The Tiger, the Toy Cupboard, and Twitch

                                      I
Naming


While Balu had named him ‘Glare Scare’, Shalu called the tiger ‘Terrible Twitch’.

Scary Twitch was no ordinary tiger. He was the king of the toy cupboard, terror of its top shelf.
         
Balanced there, the beastly beast seemed ready to spring. He glared. He stared. He looked like he was baring his teeth with a faint growl. You could almost hear him kneading his claws slowly -click-clack, sheath-unsheathe. His tail …there… did it … did it twitch?

He haunted their sleep. He taunted their dreams. He hunted their imaginings.

Whenever Shalu saw the tiger perched up in the toy cupboard, she felt queasy tingles and giant goose bumps come all over. But nobody could say why he was so frightening. For, like any other toy, the tiger stayed still and silent:
Tight and puffed,
stiff and stuffed.

Nobody, not even Ma could remember how the tiger came to be there in the first place.
Nobody, not even Ma knew why the tiger had not been shifted out of the toy cupboard.

He just was and there he remained in the gloom as older sister Shalu and little brother Balu played in their room.

                                                    II

Gaming

Cousin Pakhi has come to spend the summer holidays with Shalu and Balu. After a messy breakfast, the kids shift to the toy room. Games erupt- some prim and proper, others jumpy and jopper.

They paint on paper,
then trit-trot-caper,
draw and dance,
sing and prance…
Fairy, monster, goon and goblin,
Come and go shufflin’ and hobblin’.
Then at last, like Mothers Hubbard,
the children turn to the toy cupboard.

Shalu opens the door.  She put her hand inside the toy basket and picks up an animal with white stripes on black. “I’m ZuZu zebra.” She dips the toy’s head to the ground as though it is eating grass. “Scrunch, munch.”

“Zebra-Shebra, La-la-la” Pakhi sings as she plucks the kangaroo from the toy basket and jumps all over the room with it. “I am a Can Grew Can Grow. Hop-hop-hop and crow. Yes, yes, no, no? Yess or noooo?”
         
Finally, Balu picks a green and black backed tortoise and says seriously. “I will be slow and steady and win the race.”

This new game starts and goes on as such games usually do. Sometimes the three children play together. Sometimes each one is busy with his or her own animal. Sometimes they fight, sometimes laugh. Both Shalu and Pakhi join forces against Balu’s animal.

Pakhi paints a big red mark on the tortoise’s nose, all the time singing “Joker, Doker, Boker.” Shalu’s Zebra climbs on the tortoise’s curved shell.

“Why are you trotting on a trot-oise you silly zebra?” shrieks Balu. The children howl with laughter at his mixed up words!

Then the zebra slips from Shalu’s hands. It flies and lands on the top shelf of the toy cupboard- right next to Scary Twitch. In the eyes of the terror tiger there comes a hint of a glint. His tail seems to twitch? Umm…no, maybe it is just a mouse that darted behind. Aren’t the claws out? There, there! Nah. It is just a screw lying in front of the tiger’s paws that is shining.

Balu shivers and looks up, “That tiger gives me the crispy crisps.”

Shalu nods. It gives her the creepy creeps also. She quickly picks up the zebra and closes the door of the toy cupboard. They play on happily after that.

Evening brings a new kind of thrill. When Shalu and Balu’s mother returns home from office, she is surrounded by a gaggle of eager children. “Fair, fair, fair” they chant. ‘Unfair, unfair, unfair” is her tired cry. Seeing their disappointed faces, she relents. 

Mother takes them to a carnival in the big parade ground. There are Ferris wheels, Merry Go Rounds, Carousels, Daredevil Dips and many, many other rides and delights. After a wonderful and wonderfully exhausting time, the children return home to lie in bed and slumber. The last wakeful thought that Shalu has is of gleaming eyes watching a twitching tail. She sleeps.

                                                      III
Dreaming?

The world of dreams,
is not what it seems.
A drop of moonlight falls.
As it spreads its silver, it calls:

‘Wake to dreams, in dreams awake.’

