“Ram Outwits Tiger: The Power of Performance”
Tiger (the leopard) encounters a strange creature he’s never seen before at a kraal and approaches submissively to ask its name. The creature strikes his breast and announces in a gruff voice, “I am Ram.” Tiger, terrified by this “terrible-looking fellow with a large and thick head,” flees home half-dead with fright. When Jackal hears the story, he laughs at Tiger’s foolishness—Ram is just meat waiting to be eaten! Tomorrow they’ll feast together.
But Ram, spotting the confederates approaching over the hill, knows this may be his last day. His wife, however, has a plan: “Take up the child in your arms and pinch it to make it cry as if it were hungry.” Jackal, anticipating Tiger’s cowardice, has tied them together with a leather thong to prevent retreat. It’s a fatal mistake.
As they approach, Ram cries out loudly while pinching his child, “You have done well, Friend Jackal, to have brought us Tiger to eat, for you hear how my child is crying for food!” The effect is instantaneous. Despite Jackal’s desperate pleas to stop, to let him loose, the terrified Tiger bolts—dragging his supposed ally over hills and valleys, through bushes and rocks, until he delivers them both home, Jackal half-dead from the journey.
A brilliant trickster tale where the seemingly defenseless Ram uses nothing but performance, psychology, and his wife’s quick thinking to transform predators into prey—at least in Tiger’s panicked imagination.
