Dancing Tiger

Performers painted like tigers and hunters dance to drumbeats on the fourth day of Onam, an annual harvest festival of Kerala. Dancing Tiger Many farms have been buried, yet the harvest fest is dazzling. He’s one among the hundreds of human tigers in the street. A coat of varnish and tempera powder conceals his skin. Pain, paint odor, itch…he endures. Drumbeats begin. He pounces, shaking his hippo-belly. A tumor also dances like death. His fatigue and nausea vanish in the artistic fervor. There’re hunters with bows and arrows, dancing around him. As night grows, waves of music abate to end. Spectators go home with the stars. Now he sits in sweat under the bare sky. First published in Typehouse Literary Magazine