Bukittinggi Tiger
Original Textile Art. 42" x 42"
Bukittinggi is a village in West Sumatra where traditional houses are built with curved roofs. My friend Mida comes from that area and told me this story about the village tiger:
One day a man who is a woodcutter goes into the jungle to get some sticks for the fires and also wood to build houses. It is very nice in the jungle so he doesn’t pay attention to the time. The woodcutter gets lost and falls asleep. The tiger carries him back to his bed when nobody can see. When the woodcutter wakes up the tiger tracks are in his house.
Some people in my village say that if a tiger from another village comes to kill a cow or a water buffalo there is an old tiger we call grandma who keeps on making a lot of noise. The tiger from the other village is scared and goes away. We hear all that noise and we say that’s okay. That’s just grandma scaring a bad tiger away. It was grandma who took care of the woodcutter.