#tigerson

PROLOGUE

Rajah’s grandfather, called Siddharth Patel, sometimes Papa Sidd, or sometimes just Bapuji, had eyes like rusted pennies—but they shined with tiger magic when he told his stories.

He rocked back and forth in his old timber chair on the back porch, as he sipped on chai, air heavy and wet during the monsoon months. Rajah found him there no matter if the sky dripped or roared. There was simply no better place to have tea, he said, no better place in the world that smelled quite as sweet.

Rajah sat there with him as Jyoti and his parents slept away, too lazy for early mornings. He would nibble on his methi thepla, dip it in his tea, chew on a pickle. His chair was one with a blue cushion and he sat with his legs crossed and his food in his lap—tea held in the cradle of his legs. Most times, as Bapuji told his stories, they both looked out at the mosquito-laden air and the green foliage of jungle-forest. Only when the stories bounded toward their climaxes did Rajah look at his grandfather. He hung onto every word, trying to find the end of the stories in the hard-drawn lines on Bapuji’s face—to pin them down and guess them, before they unrolled.

This was how his earliest summers were spent in India, as far back as Rajah could remember, and these were the clearest memories of childhood. He remembered the swollen wood of the porch and the swollen knuckles of Bapuji’s arthritis; Bapuji’s broken English sliding into Gujarati and back again when Rajah got a little lost; the bitterness of methi leaves and the sweetness of the honey he squirted too generously into his tea. But more than anything, he remembered the pattering rain, humming underneath the stories—all those larger-than-life stories— that would make him into the man he was today.

PART ONE: CUB HOOD  

“There are two ways that a Vaagh is born-- as the beast or as the man.”

Rajah knees tucked themselves up to his chest as, around them, the tin roof beat with rain.

Bapuji folded his hands on his lap. “A Vaagh born as a man—he will not feel the tiger inside him until he is much older. He will be completely hairless—not a single hair on his head, babo. Not one. But he will be a loud, unruly child, with a yowl like the beast, waking his mother in the middle of the night You can hear his screaming down the street.

“A Vaagh born as a beast, now, that is quite the rare sight,” continued Bapuji. “He will slide out as a tiger cub from the mother’s womb, mewling for mother’s milk, hungry right away! He will not remember he is a human until he has stopped milking—this will be months and months of the tiger feeding at his den mother’s breast. But he will sleep for long periods at a time and never scream. Do you know what the difference between these two vaagh are, Rajah?”

Rajah shook his head. “No, Bapuji!”

He smiled at his grandson. “The vaagh born with a man’s skin—he will protect the family. He yowls at night like a siren, his voice a great warning of danger,” explained Bapuji. “But a vaagh born as the tiger? Why, babo—“ he leaned forward, “He is a hunter.”

❆❁❆

Rajah was born as the beast. At eight year old, he believed it with all his heart, because at night, he had dreams through the tiger’s eyes, seeing colors so sharp and richly saturated he didn’t believe they were dreams at all. He crawled through grass, felt the cool, too-soft soil give way under his oversized paws, felt the warmth of his own fur swaddling his body. He woke smelling milk.

“Don’t be silly, Rajah,” said his little sister with a scrunched up nose. “You’re no hunter. All those stories Bapuji says aren’t real!”

“They are, Jyoti.”

“Are not!”  

When he asked his mother, her mouth zipped into a hard line. “It’s an old myth, Raj, nothing else. Do you think a human woman could really give birth to a tiger cub? And breastfeed it for a year?”

But we aren’t human, he wanted to argue, but in his family, such words would get him locked in his room, no savory supper to fill his always-hungry belly.

Even Bapuji would not say so for sure, even when they were alone together. He only repeated the story, nodding along to every beat of it. Thus, Raj heard the story enough to memorize it himself. When he had dreams of cub-hood, he repeated those last lines—whispered them into the darkness of his room: But a vaagh born as the tiger? He is a hunter!

Rajah wanted to be a hunter.

He longed for his dreams to be more than his imagination. But even he fell into moments of doubt as he looked at his family. They were all protectors. They would not use the words themselves, but he saw the signs. His mother, a pediatric psychologist, protected children— nurtured them away from fear, anxiety and abuse. Her family had been bankers before her, or accountants, who counted and recounted money for other families, keeping their fortunes intact while they diligently built and protected their own. Bapuji came to England and worked tirelessly as a custodian until he learned English, could afford schooling, and eventually became a businessman himself. He sat behind a desk his entire life—his favourite bapuji! Unbelievable!

