content warning: violence, blood, death
There’s no easy way to say this. The tiger threat was real.
We hypothesized about it plenty on the bus ride to the airport, but then the flights were cancelled and we had to turn around. “The city is positively infested,” the guesthouse management informed, with a sorry smile.
“Don’t tigers usually stay in the woods?” someone asked.
“These are very special tigers,” the management replied. “They’re very metropolitan.”
Two days later, the lead trombone of our orchestra, Anand, slammed both fists on the lunch table and shouted at the principal viola, Lata.
“There are no tigers!” he berated, in a passionate tenor. “It’s all a hoax.”
Lata left in tears. Afterwards, the second violin Pihu pinched my elbow during dinner. “Turns out—” she said, “there are twice as many tigers in the nearby forest than we previously thought.”
“How did we go from no tigers to double tigers?”
Pihu rolled her eyes. “Use your critical thinking skills. Why are we stuck here if there are no tigers?”
“I don’t know.” A shrug escaped me. “Maybe the government wants to take us hostage. To keep an eye on us.”
I didn’t really believe what I was saying, but it was enjoyable to speculate nonetheless.
After the dining room drama, two coalitions quickly formed. The first was “Anand’s Company” consisting the flutes, cornets, and trombones. The second, “Lata’s Lot”, roped in all the bowed string instruments and half the percussionists. There remained a few undecided players as well, of which the oboes and clarinets were particularly volatile.
The consequent split caused our entire orchestra to become pitchy, and people stopped sharing tables during mealtimes, started travelling in small and moody cliques. A relentless campaign soon carried from the two parties, to brand the independents and convert them. I experienced it myself when a born-again saxophone, Ruben, cornered me in the library one afternoon.
“We’ve found a way to escape,” he spat, into the mouthpiece of my ear.
“Escape to where?” I enquired. “I don’t believe in the afterlife.”
“No,” he shoved. “From the guesthouse. We found a way out.”
“Why, Ruben? Where are you so urgently needed?”
Ruben returned a look of blank idiocy. He’d forgotten his talking points all of a sudden.
“Think with your critical mind,” I said. “What are you running back to? Your dinners, your haircuts, your shitty dating life?”
“Please—” the saxophonist choked, raising his palm and turning away. “Don’t get existential with me, I can’t handle it.”
Three months trickled on, and there was no respite from the threat. My tedium led me to Anand’s headquarters one evening, in the billiards room of the guesthouse.
“Well?” I crossed my arms. “I thought you raconteurs had devised an escape plan.”
They had resorted to cutting their hair over a sink in a rage, and resembled a band of amateur pianists – all thumbs.
To Lata’s chamber the next day, I lamented, “We’re never getting out of here, are we?”
Her group on the other hand, had begun knitting sweaters and fermenting bread, both skills (and eventual objects) incompatible with any need or desire the coalition truly possessed. The primary desire was to escape desire, they said, to which I replied, “Don’t get all existential on me, I can’t handle it.”
Lata, wearing a hand-stitched onesie, wiped away crumbs of sourdough from her lips. Her eyes glimmered. “The guesthouse management is working on a solution. Can’t you exercise patience?”
“Well, according to Anand—” I replied instinctually, avoiding her gaze, “the only viable course of action is to face the tigers directly. We can’t hide in here forever.”
Afterwards, our conductress Mrs. Shah found me at the fireplace. In a solemn voice, she confessed, “If we tackle the tiger outbreak head-on, some of us won’t make it. We must think of the less-fortunate, the vulnerable sections of society.”
I examined Mrs. Shah carefully, her eyes aglow with concern. She was our empathy – the bacteria in our sourdough starter, the common thread holding all our discord together.
One of Anand’s bassoons, a petulant over-achiever named Hiten, fled the guesthouse that very night. He moved fast, but stopped short at a patch of ominous forest and unnerved himself. He retreated at pace, bringing a pair of tigers back with him. The trio together created a huge bellowing ruckus, and our young ensemble went to the windows to watch Hiten ascend the driveway, arms flailing.
