[O]ne of the main things I remember [about my mother] now was this: she wanted to go and see a tiger when she was eight months pregnant and my father said: “That’s funny that you want to go and see a tiger at this advanced stage of pregnancy”. But she said: “No, I must go and see a tiger”. And so my father was a big well-known hunter in those days and one of the rajas sent a word saying there was a man-eater perhaps in the forest and we would like you to come and help us. “See now I’ve got a message and now I have to go”. And my mother said, “Alright, if you have to go, I am coming with you”. “How will you come at this stage?” “No, I must come to see the tiger moving”. Then he went there and she also.
We use a kind of platform on top. They build it in a tree. And these villagers, you see, they drive the animal towards the hunter. My father and mother always sitting on top of the (platform), and suddenly the big, huge tiger appeared, and my father said he had never seen such a big one before. It was coming in the moonlight and walking very stealthily in his own grace and dignity. And My mother was so enamored, you see, that she just looked at it. She was so happy as if her child has also seen it. She felt very happy, she said. My father wanted to kill the animal and mother said: “No, if you are going to kill the animal, I am going to jump. You are not going to kill the tiger”. Then the tiger disappeared. They don’t know where the tiger went. So my father knew that it would be some powerful personality that is going to be born. And my father, being a realised soul, also knew that I was something extraordinary.