Only his father could be a hunter—his father, Dr. Senthil Patel, well-renowned surgical oncologist at the Royal London Hospital. He looked nothing like a hunter in Raj’s eyes as a slinky, tall man who liked to hunch his shoulders. He was always hunched over, squinting at things, his body curled like a question mark over pieces of paper: newspaper articles, bills, books, coupon notes, letters from relatives in Junagadh, letters from relatives in Gir Somnath, letters from his uncle in Mumbai or his second uncle in Chicago. He did not need to squint at these papers; he, like every other vaagh, had perfect eyesight. It was this eyesight (the eye of the tiger) and his steady hand that made him a formidable predator. He preyed upon tumors within the human body. He found them. He cut them out. Nothing escaped the claw of his scalpel.

This is how Raj comforted himself when his father put another book in front of him. “You do not leave this desk until you have completed today’s assignments,” he instructed. “I will check your work myself.”

Ah yes, the other set of papers Rajah was privileged to hunch over: his homework, both from his classes at St Peter's Eaton Square C of E Primary School and the additional homework assigned by his father.

He tried to tell himself that when he grew up and became a surgical oncologist like his father, this would answer the call of his dreams. His claw would become a scalpel as well.

But Rajah looked out the window too often. He chewed on his pencil. He doodled in the margins. He gazed at the sky and the grass and felt the urge to run.

He looked out the window much, much too often, and he dreamed of hunting.

❆❁❆

Three and a half years after Rajah was born, Jyoti blinked into existence honey-brown and human, with thick black hair and a caterwauling scream. Rajah heard it as he sat outside the hospital room with his mother’s sisters, Aunt Deva and Aunt Kali, and Uncle Vijay, who was married to Kali. Aunt Deva peeked through the glass window and sighed softly.

“Do you want to see your baby sister, Raj?” she asked him and hoisted him up. Raj saw Jyoti there, wiggling around in his mother’s arms. He remembered that she had fat arms— but this meant she was healthy, said Aunt Kali, who also told him to never call a girl fat, ever again.

His sister came home the next day and slept in a crib by his parent’s bed for the first year of her life. She cried every few hours with that terrible scream, never letting anyone sleep, but this was the way babies were, especially Patel babies, Bapuji would say with a laugh. Except of course, you, babo—you were a pleasantly quiet baby, Bapuji teased him, teased his dreams.

When Jyoti began to crawl on her second birthday, that very day, his mother packed up her and Jyoti’s things. She kissed Raj on the forehead, telling him she would visit often—but she had to take Jyoti to his Grandmother Oma, for a long, long visit. Your grandmother needs to get to know her, don’t you think, Raj?

He did not see his baby sister again for nearly two years.

❆❁❆

Like many vaagh before him, he had only played as a tiger when younger, transforming back and forth between child and cub against his will. This was the nature of the vaagh until they reached four or five years old and the transformations required more intention. But even then, there was a danger, a call to the beast when a vaagh’s young blood rushed too fast and adrenaline spiked high. When a child got too excited, too scared, or too hungry, a transformation came unbidden. This was when the parents must sit their child aside and explain to them how different they were. What they were. What they can never reveal.

He only barely recalled the moment of revealing, his mother and father sitting with him at the dinner table. Was he four then? Was he five? He remembered his sister slept in the other room, just a baby. He was supposed to start reception the next day, meet new friends and learn how to count numbers and write his name. He was supposed to be excited, but that was the moment he first heard the words that plagued the Patels—monster, sickness, secret—and he remembered being too nervous to sleep.

Raj listened to his parents have the same conversation with Jyoti when she came home; he was seven then, so the memory was clearer, and he thought about how they’d probably said the same things to him, not so long ago. Their voices echoed up the stairs.

“Don’t play too hard with the other children. Don’t run too fast, don’t get too excited.”

“You have a condition you must always keep in check.”

“You must tell no one.”

“You must be careful.”

“Learn the warning signs.”

“Do you know that feeling when you jump off from something very, very high?”

“The feeling of your heart plummeting to your stomach? Your stomach turning upside down? The top of your head flying off?”

“Do you know how sometimes your belly clenches very, very tight? You feel restless.”

“It can feel like a rush of energy, like eating too much sugar.”

