A bloke named Blake once wrote in the late 1763 (the year is debatable):
TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Titled ‘The Tyger’, it has long been recognized as one of the finest works on Tigers and the dark side of Creation. I like it very much. You should read the entire poem - it is beautiful (Also read ‘The Lamb’ from his Songs of Innocence).
As it is, I also happen to admire Tigers a lot. Beastly creature. Majestic. They have the perfect blend of flair, elegance, mystery, authority and… Terror!
Having said this, let me tell you, my dear reader, that neither of the above two predilections of mine had much cause to my naming this blog Tiger! Tiger! (here’s where you say ‘Ah, the plot thickens’)
It has more to do with that story-with-a-moral tale of a young boy whose (boring) job it was to keep a watch out for tigers (yawn) near the edge of the prairie whereby lay a dark forest while the shepherds took to tending to their sheep. Now this young boy - our hero- had this nasty tendency to shout ‘Tiger! Tiger!’ once in a while, thus shaking up the shepherds from drowsiness, and they would run up to the boy, see there is no tiger (‘It is a false alarm, that stupid boy is making fun of us, let’s go back to our sheep (read sleep)’) and the young boy would have a laugh to his heart’s content. But as the story goes, the boy got away with it the first couple of times, eventually the tiger did emerge from the woods and savagely consumed the boy even as the other shepherds entirely ignored this gory act either for sadistic vengeful pleasure because our hero hoodwinked them or for not keeping trust in the untrustworthy hero anymore – no one can tell for sure. This brings us to the curtain-fall to this techno color tale with a sad-and-gloomy end, but not before flashing a catchy moral-of-the-story in wide screen format.
Ignore the moral and ignore the sad n gloomy end for a while. Let’s focus on the ‘Tiger! Tiger!’ shouting part. Now I’ve asked myself time and again: Why did this boy have to do this? Why did shout like that? It did cost him his life in the end (but I told you, ignore the end). Did he suffer from hallucinations? Did he imagine tigers when there were only sheep, sleepy shepherds and a dark forest around?
No.
Then why?
I have a few theories – of my own – which I humbly venture to put forward. He did what he did for his amusement in an otherwise boring atmosphere. He did not want to grow up to another shepherd tending the same sheep day-after-day-after-day. He had imagination and he wanted to give vent to his imagination, otherwise he thought he would implode surrounded by his uninteresting, uneventful world. He didn’t care what happened to him at the end, or may be he was just plain stupid. And of course, he liked his little bit of attention.
Does this satisfy you? (Take a moment to ask yourself this question)
Regardless of what the answer is, that is what I do here. I am the young boy, you are the shepherd and there is no Tiger.
Enjoy blogging!
Dedicated to Amy, that 11 year old girl in South London who had already booked tigertiger.blogspot.com two years ago on a day off from school with an ear ache to note down her ‘thoughts’ online because she likes writing-things-down-but-is-fed-up-with-buying-new-note-books, which forced me to settle down on the much less appealing tigerburning.blogspot.com
Next change: Monster
(Pls. do spend two minutes to drop in a comment on this write up. I very much value YOUR feedback - heheh)
13 Responses to “Tiger! Tiger!”
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About me
- I'm suresh
- From trivandrum, bangalore, mysore, India
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If you like Blake's poetry, you should check out his artwork. Amazing stuff!
Your mix of classical phrasing and yuppie saddism makes you stand out from the crowd. You are one promising writer. Write whenever you can, write inside inline comments, in between test scenarios and everywhere else you can imagine. Because with every word you write you are getting better.
The birth of a new genre! Neosaddistic surrealism! This is a feat few writers can boast of. Good start. Now keep writing. Cant wait for this writer's first paperback.
Hey.. Never knew you wrote so well...Congrats.. Keep it going.. :-)
quite infosys & start writing books.
Hey..nice start. Hope to hear a lot from you. Don't forget me when you get famous :) Good luck!
he he i expected something like this from you. cool man! keep going
This blog the greatest thing I have ever come across in my life.
I'd always known this story as the boy who cried wolf. I used to get told it by mum everytime I told a lie. I always though it was fair enough that one shouldn't lie, as the boy did, but was being eaten alive really a proportionate punishment/consequence? I was given the impression that the boy deserved what he got and so nobody felt sorry for him. But I did, and do. But that may be because I'm the boy who keeps shouting 'Sheep! Sheep!" because I'm scared of them when they crowd together in ther intimidating flocks and because most of the time I sense danger in the most innocent of clothed animals. In fact, farmers do get killed by sheep all the time. If you ask me you're much better off tending a flock of tigers than you are sheep, because at least then you know what you're getting. There's no uncertainty with tigers. It's interesting that most schools and businesses hold fire drills and test alarms every week on the same day at the same time. They obviously haven't understood this story.
I beg to differ. Surely it's not a "flock" of tigers? I can't live in a world where the collective noun for sheep is the same as the collective noun for tigers. Do your research. Even better, do my research.
blake, tigers, shepherds, sheep. who said adding everything together into a one page write up will make it look good?
it's just your regular crap the writer's "dear readers" can get in any wanna be famous Ambitious Writers' Forums.
no great original writing styles here.
1.5/5 at the very most
Okay you reactionary psycho, I've done your research and the result is rather pleasing. The collective noun for tigers is an "ambush." This makes me rethink my belief that you know what you're getting with a tiger - it seems they're more devious than I've given them credit for. The collective noun for sharks is a "shiver", so presumably a group of tigersharks are known as an Ambush-Shiver. Brilliant.
blog dies short after its birth.