The moon tumbles from a cloud and drips its beams on Shalu. She wakes, or slips into the silver whispers of dream where she is awake.
… lying in an endless grassy plane dotted with trees. The trees rustle in the breeze.  Where is she? Where is this magical, moonlit land?

Shalu raises her hand to scratch her forehead- clomp!  Instead of fingers something that feels as solid as a block, and as hard as a rock hits the side of her head. Ouch! Has someone slipped a boxing glove on Shalu’s hand while she was sleeping? A boxing glove with a horseshoe inside it? It must be that Balu!

Confused and still more than half asleep, Shalu gets up and trots towards the nearest tree. Reaches up for the leaves with her mouth. Whinny, neigh, chomp-chomp how tasty. Huh? She’s a trotting leaf taster. How strange.

Shalu feels thirsty. She sees a watering hole nearby and moves towards it. As she bends her head, her face reflects in the water.

Shalu jumps back with surprise. “Harrumph! I seem to have turned into a zebra!” No wonder she has no fingers. That solid block must be a hoof. No wonder she is trotting and tasting the tree leaves and whinnying and neighing and chomping. She is a zebra!

Neigh! Neighver mind.

In her dreams Shalu quite easily accepts what would send her jumping and screaming if she were awake. And she starts thinking of herself as a zebra, in fact as ZuZu - the zebra that she was playing with in the morning.

Soon begins enjoying her zebra-ness. She trots up to one tree then another, tastes their different tasting leaves, canters across the moonlit plane, gallops.

She lies down, turns on her back and rubs herself against the ground. Scritch! Scratch! Aha, what a lovely scrubber earth mother makes of her grass covered ground! In this upside down position, Shalu sees a big boulder in the distance. It is almost round, with just a little hint of flat at the top.

How come she’s not noticed it before?  As Shalu turns over and trots towards it, a cloud covers the moon. The stone turns into a dim shadow. Shalu continues moving towards it. When she is about two or three hundred yards away, the covering whips itself off the moon’s face. At that moment Shalu looks up at the boulder. Her blood feels like it has blocks of ice in it. She can hardly breathe.

For perched on top of the gigantic stone is a giant of a tiger; a giant who is crouching, who is ready to spring. Even from that distance, his eyes gleam with yellow venom.  His tail is going twitch-swish, faster-faster! Shalu knows; she just knows that this beast is the tiger of the toy cupboard- magically turned massive, amazingly come alive.

He speaks in voice as gravelly as gravel hitting a tin roof, as booming as a drum beat.
“Never swept me
when you kept me.
In a cupboard of dust,
covered with dust,
I was left to rust.
Now free, now free, NOW FREE,
to do what I must.
So flee, so flee, SO FLEE.”

With that he leaps off the rock with one flowing motion.

Shalu turns swiftly. Scrush! ….and runs tab dak tab dak - no timid trotting this time, no casual cantering. It is a full out gallop, a run of her life, a run for her life. She listens for the tiger loping swiftly behind him and imagines she hears a foul puff-puffing, almost feels the hot, hungry breath of the beast.

“Run Shalu Run,” she huffs… And how she runs, bunching her legs together and flinging them out- bunch, fling, bunch, gallop, gallop, tab dak, tab dak.

In the distance, a black line snakes across the plane. As Shalu gallops closer she hears a curious gurgling chap, chap noise that rises above the rasp of her gasping breath. Closer still, the black snake turns molten, a choppy silver flowing furious in the moonlight.

Shalu or ZuZu zebra has come to the shore of a big river with a swift current- too swift for her to cross. From somewhere not very far behind she hears the tiger roar with a roar that sounds like a hundred toy trumpets blowing. And a terrible voice howls “Flee, Flee, FLEE!”

IV
Sharing

TRAPPED! Desperately Shalu moves from side to side, looking for a place to cross the river. In her hurry, she stumbles over a big, round rock. A rock that squeaks, “Why are you trotting on a trot-oise you silly zebra?”

Uh? Shalu has heard these words before!