“Or like basking in sunlight.”

“It will feel good—you’ll think it will feel good, but don’t be fooled. That’s the tiger.”

“You must tell the tiger no.”

“The tiger can become a curse--but not if you control it.”

“Not if you do exactly as we say.”

❆❁❆

“The Vaagh were born out of royalty, long, long ago, before there were any pens to write such a tale down. It is said there was a powerful, benevolent king who ruled over the lands…and did everything he could in his great power to ensure the fields overflowed with good seed and the demons in the jungles stayed back. But born from him was a sickly prince, the greatest tragedy of all, and all the doctors from the stretches of his kingdom told him this sickly prince would not last his first year. The king was heartbroken and turned to the gods.

“He asked for justice for his son!” Rajah piped in. He nearly spilled his tea all over himself and sent his bapuji laughing at him.

“Yes, yes! That is exactly what he prayed for. He said, please, send justice to my son, because he has so much to give to the land. And the gods heard him, and they told him they had listened well to his plea. They agreed: the sickly prince, born from such a powerful and pure-spirited man, had a great destiny. So they sent a tigress to the king and told the king to let his child suckle from the mother’s milk for a year. Then the child would be healed of his mortal weaknesses. The king did so, and by the end of the year, his son had grown twice as fast as any child. He was strong, tall, fast, and could already speak as if he were full-grown.”

“The first vaagh!”

“Yes. He took the name Vagh-raja. Tiger Prince.”

“And we are his descendants.”

“Yes—we are his descendants. We are royalty.”

“Royalty,” repeated Raj, in wonder.

❆❁❆

Summers in India existed in a time apart and a world away. It took only one night for Raj to forget all about his London home and the smell of the city. He traded it for petrichor, sandalwood, ittar, smoke—for khatti meethi dal, and kand pakora, and cumin and curry. At night, instead of the occasional roll of tires and exhaust outside his windows, he listened to a chorus of insects screaming their heads off. He listened to the rain and felt the hot air lay sticky, thicker than any blanket, on his bare brown chest.

The first month brought those magical mornings with Bapuji, early afternoons in the Baradiya marketplace with Mum, and late afternoon sessions with Papa, pouring over workbooks and practicing his Latin. Then they bid Bapuji farewell and traveled away from Barayida to visit his mum’s relatives, going to Mumbai and then New Delhi. The workbooks followed, but so did one other tradition: he and Papa played football together, wherever they could.

His studious father transformed into the beast, if not in form, then in movement. He taught Raj how to handle the ball nimbly, how to weave it between one’s feet without tripping over it. Balance, he said, is as much key to it as power and agility.

They ran together—racing. His father was faster than a bullet when he let himself, bounding gracefully after Raj, who shouted and growled and only had the advantage of his youth and smallness, to sometimes dart out of his father’s reach. But his father caught him eventually. His big, wide-palmed hands scooped him up and threw him over his shoulder. Then he kept running, with all that speed in his sinewy form, jostling Raj with each leaping step. Raj lifted his hands up, spread his fingers, and tasted the wind.

When they collapsed into a heap together, Raj wiggled onto his father’s chest and swore he heard the soft rumble of a tiger’s growl there in his chest cavity.

❆❁❆

One summer, Raj woke in the middle of the night in Baradiya when the air was too hot. The sweat dripped down his forehead like rain dripped from the gutter. He sat up and wandered out of bed, wishing to step outside, hoping for clearer air.

He snuck downstairs, his feet gentle on the old wood of the house. The house stayed quiet; it did not creak once.

Raj did not make it to the porch. He saw bright orange fur in the glaring moonlight through the heavy curtains hanging over the door. His fingers pushed the curtain aside only a few more inches, and he peered out. His eyes grew wider and wider.

Tigers— laying against the earth, side by-side. And Rajah recognized them.

His father—with a burnt orange back, black stripes rippling with every breath he took. His mother—like a beautiful clementine beside him. She was slender, only half his size, with a white muzzle that nuzzled against his father’s, a tongue as red as a raspberry that grazed and grazed over his father’s whiskers. Raj watched in wonder as she tended to him, the tiger’s gentle firmness in each loving stroke. It reminded him of his mother, running a hand through his father’s hair when he spent too long hunched over something; and Rajah understood.

❆❁❆

It was the only time he saw his parents as vaagh, in true form, when he was a child. Maybe it was just a dream.

