The Mild Tiger And The Wild Men Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

A Tiger's Walk-out from the Zoo
I am the Royal Bengal Tiger, ‘Nethra'
survived for two years in the Vandalur Zoo
eating silently the rotten meat meagre.
To entertain the adults and scare the young ones,
some anti-socials kidnapped me from the forests
where I inherited a vast range of home
for roaming and harming the deers and goats
and brought here, ‘ the Vandalur Zoo' in Chennai.
How long can I lie down being lazy and lousy?
I staged a walk-out from the zoo
by leaping over the fence
and swimming across the moat to do penance
in the cool retreat of a bush..
I didn't demand freebies from the keeper
and I never grabbed the lands of the weak.
I never sought the help of leading lawyers
as I didn't want to go out on bail.
The terrorists have copied my art of killing
and so I don't bite the neck these days and slit.
See, the elephants are at large along the ghats
destroy the crops and crush the farmers in a flash.
Though my kin are ill-mannered and violent,
I never touched anyone in this outing.
But the workers of the zoo kept a bait
and lured me into the cabin for a bite.