CBSE Class 12 Board Examination

Chapter 2: The Tiger King

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Summary

Written by Kalki, this story is a satire on the conceit and arbitrary power of those who rule, using the literary device of dramatic irony. The Maharaja of Pratibandapuram, known as the Tiger King, is told by astrologers at his birth that he will one day die, and that his death will come from a tiger — since he was born in the hour of the Bull, the Tiger's enemy. As a baby he challenges the prophecy with the words 'Let tigers beware!' To defy fate, he resolves to kill a hundred tigers, believing that once the hundredth is dead he will have nothing to fear. He bans tiger-hunting by anyone else and devotes himself entirely to the hunt, even risking his throne by refusing a British officer permission to hunt, then pacifying the officer's wife with fifty expensive diamond rings worth three lakh rupees. When tigers grow extinct in his own state, he marries into a royal family with many tigers to keep up his tally. Reaching ninety-nine, he struggles to find the hundredth tiger; the dewan secretly procures an old, weak tiger and places it in the king's path. The Maharaja fires and, believing he has killed his hundredth tiger, celebrates — but in fact his bullet missed, and the tiger merely fainted; the hunters secretly kill it to save their jobs. Ironically, the king is finally killed not by a real tiger but by a cheap wooden toy tiger: a sliver of wood pierces his hand, the wound festers, and he dies after an operation. Thus the hundredth tiger takes its revenge, and the prophecy is fulfilled in an unexpected way.

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