Tigers - The Pride of India

Tigers, the Pride of India
Hello, my name is Roy Fallon and I live in Manchester, England.
Since I was a 9 year old kid, the greatest passion in my life has been for my beautiful wild tigers.
Thats a passion that has endured for 45 years.
The spark was lit by a teacher at my junior school.
This great guy was known to all the kids as Mr. Prince.
He had travelled all over the World in the 1940's and 50's.
He had been to all the exotic places that most people, could only ever dream about, even in this day and age of cheap fast and convenient internet booked flights to all corners of the globe.
Mr. Prince was probably the most interesting person that has ever come into my life.
He was actually the school headmaster.
All week, I used to look forward to Friday afternoons, when Mr. Prince would come into our classroom and all the kids would gather around and sit cross legged on the wooden floor, whilst he told us another story about the adventures he had experiencced during his travels around the World.
He told us stories of his encounters with lions, leopards, elephants, rhino, gorillas and many more wonderfully fantastic creatures.
One day in particular, he told us about a place called Ranthambhore.
Ranthambhore was a magical forest in Rajasthan, India.
He had met many tigers in that faraway place and he told us of one partuicular female tiger and how he had seen her daily struggle to bring up her 2 cubs.
45 years later, I can remember that story as if it had been told to me yesterday and I hope that later on in this blog, I will write it down and hope that some other kid can gain from it what I did.
Enough here to say that the story was related to us in such a powerful and descriptive manner that it is still so fresh in my mind.
I still now see the same picture in my minds eye as I did then.
A forest lush and green that smelled sweet and was filled with animals,birds and reptiles of many different kinds.
But most of all, striding gracefully through this beautiful place, I can see that tigress and her cubs.
That day the 9 year old kid that was me, learned about how emotions can change and lift or lower your spirits in an instant.
I experienced absolute joy as Mr. Prince told us about how the tiger mother gave birth to her 2 cubs and then, over the weeks, how they grew but I felt my throat close up and my eyes filled with tears as one of the cubs died when its mother was away hunting and a wild boar chanced upon it.
Then more joy as it was made clear that the other cub survived, only to feel the sorrow of the mother as she spent the next 15 days searching for her lost baby.
In the end, it became a tragic tale as the mother also lost her life at the claws and teeth of a rogue male tiger.
I dont want to tell any more details of this story just yet, becasue if I do write it later in the blog it will have lost many of its surprises.
Well, when Mr. Prince had finished his Friday afternoon stories he always read us a poem.
These poems were not always related to the story he had just told us, they were usually just to inspire our young minds but after the Ranthambhore Tiger story he read the wonderful poem - The Tiger, by William Blake.
Wow.. I had never heard such a thing..
I immediately had an interpretation of this poem in my mind.
For those of you who have never seen or heard of this poem, here it is.

The Tiger

TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer?

what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil?

What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?



William Blake was born in London in 1757 and died in August 1827 .

He lived a very eventful and creative life.

He was an extremely religious individual and would never have done or said anything that could ever be construed as blasphemous, yet - when he saw a tiger for the very first time, he is reported to have said..."when God made this creature, he surpassed even his own brilliance.

Blake's poem seemed like a gateway into the World of the tiger for me and for many many years I lived with the vision of the constantly dark Indian forests full of those fire filled tiger eyes.



From the day I heard that story and poem, I was hooked on tigers.

I became almost obsessed with the tiger.

I read as many books about them as I could.

I mithered the lady who ran the local library, every day to tell me if any new tiger books came in.

I fell asleep at night imagining that there was a tiger watching over me throughout the nights.

My mother became so worried about my passion that she actually talked with the family doctor about it.

He reassured her that I was just a young lad who was going through a phase and it would pass soon enough.

Well he was wrong, it wasn't a phase and it did not pass.

The spark that had been ignited by that wonderful teacher turned into a bright blazing flame that stays burning still bright to this day.

I was about 11 years old when I first realised that it was really true that tigers were killed for -"sport????" by - "civilised gentry????"

Indeed, it was in the 60's when the Queen of England's husband, Philip, was the last person to "legally" kill a tiger and that was in Ranthambhore.

Well he is not worth further mentionin my blog, after doing such a thing.

