The fable of Ramiha and the tiger
reading time approx. 13 min.

Kampong Mejong Lodaja, a village in the Preanger on West Java, was named after the king tiger that was occasionally seen in those regions in earlier years. The kampong owed its name to a special history.
At that time, Ramiha and his wife Roesminah lived on the edge of a sparse rice field. They had a large family but were very poor. Their children often had to go to bed on an empty stomach. One day Roesminah gave birth to twins. They were two beautiful boys who they called Djapan and Djoemadi. But the parents were not happy because they did not know how they could raise two more children.
In the evening when all the children were sleeping, the father and mother sat outside the house. The moon was bright in the black sky and the air was filled with sounds of the nocturnal animals of the forest. It would be peaceful if they didn't have so many worries.
“I am desperate,” Ramiha said to his wife in a low voice. “Our rice field does not yield enough, we have no corn and the cassava is much too expensive.”
Roesminah sighed deeply. "What must we do?"
Two big tears ran down her cheeks because she already knew the answer. They wouldn't be able to keep the two babies.
“I will take them into the jungle tomorrow morning, before the other children wake up,” Ramiha said. “I will roll them together in a banana leaf, tightly against each other, just like they were in your stomach. Then they will not be afraid.”
“They will go hungry,” Roesminah protested.
“It won't be long,” replied the unhappy father. They both knew that a wild animal would eat the twin brothers and that they would be with the ancestors before Ramiha returned home.
The next morning the father left before the sun rose. The babies were still so small that he could easily carry them in one arm. That was the last thing he could do for them: make sure they could smell each other's scent, feel each other's skin, and hear each other's heartbeat like they used to in their mother's belly. As they were born, so would they die, forever together.
With his parang, Ramiha cut his way through the dense understory of the jungle. Slowly it became light and the morning birds began their song. Softly, Ramiha hummed a song of his own, much more somber than the singing of the birds: “How ever dark the night may be, there will be more darkness in a new day.”
“Oh yes,” he suddenly heard. “And what may the new day bring?”
A few meters in front of him, in a prowling position, sat a tigress, ready to pounce. He had seen tigers before, but this one was huge, especially for a female one. She was so close to him that he could clearly see her white whiskers and the white beard under her chin that contrasted so beautifully with her yellow-black striped chest. However, Ramiha also saw the calculation in her cold eyes and he realized that his life was in danger. He slowly lowered himself to his haunches and placed the bundle wrapped in a banana leaf on the ground.
“These are Djapan and Djoemadi, my two youngest children. I will offer them to you, honoured grandmother, because I can't feed them. But I beg you, please let me go, because I have other children and without me they will starve.” He spoke with reverence, for he had concluded that the enormous animal preparing to attack was a king tiger, the largest and most dangerous of all tigers. With one blow of her mighty claw she could send him to the ancestors. But Ramiha was not yet ready to make his last journey.  “Maybe we can help each other,” he said humbly.
“And what makes you think I need your help?” asked the tigress.
Ramiha was smart. He knew that there were almost no king tigers left in the wilderness and the tigress owed it to her kind to reproduce. But the fierce hunt for the king tiger in these regions would make that difficult for her. He quickly thought of what he could do. The people of the kampong had a sacred respect for the jungle with all its forest spirits. The giant trees, up to eighty meters high, were seen as the dwelling places of the ancestors. If Ramiha could create a myth about two children living with the tigress, it would stop farmers from hunting her.
“Okay,” she replied. “I won't eat your babies nor you, but you must promise to bring me two good-sized fish every fifth day.”
She took the bundle containing the two boys carefully between her teeth and disappeared into the bushes. Her long tail was the last thing Ramiha saw of her. He dropped his machete from his hands and kneeled, trembling. How was that possible? He was not a fisherman, he was a farmer, and not even a good one because he could barely support his family.
The next day Ramiha stood awkwardly with a fishing line at the water's edge. The monkeys above his head jeered at him. They caught the fish faster than he could throw in his line. But his effort was rewarded, he caught two fish. They were much too small for the tiger, so he gave them to his wife who prepared corn to go with the fish and they ate them with pleasure.
The next day he once more tried his luck at the waterfront. Again the fish he caught were too small to offer to the tigress. What was he doing here wasting his time? He should work on his land, it yielded more than those useless glitter fish.
When he least expected it, there was suddenly a sharp tug on his leash. He jumped up and reeled in a big fish. Now, that was something that was worth it. So he had to have one more and then he could face the tigress with good decency.
But Ramiha did not go to the tigress. He couldn't bring himself to take the fish away, it seemed like theft from his family. Roesminah prepared a feast that evening.
Ramiha began to enjoy fishing more and more, especially as the fish he caught became bigger and bigger. He had even been able to hold a modest selamatan, a ritual meal, for his family and neighbors. The monkeys often kept him company when he was at the water's edge, for he had gotten into the habit of throwing them an occasional fish.
Gradually his sorrow for the two little boys diminished and he forgot his promise to the tigress.
One day he caught a particularly large fish. It was quite a job to get him out of the water and he was so absorbed in his work that he did not notice the monkeys quietly retreating into the foliage of the highest treetops. The warm airflow at the back of his neck also did not immediately catch his attention. But he froze when he heard a low growl. He didn't have to look over his shoulder to know that the tigress had come to see him. The fishing line slipped from his hands and he slowly lowered himself to his haunches. His hour of death had come.
