neighbors in the Russian Far East to the dangers facing tigers and other wildlife from poaching and habitat destruction. News of the children's celebration of tigers spread far beyond their own region. For the past eight years, on the last Saturday in each September, many communities in the world have joined the children of Vladivostock to celebrate the tiger and demand its protection.

Next year (2010!) is another 'Year of the Tiger' on the Chinese calendar. According to Chinese folklore, the motto of people who are born in the year of the tiger, wihch comes along every twelve years, is "I win." If you wander through the Chinese countryside today, you will still find many babies wearing tiny tiger shoes. Tigers hold a central place in Chinese folklore - they are considered brave and strong. Having or wearing tiger symbols is believed to impart good luck.

But... in the middle of the 20th century, the Chinese government decided that the traditional myths and folklore about the benign and powerful tiger were childish. Leaders and bureaucrats from Mao Zedong down, decreed that China must eradicate its tigers in order to become a modern nation. This was very effectively done by spreading the word that the government considered the tiger a pest, and would pay a bounty to anyone who killed one.

(Of course, many countries have declared war on their own wildlife. In my country, even under the administration of President Obama, defenders of wolves are working very hard to convince the government that the wolf must not be hunted - that wolves hold a pivotal place in American ecosystems, and are beautiful animals with a long history in the cultures of our continent.)

Things became so bad for Chinese tigers and tigers throughout Asia in the 20th century that many tiger experts believed that when the first day of the new millennium finally dawned, wild tigers would be gone. They were wrong. I proved to myself that tigers had survived that terrible deadline when I traveled to the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in mid-January 2000, and saw my first wild tiger. She was a beauty, at home in her world, indifferent to the human tourists plying the sandy tracks of her forest.

Occasionally, I allow myself to consider a world in which tigers have become extinct. A world where the only tiger a child will ever see is the stuffed toy at the foot of her bed, a moldering specimen with staring, glassy eyes and snarling fangs in a natural history museum, or a pacing misery in a zoo. A child in America will wonder if the world was a different place when tigers roamed free. A child in India will go into the forest, and will feel the palpable absence, the void that used to be occupied by an animating spirit.

I remember that first visit to Ranthambhore not only because I saw a wild tiger for the first time, but because I experienced nature in a completely new way. In a tiger forest, every rock, every blade of grass, every dancing leaf, is somehow imbued with tigerness, with the sheer fact of the presence of the animal. Everything becomes more SIGNIFICANT, as if nature were vibrating to some unheard music. The forest is pregnant with an unspoken secret.

Occasionally, I allow myself to consider a world in which human beings have set aside great tracts of wild lands because their wildness and the life they hold are viewed as sacred. Not sacred in an 'apart' sense, rather, sacred in the sense that we humans cannot live a good life without wildness beside us.

Imagine: a world that protects vast, Eden-like lands where the tiger lives unmolested, unafraid, side-by-side with all the other creatures in its kingdom. People are different in this world. They are slower, more thoughtful, more reflective - peaceful, full of peace. In such a world, the ancient Chinese myth that the wind is the breath of the tiger will be fulfilled. Chinese babies, and babies all over the world, will wear their tiny tiger shoes and grow up whole - of a piece with nature, rather than saluting it in word and thought, and killing it in deed.

Your friend,

Jen

November 2009