Leopard Legend | Kavitha Rath

My father’s brother,
a lawyer by trade,
used to hunt in the dry tropical forests
outside a small panchayat town
in the northeast corner of Tamil Nadu,
where Tippu Sultan once fought, but failed
to hold back the rising tide of direct rule.

My uncle marched through the short shrubs
and thorny forests by the Kaveri River
in search of deer and rabbits.
My family still keeps
a white-spotted deer skin
sprawled over the couch in our basement.

According to Pennagaram town locals,
the neighboring village once
asked him to kill a man-eating leopard.
He hid in the trees, aloft night after night
to match eyes with the invisible terror.

My uncle sent the hide up north
for curing and tanning.
The skin never returned,
instead declared “irrevocably damaged.”

I remember his cat,
white-faced with yellow-gold markings.
It sat curled upon the desk,
crumpling the legal papers with bared claws,
displaying its fangs in a lazy yawn,
its fire-gold eyes joyfully squinting at me.

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Indian Review | Author Profile | Kavitha Rath has lived in Atlanta, Chennai, and London, and is currently in Washington, DC. In the past, she received an honorable mention in Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize contest and recognition from the Georgia Poetry Society. Her poetry has appeared on New Asian Writing. 

Kavitha Rath has lived in Atlanta, Chennai, and London, and is currently in Washington, DC. In the past, she received an honorable mention in Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize contest and recognition from the Georgia Poetry Society. Her poetry has appeared on New Asian Writing.