The counterfeit tiger

She dug out some tiger claws and teeth and, proffering them for a closer look, said: "If you’re interested, I also have a tiger skin with me." I couldn’t believe my ears. The trade in tiger skins is something you read about in the papers or see on television. You don’t expect it to enter your home.

She laid out the tiger skin, smoothed out the folds and looked expectantly at us.The tiger would probably have been a year old when he met his end. "How much?" my friend asked. "Only four thousand," she replied. "These claws (she held two aloft) can be worn on your chest like this." She joined them at the root so that their tips pointed in opposite directions.

I looked hard at her and asked, "Don’t you feel bad about selling tiger skins?" She cast her eyes down for a moment. Then, meeting mine, she replied that she had to make a living. "So you extinguish one life in order to support another one," I said with some sarcasm. "Where do you come from, and where do you get these skins and claws?" I persisted. She said she got them from a forest tract near Mysore, where the tribals kill tigers and sell their skins.

"You shouldn’t be doing this," I moralised. "It’s against the law." "Take the skin if you want to," she countered, neatly sidestepping the issue. I could see it would be pointless to sermonise on the fragility of the eco-system. More drastic action was called for. "Do you workalone?" I asked. "No, we are in a group," she replied readily. "We stay on the maidan at Maphusa."

"Do people here in Goa buy these skins?" I asked. "Not much. People here are afraid. But yes, the rich do buy skins to display on their walls. You too can hang this one on your wall."

"I have elephant tusks with me. I’ll give you one for ten thousand," she offered. More raised eyebrows. "But aren’t you scared of the police nabbing you with all this illegal merchandise?" I asked. "Yes, I am. Who isn’t?" The last question seemed to have shaken her. She hurried out to her accomplices, who had been waiting outside. It is usually difficult to get through to the authorities on a Sunday but V. T. Thomas, the Deputy Conservator (Wildlife) for Goa came on the line. He lamented the shortage of staff his department was suffering from, but he promised to deploy his men at Maphusa.

Later that afternoon I met Jagdish, a friend keen on wildlife, and told him of the woman with the tiger skin. He immediately described thepeddlers to me, and all the descriptions fitted. "These people had approached you?" I asked. "Yes, I’ve seen them," said Jagdish, grinning. "But more interestingly, there’s this person who was approached by these people and was terribly excited because he’d managed to bargain hard and buy a tiger skin for eight thousand, down from an initial price of forty thousand."

"But a few days later he called up, a disappointed man, to say that the stripes on the skin, which occupied premium space on his wall, were fading away. They had sold him the skin of a cow cleverly dyed with tiger stripes and now, it’s become the standing joke of the locality."

Sure, it’s a scam, but these peddlers might be doing the Royal Bengal tiger a good turn by making prospective buyers wary. No demand, no supply.