❆❁❆

“There is another legend—that the Vaagh came to be as a result of the gods and their revenge.”  Bapuji’s chair creaked like bones rattling around as he pushed back on his heel, rocked forth onto his toes. “We were once monsters! The sorcerers of India grew too hungry for power, so hungry a tiger grew in their bellies the more and more they hunted down the power they sought. They consumed beautiful creatures with little mercy. They ate the chakora, they ate the heavenly swans, hunted the yali and hunted the beautiful rainbow fish. Soon, their lips turned as red as blood and their teeth sharpened into large, yellow fangs. Their hunger turned them to man-eating next, and then, they were cursed.”

“Is that true?” Rajah asked. The racing of his heart was different this time. It was running from the story in fear.  

“Truth! This is what they’ll tell you, Rajah,” he said to Rajah. “Truth is always in the hands of the one with the pen. Know the story.” He rocked again. “We are monsters.”

“Monsters,” said Rajah. The morning clicked with the sound of a thousand crickets in agreement.

❆❁❆

“Do you ever transform?”

“No, Raj, don’t be ridiculous,” lied his mother. He was eight years old, dreaming every night, through his tiger eyes. He blurted the question in the car on the way home from school.

“Never? Not even in India? In the Baradiya hills? Among the lions?” he asked. “Bapuji says that is why we ended up in Baradiya…because of the lions. At night, people would just think…we were like them—the lions.”

“Your grandfather is full of crazy stories,” said Mum. She didn’t look away from the street. “They are fun, but they are just stories. And tigers don’t look like lions anyway,” she added.  

“But never? Ever?”

“Raj,” sighed his mum. “We have talked about this.”

“But you must want to—”

“Rajah, does a handicapped man choose to be handicapped? Does someone with diabetes want to have diabetes? It’s an illness, like I have always told you, not a superpower—an illness. Having an episode…would be terrifying, not to mention dangerous. For everyone.”

“But we can control it—“

“No, we can’t. We told you the tiger has a mind of its own—“

“We can learn!”

“Rajah!”

I want to know what it’s like! He almost said it out loud. But he knew his mother would snap at him and he would be punished. He wished more than anything he could remember when he was much, much younger, and played as a cub with his mum and his Grandmother Oma and it wasn’t a bad thing, just part of his upbringing—he wished he could remember what it felt like, to have four paws, a whipping tail, ears that could hear so much farther than his own, teeth sharp and deadly.

He couldn’t remember. He searched and searched. He hunted for them. The closest he got to the feeling was when running, or in his dreams.

“Tell me how your Latin is coming,” his mum said, changing the subject.

❆❁❆

During his first year at St. Peter’s, Rajah met Cliry Osborne, sitting next to each other because of the alphabet and no reason more than that. But they had so much more in common. They liked the colour green, The Crystal Maze, spicy foods, donut holes, and most importantly of all—football. They decided to be best friends by the end of the first day and from then on, they were.

Cliry and him ran the field during recess hours. Dodge here, pass there—Cliry was sprightly and practiced and Raj too fast for any of the other tots.

“You’re like a cheetah,” admired Cliry.

“Nah!” laughed Rajah, and wished he could tell Cliry what he really was.

He wanted to join Cliry after school for club football, wanted to become like Cliry and the other boys, who got to wear matching jerseys, who went out for ice cream after every game, who shared jokes with each other that Raj never got to be a part of, even when Cliry told him the secrets behind them. Cliry begged him year after year. “You’re so good, you’re so good,” he would say.

He got angry at Raj once, year 3—their only fight. “You’re not playing because you think you’re better than us!” Cliry shouted at him.

Rajah burst into tears.

He cried and cried the whole day through, until school was over, and he sat on the curb, crying, and his mum pulled up in their little silver van. She left the car idling when she saw and rushed out to him, drawing him into her lap to hold him tightly. Rajah couldn’t speak for the first few minutes that passed, as the rest of the children sent him and his mother funny glances when they passed by. Each look burned, feeling like extra punishment. Cliry probably had made everyone hate him, just as Cliry hated him too. Raj’s chest got hot and he felt dizzy and full of hatred himself.

But he didn’t hate Cliry. He hated what he was. He wanted to rip apart his binders, stomp on all his books, and slash his claws out at anything within his reach.