To my surprise, two of his allies, Cyrus and Faiza, rushed out to defend his honor. From the second floor, I looked down at their tiny faces, and for a moment construed the renegades as appearing quite content, despite the mortal danger they faced. The three dashed, danced, reveled in the openness of human experience – the cold breath in their lungs. That is, until, Cyrus got his leg stuck in a tiger’s teeth.
They were going to bring the wounded indoors at first, but someone suggested the blood would attract other tigers, and also be a chore to clean. It was a quick denouement for poor Cyrus, but Anand didn’t detest the fatal outcome for too long.
“At least he had purpose,” the lead trombone sermonized, at twilight. “And isn’t that what all life boils down to? Dying with a purpose?”
I glanced next to him, where Ruben the saxophonist was standing. He met my gaze and winked. It was tawdry of him to involve me at such a moment, but also, it felt nice to be acknowledged.
After Cyrus’s unlikely ascension, Mrs. Shah sat us all down and forbade us to venture out of the guesthouse.
“We must all support each other,” she warned. “Learn to work together.”
Everyone nodded diligently, contemplated her words over lunch, and then both gangs harmonized to detain the dear lady and lock her up in a bedroom. It was too reactionary maybe, but I’d never really associated with the conductress’ values and to overstep now would be destructive to my perception of self, so I didn’t intervene.
“Now that she’s out of the way,” I addressed the impetuous Faiza, “what’s your next move?”
“We wanted to kidnap the guesthouse management,” she answered, matter-of-factly. “But turns out, they left the premises a while ago.”
I expected chaos to succeed Anand’s Company, once Mrs. Shah was dispatched. Instead, one of Lata’s clique, a mousy marimba called Bobby, discovered a supply of crossbows in the attic, along with a chest of arrows.
“We can finally defend ourselves!” he effused, eyes twinkling. “We can kill the tigers and eat them, and make ourselves stronger.”
Bobby’s suggestion made us all temporarily excited, but the crescendo was short-lived. Hearing the idea, opposition frontman Anand clicked his tongue gravely and announced, “No can do. Our crew is strictly vegetarian. We can’t put anything foreign or dead in our body.”
At this, a few players recalled an instance a year ago, where Anand had devoured a whole platter of mutton sliders, following one of our recitals.
“That meat was processed,” the trombone refuted, wiping away a lick of drool. “Processed meat is practically vegetarian.”
This leap of logic landed perfectly with his target, and the matter was clumsily settled. Lata’s Lot sanctioned themselves the repository of crossbows and half the windows of the guesthouse, and the hunting spree began.
No tigers were harmed in the aftermath, because the opening night of the hunt, Anand’s brass muscle overpowered Lata’s chamber in their ramparts and wrestled the weapons away, by force.
“You’re threatening our safety!” the attackers cried.
“But we’re not going to harm you!” Lata cried. “We just want to defend ourselves!”
The tussle lasted a while, until the meat-eating vegetarians prevailed. All crossbows and arrows were confiscated. The next morning, the distinct and heavy scent of animal fur infiltrated the windows of the guesthouse. I sat up in bed and saw a tiger sitting on a tufted armchair, next to the corpse of one of my friends, a clarinet.
“Don’t worry,” the tiger spoke, registering my alarm. “I’m not here to harm you. I just came for your friend over here. Funny how that works, right?”
I smiled weakly from fear, and my good, goddamned luck.
Over the next week, a den of tigers splashed against the guesthouse. More each day, hanging from trees, rolling in the mud, clawing at the windows.
To safeguard themselves, Lata’s crew huddled together in one room. At night, I overheard the abrupt crash of cymbals and broken strings: a sound so screeching and cacophonous, that it subdued any trace of human revolt. By dawn the feline outbreak had climbed in through the chimneys, the windows, the doorways. All the paths of entry were swung wide open; the fresh air was suffocating.
I walked into the dining room and observed Anand, blood-speckled, lunching with the memory of our former cohort. A pungent odor—entrails of civility—swirled beyond the window, where Lata and the others had lain some time ago. They were gone.
“The tigers…” I began.
“It was all a hoax,” Anand attested, with a painted-on smirk. He met my eyes dead center. “There was no orchestra here to begin with. But you and I have known that all along... Haven’t we?”
2026