A head pokes out from under the rock. It has sleepy eyes and a wise, wrinkled face. A big red wart seems to be growing from its nose, almost as though it has been painted there. What Shalu has taken to be a rock, is actually the back of a huge tortoise, a very familiar tortoise.

Even as the zebra and the tortoise look at each other, the air is torn with ROAR! ROARR! It is so close that Zuzu Shalu’s eardrums threaten to burn away. It is so loud that it sounds like a thousand trumpets blowing themselves to shreds.
“Flee! Flee! FLEE!”

“On my back,” screams Balu the tortoise, “Jump!”

Scramble, clamber, slip-slide-clutch, chad-fisal-chad! Somehow Shalu manages to climb and cling. The last thing that she sees before the tortoise slides into the water is the giant tiger loping, leaping, towards them.

As the tiger makes a roaring lunge
into the flowing stream they plunge.

Oooh the water- that ice cold water- that jumping, bucking water. But shivering Shalu thinks of nothing but holding on to the tortoise’s back. She digs in with her hooves.  Wave after wall of a wave crash again and again over the tortoise and the zebra.


Midway through the river crossing, Shalu is so drenched, so cold and chilled that her hooves slip off the tortoise’s curved back. She looses grip and begins to be swept away in the shimmering swift current. With powerful strokes, Balu tortoise swims underwater and comes up below her. Shalu is supported and they reach the other shore somehow.

Oh, what trip! What a dream!
Like a nightmare with a scream.
But with a little help from her friend,
Shalu crosses the watery bend.

Wet, tired wet, gasping tired wet. They have no strength to run or swim or even walk any further. When…

They see the menacing form of the tiger arc over the dark water. In one giant leap he clears the river and lands almost on top of Shalu and the tortoise. But before the tiger can get down to snarling, and snapping, and scrunching, something happens, something real strange.

A kangaroo comes from nowhere and hoppity hopping hops in between the hunter and the hunted. In a squeaky but strong voice (sounding just like Pakhi’s) she shouts, ‘Can Grew, Can Grow!’

And wonder of wonders, the kangaroo begins to rise… and rise. Up, up goes her size. The kangaroo grows and GROWS. In a trice she is twice, then thrice her normal size and growing, and still growing. She towers. She glowers at the tiger. The tiger cowers and turns tail- like a pussy cat that has had hot water thrown on it. As he runs for cover, the tiger’s ‘Yip! yip! Meowrrr! Fleeee…’ can be heard fading in the distance.

“Come quick!” squeak scream squreams Pakhi Kangaroo.  “This growing size magic spell will only last for a few minutes. Then I will be normal and that tiger-shiger will come back after us!” The kangaroo picks up the zebra with her front paws and puts her in her pocket. Then she does the same with the tortoise. She is so big that they fit in easily, though Shalu whispers “Thank god, there’s no Joey in here to share the pocket.”

They hop off in the direction opposite to the one taken by the frightened tiger.

But soon, too soon they find the kangaroo rapidly shrinking back to her original size. The pocket starts becoming a tight fit. The kangaroo quickly pulls them out before they suffocate.

As Pakhi Can Grew deflates in size, Shalu and Balu notice that behind her there is a huge tent with the banner, WHITEWOOD MOONLIGHT FAIR.

They are wondering about the midnight fete in the middle of a wood - when Shalu sees a speck bounding in the distance, coming towards them, becoming bigger. The roaring is getting nearer and clearer.

“Quick. Let us enter the fair where the tiger will not be able to find us.”

They rush towards the tent. But the entrance is blocked by a man in a clown’s suit and a sad face. He holds up his hand.
“To get inside, you must answer,
the riddle of the standing dancer.”

“OK.” says Shalu, “But please ask us quick! A terrible tiger is after us”

The sad clown smiles and spreads his hands outwards.

“Many arms delight,
turn and twist around,
till the passengers alight
to stand safe on the ground.”

He coughs, “I must have the answer before I can let you in.”