His mother’s hands, cool, soft, and used to protecting children from themselves, cupped his cheeks.

“Raj,” she said to him. “You’re shaking. Listen to me. You must calm down.”

“I c-ca-ca-can’t. Cliry h-hates me. Th-they all ha-hate m-me.”

“Babo, babo, my little prince—look me in the eyes.”

He did so through his tears. His mother’s eyes were a light brown like honey, and they shined liquid smooth at him. “Breathe with me,” she said to him. “In and out. In and out.”

He felt almost hypnotized as he did. In and out with his mother, in and out with the breath of the wind as it tickled his face, in and out with the pulse of his heart as it became slow….slower…and at last, steady.

“I want to play football,” he blurted as soon as he found he could talk. The tears sprang to his eyes again. “I wanna be in club football! Please, Mumiji, please!”

He would always remember his mother’s sigh, how it moved her entire body. His mother, who he considered as unshakeable as a mountain, was defeated by this one breath.  

“We will talk to your father,” she told him, and picked him up into her arms. Raj put his hands around her neck and pushed his cheek against her chest. He would also remember the thudding of her heart that day, especially when he needed to think about his own: his mother’s heart’s steadiness, the ebb and flow of da-dum, like the tide that rolled in, only to remember the importance, instead, of letting go.

❆❁❆

His father said yes, but with stipulations.

“You must practice yoga,” he told his young son, who made a terrible face. He hated yoga, which his mum did every day alongside his father. It was always funny to watch them after dinner, stretching themselves into these new positions on the mat and talking about their day as if it was a natural thing to do so with one’s head underneath one’s leg. They also flirted terribly with each other in between domestic squabbling or boring yabber about bills, or gossip among work. It was gross.

“It is to calm the tiger,” explained his father to him. “You put it to sleep.”

But that’s why he hated it!

“Even tigers need to nap,” his mother tried to appeal to him in this way.

Raj agreed because he yearned for the green field, the ball underfoot, the rush of the game, and acceptance from the other boys. He practiced yoga with his parents every day until it became more natural. He grew to enjoy it, finding it did not put the tiger to sleep as his mother might have willed it to. Instead stretched out the tiger’s mind inside of him. He was one big cat on a mat—

Or he would be—one day.  

❆❁❆

“Rajah, have you heard the story of the goddess Durga?”

“Yes, Bapuji!”

“Would you like to hear it again?”

“Yes, Bapuji, please!”

“Excellent!” And Bapuji’s laugh started the story.

“Once, eons ago, there was a terrible demon Mahishasura who started his reign of terror over the Universe and fought directly with the gods himself. Only the goddess Durga, born of pure energy from Shiva and Vishnu, with ten mighty arms carrying ten mighty weapons, could hope to defeat him. The weapons each were gifts from the gods. Do you remember all of them, Raj?”

“Yes, Bapuji.”

“You do not!”

“I do, I do! Lord Shiva gave her a trident while Lord Vishnu gave her a disc. Varuna, gave her a conch and noose, and Agni gave her a spear. From Vayu, she received arrows—isn’t that right?”

“Yes, and Indra, gave her a thunderbolt! And the gift of his white-skinned elephant, Airavata was--?”

“A bell! And from Yama, she received a sword and shield, and from Vishwakarma, an axe and armor.”

“And the final gift—

“Was the greatest gift of all.”

“Would you like to tell it, Raj?”

“No, I like it when you tell it.”

“Then I will. The last gift was indeed the greatest gift, as you have said. Durga must ride into battle on fiercesness itself. And so the god of mountains, Himavat gifted her with the tiger to ride on, a tiger who would seek out justice and punish evil by Durga’s side.

“The beautiful Durga was ready to engage in battle with the fierce and cruel Mahishasura. Her tiger’s thunderous roars shook the three worlds! Oceans boiled and surf poured overland. Continents were torn at their granite foundations as whole new chains of mountains rose, while older ranges crumbled, cracked, and gave way to dust in a thousand landslides. Mahishasura and his demon allies found their attention drawn from heaven to Earth, as Durga's power moved its way. Though confident of their power and control in heaven, the demons could not help being awestruck.

Mahishasura was shocked and enraged by the disastrous events on the battlefield. He took on the form of a demonic buffalo, and charged at the divine soldiers of Durga, goring and killing many and lashing out with his whip-like tail. Perhaps it would have been lost, then and there.”

