Shall I Show You My Real Face?

In the final story in the 'What The Folk' series, read a folktale from Tamil Nadu, which takes you through an incredible story of a tiger married to a human.

Shall I show you my real face. Illustrated by Gowri Suresh, Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

Folktales talk about all kinds of family relations—not only of affection but of betrayal, jealousy, and even cruelty, making them a potent source of psychoanalytic insight. These family ties are mostly those of inter-gender relationships—brother-sister, father-daughter, mother-son, husband-wife, and so on. The Tamil kin nucleus as evidenced in Tamil literature consists of a woman as well as her father, brother, husband, or her son. There is always some male relative that poses a problem or a solution to a Tamil woman. Read this ancient poem that talks of brothers becoming a thorn in the side of a young girl anxiously waiting for her beloved.

With sumptuous cool moist shadow

like thickened darkness

amidst white sands

like gathered moonlight,

the lovely grove

of black-branched punnai trees

is alone.

Still he does not come,

But the boats

of my brothers

hunting many fish

are drawing near.

It is interesting, then, that in some of the other stories, where good mothers die and continue to provide for their children in another form or wicked stepmothers who starve and beat their children, were obviously symbolic to get the listener and the teller to explore their own lives and recognize and articulate any such challenges and perhaps even resolve them. One such symbol is that of animal husbands.

A fierce tiger had somehow acquired the art of changing his form, and he wanted very much to marry a Brahmin wife. Though he liked his meat and couldn't live without it, he loved the smell and taste of food cooked by Brahmins, even though it was vegetarian. So, one day, he took on the shape of a learned young Brahmin who could recite the Ramayana and went to the door of a Brahmin family. The family invited him in with great respect and fed him sumptuous meals of rice and curried vegetables and mango pickles and yoghurt. The tiger didn't take long to express his interest in marrying the daughter of the family. The family admired the learned Brahmin's voice and his knowledge of Sanskrit, and they were delighted. The wedding was arranged quickly, as the son-in-law seemed to be in a hurry and didn't have any family of his own to invite. A few days later, the son-in-law said he should return to his home beyond the jungle and asked permission to take his new bride with him.

The bride’s old father readily agreed and said, 'Son-in-law, sir, you are her husband and she is all yours. We have brought her up lovingly. Sending her away is like sending her into the wilderness, but I know you'll take good care of her.' The son-in-law left the very next day. His mother-in-law prepared all sorts of sweets and cakes for her daughter and her new husband. To ward off any lurking demons, she put a couple of neem leaves in each bundle of food and in the hair of her innocent daughter, as she blessed the young couple and tearfully bade them farewell.

On the way, everything went well and they had a pleasant journey. But any time the girl wanted to sit down near a pond or under a tree to rest, the son-in-law would get angry and say, 'Will be quiet and come along, or shall I show you my real face?'

Though she didn't understand what he was saying, she felt the menace in his voice and manner. So she went meekly along till she came to another pond or tree and felt like resting, and he said again, 'Will you be quiet and come with me, or shall I show you my real face?'

After hearing this for a while, and not particularly liking the change that was coming over her husband as they entered deep into the woods, she said to him, 'All right, show me your real face!'

As soon as she said that, her husband was transformed. Four legs, black stripes all over a long yellow body, and a whiskered tiger's face confronted her. This was a tiger, and not a man! And it said, 'Your husband is a tiger. Never forget it. We'll reach home very soon. I'll bring you everything you need, vegetables, rice, spices, and some meat for myself. Cook and keep house for me. But don't you disobey me, ever!'

They lived together as husband and wife in a proper house in the middle of a jungle, and she even had a son, who was a tiger cub. But she was miserable. She hadn't bargained for a life with a mean meat-eating tiger who brought home organs and entrails day in, day out. As she was crying all alone in the house one day, a crow happened to come down to peck at some grains of rice. He noticed the crying girl and asked her what the matter was. The girl told the crow her story and asked it if it would take a letter for her. The crow said, 'Yes, anything to help you.'