For sure, he could never be as great a man as that wonderful teacher that changed the path of my destiny and still touches my soul so many years later.

We all have those life changing moments in our lives and I know that hearing Mr. Prince tell us that story and that poem was the greatest life changing moment in my life.

Mr. Prince will be long gone from this life now but he will always have my greatest respect and admiration.



As I grew up through my teens I had one burning desire and that was to go to Ranthambhore and see my beautiful tigers in the wild forest there.

I now thought of the tigers there as my tigers, as I would think of my brother as - my brother.

My education at secondary school suffered greatly as I was the favourite subject of just about every bully boy at the school.

My time at that school can only be described as horrible.

The other kids thought I was a bit of a soft arse, cos I was so passionate about something other than football.

I took up boxing and I was very good at it.

At the boxing club, I met another great influence in my life.

His name was Brian Hughes and he was our trainer.

He tyaught me that aggression should be controlled and that fighting was something that should be kept in the ring.

I learned discipline and self control

I also knew that I could kick the living shit out of any one of those bully boys.

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that, once they learned I was a practising and accomplished boxer, they would leave me alone?

Wrong...the bullying got worse.

They knew that I wouldnt fight back and they preyed on me.

Well eventually school was over and at 14 years of age I started work on a local farm.

I wasn't much good for anything else.

I had no qualifications from my awful schooldays and my only ambition was to see Ranthambhore.

After 1 year I left the farm and went to work for Dew Group Ltd, a medium sized Civil Engineering and Construction company.

During my time at that company I learned the meaning of pain and suffering.

At 16 years of age I was working in all weathers and with every kind of men imaginable.

From great and morally upstanding types to out and out vicious drunks that used to drink their weekly wage away before they even got home and beat up their poor wives, on a Thursday night.

At 16 I also got a weekend job.

I became the youngest doorman (or bouncer as the title wne in those days) in Manchester.

I was wearing a evening suit and bow tie and standing on the doors of the Sinatras Night Club on Manchester Road, Failsworth.

I can tell you I saw just about everything that life can throw at you over the next few years, whilst working on that door.

Gangsters flashing shoulder holsters filled with automatic pistols, teddy boy types with 8 inch knives tucked in their waistbelts, prostitutes.

I saw one guy get shot through his neck, countless stabbings and glassings but I loved every minute of it.

When I was 18 I met some Hells Angels in a place called the 10-10 cafe in Manchester City Centre.

They were excellent guys and I was fascinated by their way of life, which I very quickly adopted.

By the time I was 20 I had left Sinatras and I was riding a Triumph 650cc Trophy Motorcycle.

I was wearing Hells Angels on my back and I was the wildest of a very wild bunch.

As you can imagine the police were drawn to me like shit sticks to a blanket.

I was so crazy in those days, I was given the nickname, Animal, by the rest of the Hells Angels.

Even my mother knew me by that name, when the guys came to my house they used to ask her " is Animal home?" when she answered the door.

The cops also knew me by that name and they made sure that the magistartes and judges got to hear of it during the many many prosecutions they faced me with.

You can imagine, "yes M'Lud he is known by the name Animal....".

The arseholes just found me guilty on that evidence alone...ces't la vie.

Anyway, thorughout all of this my desire to see my tigers in Ranthambhore was still just as strong as ever.

I just never got the money together, the life I lead kept the courts coffers filled with the bulk of my wages.

As the years flew by, I got up to all sorts of things, I was involved with the biker lifestyle for many many years, and still am to some extent.

I spent 12 years as a bodyguard and worked for some major celebrity types,not many of whom left a good impression on me or earned my slightest respect.

I started off looking after strippers on the Manchester and North West of England circuits then moved on to major performers and rock bands as diverse as Michael Jackson and Iron Maiden, John Denver and AC/DC.

I earned a lot of money in those days and bought my house, where I still live today, with it.

Eventually I got married, got divorced and then got married again, had my beautiful daughter and then got divorced, brought my daughter up and worked every single day at the same time.

There are lots more aspects to my life, so diverse and crazy, such as spending 3 years working with the Scorpion Militia of Serbia against the KLA invaders.

It was during this time that I totally lost all interest in Human things.

I realised that, what is important to most people is just trivial to me.

Eventually I made it to Ranthambhore and that is where the real story of my life starts.