“But Durga's tiger pounced!”

“Yes! He pounced on the demon-buffalo and engaged him in a battle, drawing from him blood with his mighty claws and with mighty force of three times his size, and with strength of thunder, he bit through his flesh! He held the demon in place for Durga to put a noose around his neck and then choke the demon to death. Finally, the heavens were freed. It was the first of many victories for Durga, who is—“

“Who is Kali, Bhagvati, Bhavani, Ambika, Lalita, Gauri, Kandalini, Java, and Rajeswari!”

“You have been paying attention to this silly old man’s jabber, all these mornings. Can you tell me then why we worship Durga?”

“Because we are tigers.”

“Yes. “

“We are her—her bulwarks!”

“Yes!”

“We ride into battle so good can triumph over evil!”

“Yes! Yes, Rajah. And one day, we will ride with her again.”

❆❁❆

They went to two places of worship: the protestant church on Sunday, with the rest of his classmates and friends, and then Temple—the Neasden Temple.

Raj hated church.

Church meant his stuffy wool sweaters on top of a static-cling, plaid collared shirt, the combination of which felt like a cage. He had to polish his shoes and lint roll his pants and brush his hair and it was boring. The priest droned, the organ moaned, the songs lacked any melody his brain could hold onto—it all nearly sent Raj to sleep. Several times, Jyoti pinched him awake, which he was always thankful for, since getting caught dozing off would earn him a lecture later.

He liked seeing Cliry there, but Cliry’s was the only face to bring him true comfort. Otherwise, the strangers stood tall and emotionless and white like paper dolls, and he felt his brown skin screaming out loud. Some boys who did not know him from St. Peter’s sent him funny looks, like he was an insect who’d snuck his way inside. Raj had to bite down on his tongue to keep himself from going What you lookin at, huh? Huh? Ever seen a brown person before?

But the Patels came to this place because of St. Peter’s, his school—this church it’s brother church. And he went to St. Peter’s because it was the school that would get him into Arnold House, which would get him into Eton, or City of London, or Harrow, just as Jyoti was going to start at St. Peter’s, then go a similar route, only for girls. And they had to do this so they could go to Cambridge, so they could study medicine, so they could get a good residency, so Jyoti could do whatever in the medical field and he could be a surgical oncologist like Dr. Senthil Patel before him. It was an ambitious path, but his father had written it out for him and set the groundwork himself. It began by going to church on Sundays.

But the Neasden Temple was magical.

Raj only wore slacks and the shirt, no itchy sweater on top. Right away, walking into the beautiful place, he shed his shoes and the tile kissed the bottoms of his feet. And there were gods on every side of him.

He forgot all about his skin, his schooling, the years ahead of him, and breathed in time with his family as they made their way around to perform puja. Raj could pretend he was in India, because almost everything in the temple was Indian—Indian children, Indian mothers and fathers, the woman in traditional Indian garb, the smells of incense—those full-bodied scents of Heaven and Earth— wafting down the halls, flowers and foods everywhere as they were offered to the deities. He didn’t mind being quiet and contemplative in temple. He liked meditating. The Christian God reprimanded him into silence; his Hindu gods and goddesses welcomed him home.

His mum and Papa worshipped Shiva as Supreme Being, and Jyoti appeared drawn to Shiva too. Only Raj felt a divine pull toward Shiva’s feminine aspect, Shakti, or Devi—the Divine Mother. Raj paid his respects to Shiva, but then he wandered away by himself, his parents letting him go. He found the shrine of the Divine Mother and prostrated himself in front of her. He performed this puja alone, thinking of Durga when he did. Durga and her tiger: fierceness itself.

Mum worried about him falling too closely into the occult sect of Shaktism—perhaps they will suspect something…that he is of the magic kind…what will people say if… Raj overheard her murmur to Papa before.

Sanātana Dharma speaks to us all in its own way, Papa told her. Let him choose his path through it.

And Raj did. He prayed to all Shakti’s aspects and asked to be made into a hunter. I feel it in my bones. I am your vehicle. I am your bulwark. I am fierceness, I am justice, I am your sword and shield, your axe and armor, the bell that rings clear, the roar that will shake the earth.

❆❁❆

“There is one more legend of the Vaagh…the oldest legend spoken, passed down through the generations, from fathers to their sons and mothers to their daughters. You, I think, are old enough to hear it now,” Bapuji’s chair creaked again, sounding like the rain was caught in the knots of the wood. Raj—who was now eleven— stayed quiet. Listening.