The girl brought out a palmyra leaf and wrote a letter with an iron nail describing her misery in the woods and begging her brothers to come and rescue her. She tied this palmyra leaf to the neck of the crow, who flew to the village and landed in front of her brothers. They noticed the leaf around its neck, untied it, and read the letter. There were three of them and they set out at once, guided by the crow.

As they entered the jungle, they saw a stray donkey. The youngest brother, who was a bit lame, was also quite playful. He wanted to take the donkey along. His brothers argued over it for a while, but the youngest brother took the animal along anyway.

Further on, they saw a big black ant, the biting kind, and the middle brother took it along in a coconut shell. Nearby there was also a big palmyra tree lying on the ground, and the eldest took it with him. It might come in handy when they fought the tiger, he thought.

It was already noon, and they had nothing to eat. So they sat near a pond and drank up practically all the water. When they were about to leave, they found a washerman's vat, round as a fat man's belly, and they took that along with them.

They soon reached their sister's house, and the sister welcomed them.

'I'm so glad you've come,' she said, 'but the tiger will be here any minute. Go hide in the loft, and when he goes out again, we'll plan the next thing to do.'

She helped them get up into the loft, which they did with their belongings, the ant, the donkey, the palmyra trunk, and the washerman's vat. When the tiger returned, he sniffed all around and said, 'I smell human smells!'

His wife said, 'Of course, what do you expect? You married a human girl!'

'I know your smell. This is different,' he said. He was hungry and wanted to be fed the Brahmin food she had made for him. Just as she served him rice on a banana leaf, the lame youngest brother in the loft whispered, 'I need to pee. I can't hold it any longer.' The eldest said, 'Then go, but don't make any noise.' And he did, and his piss fell right onto the rice on the tiger's leaf.

'What's that?' said the tiger, suspiciously.

'Oh, that? I left some ghee in a pot in the loft and it must have toppled over,' said the wife.

After a little while, the youngest brother said, 'I've got to shit. What shall I do?'

The eldest brother said, 'All right, go ahead.'

And the youngest brother did, and it fell right onto the tiger's leaf. The tiger roared, 'What's this? It looks like shit!'

His wife said, 'Don't say ugly things when you're eating. That's just some mashed lentils I cooked and put up in the loft. Some cat or something is playing up there.'

The tiger ate it all up, thinking it was some kind of tovaiyal, a dish of cooked, mashed, and spiced lentils.

Suddenly, he heard a big voice say from the loft, 'Tiger, your time is up. I'm your brother-in-law up here. I want to eat you up.'

The tiger, taken aback, looked up and said, 'Where are you?'

'Up here! Hear me roar!' said the eldest, while the youngest put the ant into the donkey's anus. When the ant bit the donkey, the donkey began to bray in the loudest possible voice. The tiger was terrified. 'Is that your voice? Show me your leg!' he said.

The eldest brother showed him the palmyra trunk, brandishing it from the loft. The tiger said, ‘Abba, I've never seen such a leg!'

Taking advantage of the tiger's fright, the middle brother said, 'Look at my belly! Big enough to hold you!' and showed him the washerman's vat.

The tiger shuddered and took to his heels, saying, 'Such a voice, such a stout leg, such a huge belly, I've never seen anything like it!' And he fled for his life.

It was dark by that time, and they wanted to return home while the tiger was still in a state of terror. So they quickly ate what little food was left and prepared to leave. The tiger cub was asleep. They wanted to get rid of it, so they cut it in two pieces and suspended them over the hearth, with a hot plate on the stove. And they made haste and ran, the three brothers and their sister, towards home.

The sister had bolted the front door of the house from inside, and they had left from the back door. As the pieces of the slain tiger cub began to drip blood over the hearth and onto the hot plate, it hissed and sputtered. When the tiger cautiously returned that night, found the front door locked, and heard the hiss and the sputter on the hot plate, he thought his wife was making dosai.

