Creating a fairer Britain
Once upon a time there was a tiger cub called Bachaa. Bachaa grew up in the slow green of India’s forests. He lived only with his mother, for he had no brothers or sisters - his father having left them as a child. Bachaa and his mother were happy though, for sweet India loved them. In summer heats, India would cool Bachaa with Monsoon showers, and warm him with soft sun light. She hid him in pools of shadow, and provided for him and delighted him with butterflies and the sweet airs of wind moving over the land.
Bachaa's mother would whisper to him, "Oh son, you are mine and your fathers’ joy. Your coat is more lustrous than the brightest of midsummer days, your stripes deeper than the moonless night. Your teeth sharper than the winters winds, claws keener than man’s flint."
Bachaa played in the boughs of trees centuries old, swiping at the fireflies that hung lazily in the air. He’d follow the secret paths of the forest, walking its arteries, learning its skin, following it to its heart. Lost in his home, he would silently watch the moon, as big as the sky, and wish the night never to cease.
One day, his mother was happy again.
"Oh son" she said, "Happy happy day! Your father has returned, and wants us to move out to him - to the bay of Swansea shore. What do you think my young Bachaa? Oh happy happy day!"
Upon seeing his mother’s fierce mirth, Bachaa grinned. 'We will live with dragons, and see who is the mightier! To Swansea we must sail.' A short week later, the tiger and her cub were boarding a silver bird with iron wings. People were inside, dressed in suits and ties despite the sweltering heat. As the bird roared into life, Bachaa looked back on vast India. The sky was dyed red in the sun fall, its hills black against the dying light. He thought of his mothers smile, and he said a silent goodbye to India.
He did not look back upon his home land again.
Bachaa did not like flying. Willingly submitting to be eaten by a bird of prey, no matter how temporary, was against his nature. The sky, so distant in the heaven, now rolled out beneath him, and his stomach rolled over them too.
Upon landing he stretched out his paws on the foreign concrete of Cardiff, and sniffed at the air. The flag on the airport showed a crimson dragon, emblazoned on a field of green and white. It was the only colour Bachaa could see. He wondered whether the British had lay concrete over their sky and bathed their skins in it to blend in, aiding them in the hunt. Although his fur violently marked him apart, he walked through the city anonymous, and unnoticed.
The few dragons he saw were as grey and desolate as the sunless sky. He had no desire to test himself against them, for he felt too sorry for himself to try. The concrete hurt his paws, and cut into his knife edge claws. He was hungry, and felt the gnawing ache for India's heat.
"Ah my happy happy soul, there is my Baagh!” Bachaa’s father said, “My how you have grown. So big and handsome, just like your dear father."
Bachaa noticed his fathers’ skin was laden with the heavy grey of the British sky. His pupils swam milky white. He wore a shirt that covered most of his markings; the few tufts of hair that did show through were dyed to dirty beige. The fur around his cheeks and hands was finely trimmed, and neatly combed. His stomach rolled over his belt; his chin bulged over his collar and shook slightly when he spoke.
"You must be hungry my son,” His chin wobbled. “Travelling such a long long way here. I have made you this."
He gave Bachaa a plate thickly laid with yellow fish and chips. The smell stuck to his fur and to the back of his palate. The small fish was grey, and the chips sagged when he speared them with his claw.
"No son, we're in Swansea now.” Bachaa’s father interrupted, “We must use these instead."
Between his paws, Bachaa's father held a thin silver knife and fork. He saw his fathers’ claws. They had become dull, filed away to look like fingers. Bachaa hated him. Not for the fork, or the fish, or his shirt. Bachaa hated him for taking India away.
Each day, Bachaa would explore the city, and find something new to hate. In the forest, he had a thousand hidden places, shadows in trees, and caves in green in which to stalk, rivers in which he could play. But here, in Swansea, there is only concrete, lights, and people. The days didn't differ much from the night, and Bachaa missed the stars. The people were all alike, even the dragons too. They were all fragile ill things that kept to themselves, head down, silently walking past each other.
He missed the taste of lamb gosht, licked from his fingers, and then cleaned from the specks that had matted in his fur. He could feel his claws crack with each step he took on concrete, his eyes dulling in the turpentine light. Bachaa’s head hurt from trying to speak human. There was nothing to hunt. Everything had been killed, and then frozen in awkward boxes to eat at leisure.
The concrete jungle of people, lights, frozen boxes and buildings mapped out a maze which he had no map for. He longed for green that wasn’t beyond the distant mountains. For a forest that wasn’t locked behind bars. Bachaa picked up his nose and scented the salt in the air. Staring out over the vast ocean, Bachaa felt as he had done in India, looking up at the impossibly large moon.
The sky and the sea wed in grey. Bachaa pricked his ears to the ocean. The sound of mighty waves gently lapping at the sand soothed him. He sank his claws into the sand, and drew circles and lines into it. He tired spelling out his name in English - but he could not recall the symbols.
The tiny tiger cub strode to the water’s edge, and stooped low as if to spring at the water like prey. The water ran toward him, and he sprung backward. The little cub had peered into the water, and didn’t believe what he had seen. Briskly climbing the few rocks that littered the periphery of the beach, he found a standing pool of water into which to look.
In the reflection, he saw three things. He saw himself, which he knew to be true – a tiger with a large orange face, scored with black markings, with a white chin. He also saw a boy with dark rings of shadow around his eyes, with thin shivering arms.
But he also saw something in his reflection he had never seen before. The fur on his face had thinned to scales. The claws on his hand had been sanded thinner, to a razor sharp dexterousness. His tongue had become long and serpentine. The inferno of his fur had been dyed the crimson of the flag’s dragon.
The Tiger
The Boy
The Dragon.
Which was he? The cold wind passed over him. Bachaa did not shiver - India’s heat burned in his gut. He could now pick out the stars beyond the clouds, for now he had wings to fly beyond them. He would hunt the shrimp of the sea, and the birds in the sky, and all in between.
He leapt off the rock and did not land, instead taking to the sky beyond the clouds. His own tongue failed to express what colour the sky was now; his borrowed language however, had taught him such a word.
Porffor. Purple.
Bachaa lived happily ever after, between the moon of India, and the Porffor of Swansea bay.