“In this legend, we are not monsters, nor are we princes…” he continued. “It is said…that when the world was still young, still wild with magic like nothing we have seen in this time, India was rampaged by dragons. No matter how many armies were raised, they could not beat back these ugly reptiles…these horrible demons from the pits of hell, which burned towns, stole and ate children, toppled the most beautiful of temples and palaces…sought gold and power and mayhem. They prayed and prayed to the gods, but the dragons’ roars deafened their prayers.

“But one brave tribe, the Warli of the mountains, near the Maharashtra-Gujarat border, rose up against them. Their bravest women and men went to their tiger god—Vaghdeva—and one by one, asked Vaghdeva to give them the power to protect their families, to hunt the dragons. And one by one, they sacrificed themselves, gave their blood to the god, so he might be paid.

“And one by one, they rose as tigers. They were the very first vaagh—with the strength of their god flowing through their veins. They went out, hunting the dragons through the mountains of their home, to the coasts, through India’s tangled jungles and even in our deepest rivers. They spread far and wide, and soon most towns had the tales—had seen a tiger locked in battle with a dragon, until at last the tiger’s fangs brought the beast to its end.”

Bapuji stopped abruptly. He rocked in his chair. Raj sat still, waiting for the story to go on, until at last he must wonder if the story truly was over. Then he leaned back into his own chair and cast his eyes to the sun in the sky, eyes traveling over its fingers that spread over the leaves.

“Do we still hunt dragons?” he asked to the air.

“No, no, the last of the great dragons is dead,” replied Bapuji. “They are but worm-snakes now..the ugly Naga…who hide like bottom-dwellers in the swampiest regions. But once—“ his voice caught.  Raj looked back at his bapuji and saw tears in his eyes.

“Once, we rode through these lands,” he said. “And when we crested over each hill, our pelts like fire, all of India rejoiced in us—its proudest warriors.”

❆❁❆

Warrior.

Hunter.

Hero.

Rajah sat in the pew of church, blocking out the drone of those foreign hymns, thinking instead of these words. Warrior, hunter, hero. Warrior, hunter, hero. His heart felt like it was marathoning in his chest, leaping over the words of the priest, tearing through the flavorless doctrine of a god he didn’t believe in. Destiny, destiny, his heart called. Warrior, hunter, hero.

“Rajah, stop being a dunce!” Jyoti’s whine broke all his fantasies in half. He jerked his head toward her and saw his family waiting at the end of the pew, service over, and he alone sitting and staring blankly ahead.

He scrambled up, hitting his shin against the row in front of him, wincing a little. He ignored the worried look on his mother’s face, the tiny frown underneath his father’s mustache, as he side-ways stepped out of the pew and joined them both.

Warrior, hunter, hero.

Dunce.

The Patels milled with the rest of the crowd, inching their way down the aisle. “We should say hello to the Hacketts before we leave,” his father mentioned this to his mother, speaking of another family whose patriarch worked in the hospital with him. “Raj, Jyoti, why don’t you wait for us on the steps?”

“Yes, Papa,” chirped Jyoti.

“Watch your sister, Raj,” said his mother with warning in her voice, the underlying meaning plain: Don’t fall into your daydreams again!

Raj took Jyoti’s hand and squirmed his way through the bodies of churchgoers, until they were outside again. His eyes searched for Cliry and found him among some of the other boys—some he knew, some he didn’t. He hedged his bets, approaching with caution.

“Oh, hey Raj!” exclaimed Cliry. “Hi Jyoti.”

“Hey.” Raj dropped Jyoti’s hands and pushed his own into the pockets of his chinos. He felt the eyes of the strange boys on him and Jyoti, but tried to push it away.  “So. That was boring!” He laughed a little.  

“Ha, every Sunday is. You got plans for the rest of the day? We’re talking about going to Hyde and playing some ball, yeah?” Cliry glanced at the other boys. Most of them nodded.

Most of them.

Jyoti stepped closer to his side. Did she feel their eyes too, as hot as lasers? Did she notice their blank faces?

Protector. Guardian. Bulwark, sword, and shield.  

“Yeah!” Raj said with a massive grin spreading across his face, putting a hand on Jyoti’s back as he did. “That sounds brill!”