'So you've locked the door and you're making dosai for your brother! Let's see,' he said, tiptoeing around to the back of the house. As he entered, what did he see but his dear son sliced in two and hung over the hearth, his wife gone, and with her everything that the tiger had collected—all the finery from the travellers he had attacked and killed, rings and necklaces and silks and such.

The tiger grieved over the cruel death of his son and was furious at the treachery of his wife. He vowed revenge. He swore he would get her back and tear her to pieces as she had torn his son.

But how? He used the one magic trick he knew and assumed the shape of the Brahmin husband and made his way to his father-in-law's village. His wife and brothers-in-law saw him from a distance and were ready for him. As he came to the door, her parents welcomed him. The brothers-in-law also scurried here and there, serving him, bringing rice and vegetables and molasses for the feast. The tiger-Brahmin was very pleased with the hospitable welcome. He didn't see any brother-in-law who looked huge and terrifying and had a big harsh voice. The family were all small-boned and had soft voices.

Meanwhile, the eldest brother had spread some twigs and grass across the mouth of a disused well behind the house, and spread a fine silken mat over it. It is customary in such households to give the son-in-law an oil massage and a hot bath before dinner, and so his three brothers-in-law requested the tiger-Brahmin to take his seat on the lovely mat for the massage and the bath. As soon as he sat on it, the mat, and the twigs and the grass under it, gave way and sank under him. And down fell the tiger son-in-law into the well with a great crash. They filled the well with stones and rubbish, and that finished off the tiger.

This story is, in fact, told to explain the family proverb, 'Summa irukkiya,’ which literally translates to, 'Will you be quiet, or shall I show you my original shape?'

Incidentally, social stratification and the Hindu caste system also influence the character of Indian folklore. Members of poorer classes and lower castes have traditionally not had access to the formalised Sanskrit literature of the educated Brahmins, and have developed oral traditions of their own that sometimes mimic and sometimes parody that literature. The desire for upward social mobility is evident in these stories; however, it is a known fact that the imposition of the varnas and Manu’s laws on the Tamil population has been widely opposed.

Finally, marriage and love? Tamil has an ocean of songs in this genre! In fact, one of the two major classification of Sangam Tamil literature is 'Agam', which talks about pre-marital (Kalaviyal) and post-marital (Karpiyal) love.

Here is a song from Kurunthogai from 2nd century BCE, one of the eight anthologies of the Sangam literature, which talks about love and marriage. It is about a girl from rich family who fell for a boy from a humble background and eloped with him. Her mother's friend comes to visit her and sees the daughter cooking for her husband, the friend then describes this to the girl's mother, and this description is the actual song:

முளி தயிர் பிசைந்த காந்தள் மெல் விரல்,

கழுவுறு கலிங்கம், கழாஅது, உடீஇ,

குவளை உண்கண் குய்ப்புகை கழுமத்

தான் துழந்து அட்ட தீம் புளிப் பாகர்

''இனிது'' எனக் கணவன் உண்டலின்,

நுண்ணிதின் மகிழ்ந்தன்று ஒண்ணுதல் முகனே.

Muḷi tayir picainta kāntaḷ mel viral,

kaḻuvuṟu kaliṅkam, kaḻā'atu, uṭī'i,

kuvaḷai uṇkaṇ kuyppukai kaḻumat

tāṉ tuḻantu aṭṭa tīm puḷip pākar

''iṉitu'' eṉak kaṇavaṉ uṇṭaliṉ,

nuṇṇitiṉ makiḻntaṉṟu oṇṇutal mukaṉē.

She mashes thick curds

with her delicate fingers

that are like glory lily or kaantal flower petals,

and wipes them on her clothes

without washing them.

Smoke from her cooking spreads

and touches her eyes, lined with

kohl and looking like beautiful

waterlilies.

She cooked it all herself,

the sweet tamarind curry.

He ate it, saying it was tasty,

and she’s happy, very happy indeed.