A huge claw ripped the flesh from his right arm and broke the bone. He spun on his axis and fell sideways to the ground. The tigress was now standing over him. She looked even bigger than when they last met. With a menacing look in her yellow eyes, she lowered her majestic head close to his face. He still registered her pungent body odor and the stench of her breath as she blew into his face. He closed his eyes with fatalistic abandon, waiting for the jaws that could crush his skull at any moment. That would be the end.
But something unexpected happened. A discreet beep came from a branch above his head and a brief irritation flashed through his mind that those stupid monkeys never even understood the seriousness of a situation. Then a fish was dropped from the tree onto the sand next to the tigress, and she stepped away from him and swallowed the fish.
“You unreliable one!” she said. “You didn't keep your promise. You don't deserve me to let you live, but apparently you not only took care of yourself and your own children, but you also took care of a bunch of stupid monkeys. That speaks for you. I've decided I'll give you one more chance.”
The majestic animal turned and walked away from him with feline grace. After a few steps she stopped.
“Two big fish, every fifth day.”
Again Ramiha wondered how to do that. He had no illusions about his arm. He was now a fisherman, but the fish he caught were so large and heavy that, with only one arm at his disposal, they would be beyond his strength.
The entire village turned out when the seriously injured Ramiha staggered to his house.
“Matjan, matjan – tiger, tiger!” the men shouted, grabbing their spears and machetes.
“Don't do that,” Ramiha whispered with the last of his strength.
The pain made his head cloudy like muddy water, but he still realized that his fellow villagers would kill the tigress if they had the chance. He had to prevent that.
“Stop them,” he managed to say before he lost consciousness. He had lost too much blood and his spirit left him as the men gathered around the megalith on the village square and left with their sharp spears and machetes.
For three days Roesminah cared for her husband while his spirit could not decide whether or not to join the ancestors. Then he raised his eyes and looked at his wife. He wanted to touch her cheek, but the arm he thought he was reaching for her was not there and he remembered the confrontation with the tigress.
“How many days have I slept?”
He remembered that the men had gone tiger hunting. Was the tigress still alive or had they captured her?
No, they had not caught a tiger, he heard from Roesminah, but there was no time to lose. He really had to take the fish to the forest every fifth day and he would need his two eldest sons to help him. No matter how scared they were of the tigress, they still had to go with him.
“No, Ramiha, don't take the boys into the forest.” Roesminah was desperate. “I've already lost two babies, I can't lose two more children. That tigress beat you half to death, how can you think you can trust her? You can never trust wild animals, that is against nature.”
“Roesminah, you forget that the monkeys saved my life, why do you think they did that?”
“Monkeys are different, monkeys are more like us than other animals. But tigers? Never!" Roesminah insisted.
Ramiha said nothing more. He wasn't convinced himself, but he knew he had no choice.
What Ramiha had to do took a lot of courage. Catching two fish was the easiest part. He would need his eldest sons to get them out of the water, but how could he expect them to go with him to the tiger that had indeed beaten him half to death? Wouldn't it be better if the men of the kampong just grabbed her so that her skin could be sold head and all to the belandas, the Dutch, who were crazy about these kinds of trophies? But instinctively he knew that would bring bad luck.
That day the fish he and his boys pulled from the river were bigger than ever. To transport them to the forest they had to hang them on a carrying pole like pigs. When Ramiha and the boys found the tigress in the jungle, they were surprised to see the two babies. They had grown well and their eyes looked bright.
“I nursed them and I protected them,” the tigress declared as the two bigger brothers tried to hide behind their father. “In the same way, I can protect your kampong from wild animals and I can protect your harvest from plundering pigs, so that you no longer will be hungry, but you must bring me honor in the form of edible sacrifices: fish.”
Ramiha was speechless.
“I will bring up your little boys,” continued the tigress. “Your job is to convince the farmers to stop hunting me.”
Ramiha crouched down with the babies. Their skin was firm and smooth, a beautiful layer of jet black hair covered their skulls, their bellies were round and full and they looked completely content. How happy Roesminah would be if she heard that her darlings were still alive and also so well cared for. Would she finally believe in an alliance between man and tiger?
“Listen carefully, there must be respect for nature. What you take from the forest you must also give back to the forest. Then there is balance.” With those words the tigress took leave of Ramiha and disappeared with the twins into the wild vegetation of the jungle.
Back in the kampong, Ramiha spread the story about the king tiger who took care of two children, but he did not say that they were his own children. The people did not want to believe him, but decided to be on the safe side. After all, the forest hid many secrets: nymphs, fairies and ghosts lived there. Who could say for sure that this tigress wasn't actually an enchanted princess from the craton? Then the two boys would be little princes. Perhaps they had double crowns, which would indicate their royal origins.
Ramiha just left it like that. His children would grow up like wild animals in the jungle. Every week he brought his giant fish to the forest. He caught more than he needed and distributed them in the village. People were in awe of him because he had only one arm and yet was so successful. He must have magic, they thought. He must have gotten that power from the tigress after surviving her attack.
Now when the villagers saw a striped shadow at the edge of the forest, they did not go out with their bamboo spears. They even offered food because they believed that if they took care of the tiger, the tiger would take care of them. The fish made sure that there was no more hunger. The children were fat and their parents happy, they had confidence in Ramiha and in nature. They respected the wild animals of the forest and killed no more than they needed to eat.
One day Ramiha saw the tigress for the last time. She had two strong half-grown tigers with her and both cubs brushed against his legs.
“Djapan and Djoemadi,” whispered Ramiha.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         ©marian puijk