“Actually,” grunted one of the boys he didn’t know—he was wearing maroon pants and boat shoes and looked like a little arse, to be honest. “I think I gotta practice maths.”

“Aw, Thomas!” complained Cliry at once.

“Yeah, you’re a great guard, aren’t you!” exclaimed another St. Peter’s boy, Will. “And Raj is our best runner, you gotta see ‘em. He’s crazy.”

“Yeah, you just scared we’ll kick your arses?” Cliry grinned too.

Thomas snorted. “Fat chance. I just don’t feel like it all of a sudden.”

Raj felt everything inside him bristle. A couple more boys were nodding with Thomas, and that made it all worse.

“Raj, Mum is waiting,” Jyoti said and tugged at his pocket.

“Wait a sec,” said Raj hotly. His eyes zeroed on Thomas Maroon-Pants. “You just don’t wanna play me, do you?”

Warrior.

“Raj.” Cliry sounded horrified.

Thomas snorted again, then laughed and shrugged. “I don’t even know you, mate, just know your kind is all.”

“Raj—” whined Jyoti and tugged again.

“Jesus, racism sure looks good on your ugly face,” snarled Raj anyway.

Hunter.

“Oi.”

“Oh shit.”

“Least I don’t got a face of a curry-muncher like you and your sister,” Thomas said, smirking. “Don’t smell like it either.”

Hero.

Raj leapt—no. He pounced. He pounced, the tiger yowl ripping out of his constricted throat, so loud that everyone turned to look at him—Jyoti would later say with horror in their eyes, as it had sounded like a beast loosed upon a boy, and that’s what it was.

Thomas screamed underneath Raj as he beat him to the ground, felt the shaking rising high like a volcano about to explode. His hand curled into claws—

“Rajah, Rajah!”

He got pulled off four seconds later, just four seconds of fighting. He felt his father’s grip at the back of his sweater, then stumbled back and nearly tripped over himself as he was dragged away—away—away—so fast—faster than he thought possible—

Far away, he thought he heard crying and the sound of someone shouting that Raj had scratched Thomas, and Thomas was bleeding…

Then they were behind the church and he was shaking so hard the anger was turning into something else. Fear.

He couldn’t stop.

“Rajah,” his father’s voice hissed, but he had his head pressed against the wall of the church, barely listening. Couldn’t see him. His father’s voice tried to cut through the fury.

“Breathe, you must breathe.”

Warrior. Hunter. Hero.

“Not here, Rajah!”

He felt his body hit the ground in the next moment, the scent of grass thick in his nose, wet against his cheeks. His father had pressed his face into the dirt and was holding him down.

His body jerked violently one more time. But that was it. Like a storm gathering out of nowhere, this one dispersed just as quickly. It was the grass in the end, nature’s incense, that lured his tiger into serenity. Raj breathed it in, tasting it along with the moistened dirt, until the pressure of his father’s hand holding down his head released. His father’s weight shifted off completely. Turning his head, Raj saw his father sat on the ground, chest rising in effort.

There was still a little tremble that coursed through Raj’s veins as he weakly turned over and pushed up, half-sitting up. He spat out the dirt, then dry-wretched violently, nearly keeling over into the ground again.

When at last he found his vision truly clearing, and when at last he looked at his father again, he watched as Senthil Patel hunched his shoulders and cried into his hands.

He cried for a very long time.

❆❁❆

That night, he listened to his parents’ voices again, from the top of the stairs.

“There can be no more stories,” his mother was saying. “Your father has him deluded. He’s turned him into an angry, aggressive child.”

“Yes,” said his father. “Yes.”

“There can be no more trips to India,” said his mother. “Not until he has forgotten the tiger.”

“Yes,” said his father, and he was crying again. “Yes.”

When at last the house was dark and all were asleep, Raj opened his window. He breathed in the night air, remembered the powerful thunderstorm of the tiger trying to escape from his veins. It had been so close. So, so close. And Raj had felt—alive. He had felt almost completed. A piece of him had almost been put back into place today, this piece which had been purposefully broken as a child.

And Raj realized: he had only been afraid because there was so much he did not know about himself and all that lay sleeping inside him. Would he ever learn? Would he ever know himself? Would he ever feel free?

“Yes,” he answered himself out loud.  

Raj stripped down, all the way down, naked and brown in the shadows. He stared at his palms and thought of destiny, destiny all over.