Balu frets. Pakhi shakes. Shalu shudders. She can see the tiger’s clearly now, almost flying in the wind. The yellow venom in the beast’s eyes glints in the moonlight. She can faintly hear that horrible howl, “Flee, flee, FLEE”.  But they have no answer to the riddle! “Please give a hint. Please.”

The clown coughs again and looks sadder and more tired than ever. He speaks thus:
“It’s a round round ride
that you surely have tried.
The name makes me happy.
Now give the answer.
And make it snappy.”

Round and round? With many arms?  Shalu thinks hard. She hunts her head for the answer…Which ride goes round and round and sounds happy? Ferris Wheel? Nah. Daredevil Dip? Nooo. Merry… Of Course!
“MERRY GO ROUND” screams Shalu.

ZAP!
The children are no longer in their animal forms. Instead, they are sitting on painted animals on a Merry Go Round. Balu is seated on a silver tortoise with a red nose. Pakhi is peeping out of the pocket of a cane Kangaroo. Shalu is atop a wooden zebra.

Whirrr! There’s a flutter-flip in the pits of their stomach, and a lurch that smoothes out into round, regular movement. They’re off! Nobody feels like talking about their narrow escape. Shalu looks tiredly at the giant mirror that surrounds the merry go round. It gives a very strange effect, making it look like there is another set of turning animals and children that is going around them.

Wondering about this effect, Shalu casually notices the reflection of the animal behind her as it curves into view.

Oh horror!

This animal is not made of cane or silver or wood. It is living flesh and blood. Shalu shudders as the mouth opens into an ear shattering roar. Then a terrible taunting poem:

“I am right behind you, see,
Now there’s nowhere to flee.
I’m gonna catch you,
and scratch you.
I’m gonna spite you,
and bite you.

It is the tiger of her nightmares, very alive. He is attached to the Merry Go Round with a metal clasp that goes around his middle. With each round, this mechanical arm creeps the beast closer and closer to Shalu.

“I’m gonna stomp you,
and chomp you,
catch you, scratch you,
spite you, bite you,
chomp you, stomp you …
RAORRR”

By the third round Shalu can feel the hot breath of the beast, smell its foul, fetid mouth.”Help!”

Suddenly the voice of the sad clown fills the air:
“You cannot race him,
so turn and face him.
Be brave, be bold,
do as you are told.”

Balu twists and looks straight at the tiger. As he stares from the top of his shiny tortoise, the beast’s hind portion becomes solid and turns to silver.

Then Pakhi pops her head out of the cane kangaroo’s pocket and turns. As she gazes, the tiger’s mid portion hollows out into cane.

But the fore part of the tiger still lives. He roars with agony, and anger. Gasps:
“catch, scratch,
spite, bite,
chomp, stomp”

He is so close that Shalu can hear the steely click of the teeth trying to grab her. How can she face this horror, the stuff that her nightmares are made of?

But she knows their dreams will never be safe till the tiger is gone. Until they are rid of him, the tiger will always haunt and taunt and trouble. “Turn Shalu. TURN!”

Shalu twirls to face her foe. Even as she looks, the tiger alters very strangely.  His eyes lose their lustre. His jaws and claws clamp tightly and he gasps.
“Ca…catch, bi…te, scrraa..”

Then silence... A dull brown sheen covers the front portion of the tiger as it turns to wood.

The merry go round slowly grounds to a halt.

IV
At last, the tiger by the tail

Shalu stops tossing and turning in bed. She gives a tiny twitch. She sleeps soundly.

It is morning. The three children enter the playroom. They look at each other and smile as though they remember something, some shared secret. Shalu, Balu and Pakhi hold hands and walk to the toy cupboard. Shalu reaches for the door handle and pulls…

Nobody, not even Ma can tell where the tiger has gone. All she knows is that he no longer crouches on the top shelf sending queasy tingles and giving goose bumps. In his place, there are three beautifully crafted toys. The tortoise is made of pure silver. There is a delicately carved cane kangaroo. And a wooden zebra that once in a while seems to nod her head and look with wonder at her hooves.

To say she was sleeping or awake,
is either way a mistake.
What Shalu did was to have shared,
a waking dream with those who cared.