All of us can imagine the result of catching a tiger by the tail. The Before and After pictures can well be imagined, although a lot depends on the tiger. If it is a dead tiger it is another matter. If it is a tiger that has been sedated heavily, it is another matter. It is the man-eating category of tigers that is being referred to here. (That brings us to another question: Do tigers' dietary habits exclude tasting female flesh?) Catching a tiger by the tail amounts then only to a first step. What happens later has not been described by Jim Corbett, even. This is presumably because he knew better than to grab tigers by their tail.
Chandrika Kumaratunga is another matter altogether, which is why this particular tiger story is a different kind of tiger story. Its about tiger conservation project now underway in Sri Lanka. We have to say quite emphatically, that the results in that little island tiger paradise leaves a whole lot desired in India's Project Tiger. Ask Vaiko. Ask Nedumaran. Ask Karunanidhi, but off the record. On the record he will tell you that he has distanced himself from the Tigers following their peculiar habit of serving the Tamil cause by killing other Tamils, especially if they are moderate. We say this hypothesis is spurious. After all, everyone knows that the distance from Fort Saint George in Chennai and the Vanni Jungles is somewhat greater than the distance between Fort Saint George and the northern reaches of Jaffna. Anybody who is reading newspapers or watching teevee knows that the tigers have left the Vanni jungles and are now crowding around Jaffna, waiting to be let in. Then, how is Karunanidhi's stance vindicated? Tigers are now nearer to Fort Saint George than they have been under the preceding dispensation in Tamil Nadu. Moreover, the funding that is being overtly collected in Tamil Nadu for Tiger related projects have gone up over the last two years. Tiger conservationists like Nedumaran, Vaiko and others have never had it so good. People like George Fernandes, have a covert avatar, if pro-tiger publications are to believed. He is second in popularity only to Vellupillai Pirabhakaran, ahead even of Anton Balasingham and other assorted tigers.
No people in the world know tiger conservation better than the Sri Lankans, although some credit is also due to the politicians in Tamil Nadu who claim to speak for the Tamilians but no publication has ever taken even so much as a straw poll to determine how much of truth is there in this assertion. There are even completely incredible rumours that some Tamil politicians have espoused the conservation programme because the tigers leave them with no choice, but that is neither here nor there. To get back to the main thread, everybody in Sri Lanka has a tiger story to tell. Over a couple of local arrack most people might even be gently persuaded to show off a tiger scar or two. It is when you see the scars that you get the distinct impression that there are a lot of tigers out there in Sri Lanka, and all of them appear hungry. On second thoughts, that might be an overstatement, a bit like Justice Jain's hyperbole in his interim report implicating ALL Tamilians in some kind of undemonstrated complicity of protecting tigers. This is of course not true. The furthest from some Tamil minds is the question of tiger conservation. We will come to the tiger conservation in Tamil Nadu a little later, after all, tigers used to roam about freely in Tamil Nadu a decade ago.
In India Project Tiger has places like Corbett National Park, and Ramthambore and Dudwa and the rest. These are designated habitats where the tigers do exactly what they please, sometimes even in broad daylight. In Sri Lanka things are a little more complicated. They don't have a designated habitat and that is causing all kinds of behavioral problems for both the tigers and their conservationists. It is giving the tigers down there some kind of attitude. Opinion on this attitude is divided. Chandrika Kumaratunga does not like this attitude, but tigers allege that she can't see the issue too well, and this is entirely because of her vision-impaired status. She sees through her one good (?) eye only one point of view. Tigers claim that they see better, and if Vellupillai Pirabhakaran and Chandrika Kumaratunga were to get their respective eyes tested by the same ophthalmologist, then the results would speak for themselves. In this regard, India, the United States, Norway, South Africa, all have declared their opthalma-logical intentions, if such a thing is ever possible. All said and done, Pirabhakaran, when last photographed, wasn't wearing some kind of bandage over one eye, like some androgynous latter day Long John Silver. Therefore the moral of this story: In order to catch a tiger by the tail, your eyesight better be good.