A Girl, a Tiger and a Very Strange Story

A Girl, a Tiger and a Very Strange Story begins slowly. We see Junglee, a wild child. She is faster than all the others, and she can’t sit still—except when the stillness comes over her.

As I turned the first few pages, I wondered where the book would take me. Once I got into Junglee’s world, though, there was no stopping me. I was moved to tears more than once as I marvelled at Paro Anand’s magnificent writing and Priya Kuriyan’s exquisite art. The book is a stunning read that beautifully reflects the wonder of the world around us.

Told from two perspectives—that of Junglee, a Pardhi girl, and Raunaq, a tiger cub—A Girl, a Tiger and a Very Strange Story plays with form beautifully. Words tell Junglee’s story, while pictures tell Raunaq’s. The way the two are woven together is simply gorgeous.

I do wish, though, that the pattern had been retained right through! In the third part of the book, we suddenly read Raunaq’s thoughts, which threw me off as a reader. In every instance where words, rather than pictures, tell us of Raunaq’s thoughts, I was a little disturbed even though the story as a whole gripped me.

Learning about the Pardhi people through the fictional Junglee, reflecting on moral ambiguity, and realising yet again that the world is a lot more complex than we believe it to be was a humbling experience. As I read this book, I noticed a recurrent theme that I mentioned recently when reviewing Banian Buddies—that caring for nature seems to be instilled into us to a much greater degree than caring for people who are practically invisible to us. I love how gently the subject is addressed here, showing us that taking the moral high ground is unfair when we know nothing of a lived reality.

A Girl, a Tiger and a Very Strange Story is the stuff legends are made of, the kind of story that instills hope and faith. It left me wishing for a safer, better world for all those who live here—tigers and humans alike. It mixes the fantastical and the real in the best possible way, making us ache for more, even as we turn the last page.