Tigers of Templer’s Park

The Malayan tiger was in abundance and never a threatened nor protected animal in those years - the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, the tiger was so abundant in Templer's Park that it was uncommon to report sightings of tigers crossing the main trunk road and even pouncing onto roof-tops of cars, writes Malkeet Singh

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School headmaster Guardial Singh (author’s father) with an Australian traveller in front of the Clive Institution in Rawang – Photo: Malkeet Singh

By Malkeet Singh | Malaysia |

In 1954, the Sultan of Selangor, the late Sultan Hishamuddin Alam Shah, proclaimed that Templer’s Park, four miles from Rawang Town was “dedicated by Selangor to serve as a refuge and a sanctuary for wildlife and a meeting place for all who love and respect the beauty of nature”.

It was the year of my birth as well – December 26, 1954.

My late father, Gurdial Singh Narain Singh, was a teacher at the then-only English school, the Clive Institution. The Government English Primary School (GEPS) in Rawang only commenced operations in 1958. My dad was also a stringer/part-time correspondent for the Straits Times and used to regularly file stories for the newspaper.

There was a thriving Punjabi community of Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims living together at the 18th Milestone Rawang. Apart from being employed in various jobs, all of them reared dairy cattle for milk and clarified butter (ghee).

Rawang was rich in flora and fauna with vast swathes of grazing grounds for cattle and goats. The families would herd their cattle and goats towards the 16th Milestone bordering a forest reserve and Templer’s Park.

The Malayan tiger was in abundance and never a threatened nor protected animal in those years – the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, the tiger was so abundant in Templer’s Park that it was uncommon to report sightings of tigers crossing the main trunk road and even pouncing onto roof-tops of cars.

As a journalist covering Rawang and its periphery towns of Batu Arang, Kundang, Serendah, and Batang Kali, there was no shortage of newsworthy stories for my father. He was the envy of most journalists for he always had a field day covering all kinds of stories ranging from strikes at the Malayan Collieries in Batu Arang, tiger sightings, communist insurgent ambushes, secret society fights, crime news, social functions, and more.

One fine day, he had to report on the devouring of his milking cow, which had given birth just a month over by a tiger in the Templer’s Park area. There was alarm amongst the dairy farmers for another cow belonging to a Punjabi Musalman, Sonu, and his son, Japen, had also been killed a few days earlier.

Around the same time, there were reports of a tiger pouncing on the rooftop of a car driven by the daughter of Mr. Maniam of Waterfall Road Estate, Rawang. Thank God, she managed to drive back home to Rawang safely.

In 1963, my dad also filed a report to the Straits Times of an extraordinary encounter with a tiger leisurely crossing the main trunk road to Rawang at Templer’s Park. The Headmaster of the Government Primary English School, Mr. C. Maheswaran, was driving to Rawang after his weekly bridge game at the Selangor Club and had to slam the brakes of his car, as a tiger majestically took his time in crossing the road. Mr. Maheswaran is the late uncle of Comedy Court actor, Indi Nadaraja. He was the same Headmaster who caned me and my classmate, Tan Kar Ghee, for throwing chalk at each other in the classroom! Thank God, that was the only caning I got in my life.

The tiger that killed and devoured the cows was killed by the game rangers on 15 September 1963 at 8.30pm. Of course, my dad took a picture of the large cattle-eating tiger measuring 9.5 feet in length and filed a report to the Straits Times.

On 16 September 1963 at about 10am, the tiger that had been shot was loaded onto a Land Rover and taken back to Rawang by the game rangers. I vividly recall the Land Rover stopping by our house so that the entire community could come and see the tiger and bid our final farewell.

That image of the tiger with a bullet piercing through his stomach still remains deeply etched in my memory even after close to 60 years. The photograph is part of my late Dad’s collection of precious yesteryear archives in the library.

My encounter with tigers did not end with just this episode.

My dad took to me the Great Royal Indian Circus performance in Rawang and on seeing my fascination with the circus tigers, nicknamed me “Tiger”. Till his last breath in March, 1974, he would always call me “Tiger” as in English but not the Punjabi version of “Sher”.

Incidentally at this very circus, there was a PWD worker, Karanta, who has highly inebriated with toddy and dared his friend that he could pluck the moustache of a sleeping tiger in the circus cage. His hand got badly mauled by the tiger and thank God, he was not killed. I recall for many years seeing Karanta in Rawang town with only one arm.

Sometime in 1988, unwittingly, not knowing that it was a serious offence, I foolishly dragged a stuffed tiger carcass from a friend’s sealed office in the former UMBC Bank Building in Jalan Sultan Suleiman, Kuala Lumpur to my office – Bloomingdale Advertising – which a floor atop. My colleague convinced me that having a stuffed tiger carcass in our office will endow us with super creative powers! How naive could I get and “steal” an item from a sealed office?

Anyway, the building maintenance was able to trace the disappearance of the stuffed tiger to my office given the heavy drag marks left on the floor as sufficient evidence. The next morning, the maintenance team appeared at Bloomingdale and asked us to surrender the tiger.

In later years, I had the opportunity to drink Chinese wine containing the penis of a tiger in a friend’s home who kept it for medicinal purposes.

These days apart from drinking chilled Tiger beer and calling each other “Sher Ji” there are no more tigers left in Templer’s Park. The only sighting of tigers in our vicinity is the soft cotton tigers displayed on car tops parked by roadside vendors. Of course, the others are our Sikh brothers calling themselves, Shers!

The rape and plunder of Mother Nature at Templer’s Park have destroyed forever a once thriving and beautiful haven of tigers, wildlife, flora, fauna, and crystal clear waterfalls after waterfalls.

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