“One month ago, I was heading to my daughter’s house, all skin and bones, when a vicious tiger threatened to eat me,” the woman said. Her glasses were covered with pumpkin goo, and she lisped a little, because she didn’t have all her teeth. “I convinced him to wait until I had eaten well and gotten all fattened up, but he promised to be waiting for me on the trail home.”
“So to hide you from him, your daughter put you in a hollowed-out gourd and sent you tumbling!” I said, the pieces clicking in my brain. “I know this story!”
My baba had told me it a million times, like he did all his stories from the Kingdom Beyond. This wasn’t my moon mother at all, then, but an old woman from a well-loved folktale!
Just as I thought this, though, something even stranger happened. Something stranger than finding an old woman rolling home in a pumpkin gourd. Like what had happened with Neel before, a bright blue butterfly landed on the granny—this time on her nose. And in the next second, the grandmother’s image flickered like she was on a faulty television screen. When my vision corrected, no longer was she an old gray-haired woman afraid of a tiger, but the tiger itself!
The animal gave a rumbling roar, showing a glimpse of its shining teeth. I jumped about a foot in the air in my scramble to get away from it.
“Oh, my rotten tail feathers! If that’s the tiger, then we’re the old woman about to get eaten!” Tuntuni shrieked, flying quickly back into the auto. “Get in, Princess! Start the engine now!”
I stumbled into the driver’s seat, pressing down on the start with a panicky finger. Even though the engine turned over and over with a screeching noise, it didn’t catch.
The tiger was huge, sleekly muscled, with stringy pumpkin innards mixing into its orange-and-black-striped fur, and bits of rind trapped in its whiskers and wide jaw. It studied us with its dark, hungry eyes. Then it gave an earsplitting roar.
“We’re gonna die!” wailed Tuntuni, throwing his yellow wings around my neck. This time, I didn’t actually think he was wrong. “I’m too pretty to croak in a tiger’s digestive tract!”
Hurry up!” yelled Tuni, jumping with all his weight on the start button. “Unless you want your baba to tell the story about a princess and a bird who got eaten by a pumpkin-spiced tiger!”
When Tiktiki One click-clacked its tongue, Tuni added, “Okay, fine, a princess, bird, and lizard eaten by a pumpkin-spiced tiger!”
“Stop that! You’re not helping!” My hands were shaking as I tried to get the little bird to stop pressing on the starter. “I think you flooded the engine!”
Tuntuni kept shouting useless instructions, though, and the lizard kept clickety-clacking. That is, until the tiger roared again.
“Stop your superfluous shrieking!” shouted the tiger, white teeth flashing in the sun.
At that, Tuntuni and I shrieked at the top of our lungs, and even Tiktiki One clattered so loud it was clear the little lizard was terrified. Both animals hid behind my back as I now began pushing on the start button with frantic fingers.
“You’re undoubtedly flooding your fuel injector!” roared the tiger.
“Leave us alone!” I yelled in a total panic. “I swear we won’t taste very good!”
“I’m such a little bird, just feathers and bones, really!” shouted Tuni from behind me. “Hardly any meat! But the lizard here, he’s delicious on a skewer I bet! With a little lime and salt! And the princess—just look at all that juicy muscle! She’d be great breaded and fried probably! Or maybe with a little jhinge posto!”
I turned around in the seat to stare at the bird, and saw that Tiktiki One’s buggy eyes were swiveled around in outrage too. “You traitor!” I shrieked, moving both animals back onto the auto rikshaw handlebars. “Stop suggesting recipes to eat us with!”
“Every bird for himself!” Tuni said sheepishly.
The tiger, meanwhile, did something totally unexpected. As if we were the funniest thing it had ever seen, the huge animal flopped down on the ground, grabbed its belly, and began to laugh.
“Don’t laugh at us!” I yelled, which only made the tiger laugh harder.
“It’s just an act, Princess!” shouted Tuntuni above the tiger’s guffaws. “What did you do with the old granny, you deranged feline?”
“I did nothing with her!” The tiger’s nostrils flared and muscles rippled as it kept laughing. “Such an accusation is highly unjust!”
Tuni gave me a little peck with his beak, and I knew he wanted me to back him up. “Then where is she?” I managed to ask, my voice quavering only a little. “The old woman from the story? In the original folktale, you’re not supposed to be in the pumpkin—she is!”
“I am not precisely sure,” the tiger admitted, wiping tears of laugher from its giant eyes.
“Then tell us how you ended up in that pumpkin, you dirty rat … er, cat?” said Tuni like he was an old-timey private investigator.
“I am ashamed to say that I did indeed threaten the old woman a little,” said the tiger. “But it was primarily to keep my jungle credibility up—it’s remarkably hard with my level of education and eloquence to maintain my status as a fierce carnivorous predator. ‘Bunty has lost their edge.’ I’ve heard several animals say so only recently at the local watering hole.”
“Bunty?” I interrupted, wrinkling my nose. “Your name is Bunty?”
“The one and only.” The tiger gave a bow of its giant orange head. “If speaking English, you may use they or them pronouns when you refer to me.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking of my friend Vic back home who didn’t use he or she pronouns either. Conveniently, in Bengali, there was no he or she, and everyone used the same pronoun, o.
“In the words of that great philosopher J. Tumblerpond,” Bunty continued, “ ‘I don’t wanna be a fool for you. Genders split in two. It may sound performative, but it ain’t no lie. Binaries, baby! Bye! Bye! Bye!’ ” As they said this, Bunty had padded over to the auto rikshaw and started helping me clean the windshield, licking it free of all the pumpkiny innards.
“Thanks.” I was feeling less and less nervous of the tiger by the second, even though I’d never heard of this J. Tumblerpond person.
“My pleasure,” purred the big cat, before crunching on a few stray pumpkin seeds.
“Wait a minute, Princess, don’t get so friendly so quick,” Tuni squawked. “Don’t you want to find out what this tiger did with the old buri?” The bird stuck out a wing in accusation. “Fess up, Professor Bunty, did you chomp her down like a bowl of kitty kibble?”
“Chomp the old woman? How erroneous!” Bunty protested. “You are quite convinced I am carnivorous, aren’t you? So prepared to prejudge! So ready to reduce me to a stereotype! From where does this tremendous terror against tigers come if not from imposed colonial constructs?”
I was starting to trust Bunty more, but was still confused. “If you didn’t eat her, where is she? What did you do with her?”
“Veritably, I’ve done nothing with her!” the tiger said. “I was just telling you that, yes, I had threatened her a bit, to keep up the pretense of my vicious reputation. And then, this morning, a few moments after I saw her daughter sneaking her into the pumpkin, voilà! I suddenly found myself vaulted with great velocity into that selfsame vegetable!”