Chapter 4: The Stranger
First off, I'd like to clarify some of the points I made in the last couple of chapters. I've talked a lot about things being "pointless" because they don't relate directly to the plot, and that's not quite what I've meant this entire time. As a current law student, ambiguity is the worst thing. So I'll try to explain what I mean a bit better.
Basically, things in a story have to have some purpose. They can further the plot, develop character, or describe the world in a meaningful way, and, failing any of these, just be fun to read. Things don't have to directly relate to the plot for it to have a point in the story--creating atmosphere, fleshing out characters, and developing an overarching theme or symbolism are all very important parts of a story! Without these, a story will just read like a bullet-point list of stuff that happens. And you don't even have to do any of these all the time for something to be good or entertaining. Moments of brevity are important to let a story breathe and create good pacing. And, arguably most importantly, they make the story engaging to read. Some of my favorite parts in the Harry Potter books don't involve Voldemort or the setting or even any characterization, but they make the world feel real and lived-in, rather than existing purely as a constructed narrative.
Tiger's Curse, however, doesn't really do anything with its filler (and much of the first few chapters is certainly filler). Let's work through this a bit more.
The circus is only tangentially related to the overall plot, since that's where Ren is. There's no real reason for it to be a circus, because nothing outside of Ren impacts the plot. Maurizio and the other circus folk never show up again or affect the plot in the rest of the entire story. You could replace the circus with a zoo and have Kelsey be a temporary zookeeper and nothing would change.
"But not everything has to be directly related to the plot!" you say. "You just said so a couple paragraphs ago! You have less consistency than Tiger's Curse!" Well, what else does it do? It doesn't develop anyone's character, outside of maybe Kelsey (but since she is such a static character in this book, I will disagree with you). What can you tell me about Maurizio other than the fact that he's an outrageous Italian stereotype? Matt or Cathleen? Matt's dad (who, uh, I mistakenly said was never named but it turns out that Kelsey refers to him as both "Matt's dad" and "Mr. Davis" interchangeably)? These characters don't exist as people. They're narrative devices to get Kelsey from point A to point B (meeting Ren). This makes all these pages describing the circus and the interactions of the circus folk really boring because it doesn't feel like real people doing things. It feels like a bunch of robots are performing a predetermined routine so Kelsey can meet Ren.
The circus stuff also doesn't describe the world in a meaningful way. We're given very bare-bones descriptions of the circus itself, and the only details we get can be immediately associated with the first thing you picture in your head when you hear the word "circus": big tent, posters everywhere, clowns. There's a half-hearted attempt to paint the circus as being in some hard times (potentially as an excuse for the circus wanting to sell Ren--spoilers for this chapter) but it's brought up exactly one time at the beginning of chapter two and is never mentioned again after this. In a more general picture, the circus isn't related at all to the rest of the story's worldbuilding. Hindu mythology is real in this story--magic and strange creatures and actual gods and goddesses exist in the physical world. What the hell does an Italian circus in the middle of Oregon have to do with any of this?
The last part is really subjective. If you find this story fun to read, then this stuff isn't pointless even though it doesn't do any of the above. I'm not trying to police people's personal taste, but I think I've made some good points about why none of what's happened so far is fun to read (for me, at least). I don't like Kelsey as a character, and I think most of the dialogue is really badly written. I was promised a whirlwind tour of India with a hot magical prince, and I'm stuck here in Oregon with characters I don't like in a setting that sucks.
Anyway. Just wanted to clarify some points I made before. Without further ado:
Chapter Four: The Stranger
A couple days go by without description (yay!) and a mysterious man shows up snooping around Ren's cage. Kelsey asks him who is is and what he wants, since he's dressed too nicely to be standing in a dirty barn. In what is possibly the only instance of good writing in this entire book, the man addresses Kelsey by name and asks for her to help him find the owner of the circus. This is never called attention to in the narration, but a careful reader will notice that this guy doesn't know anyone else in the circus, and only had contact with the tiger. So how did he learn her name? There must be something going on behind the scenes with that tiger!
Sadly, I don't think this was intentional. Because if it was, Kelsey would have wondered about how he knew her name for the next thirty pages.
The stranger introduces himself as Anik Kadam, and then clasps his hands together and bows to her. Is, uh, is this racist? I don't want to sling around labels when they're not deserved, but this feels weird. Kelsey is charmed by this display of "chivalry" (uh, I don't think that's what this is) and directs Mr. Kadam to Maurizio.
After he leaves, Kelsey remarks to Ren that she thinks that the Mr. Kadam situation is weird. "Maybe he has a thing for tigers," she says to Ren, which has created some extremely unpleasant images in my brain, so thanks a lot, Houck. Kelsey goes on to call Ren handsome, which is very much not helping, Houck!!
I...I think Kelsey wants to bang a tiger, you guys. I need a minute.
Kelsey goes to get breakfast and the circus is busier than normal. Everyone's talking about this Mr. Kadam having a serious meeting with Maurizio, but no one's really sure what's going on. Pretty soon, though, Maurizio walks into the dining hall with Mr. Kadam, and says that he's agreed to sell the tiger to Mr. Kadam, which he is happy about. Oh wait, that's what he would say if he even remotely spoke like a human being. Instead, we get:
This man, Mr. Kadam, has made me the most happy of men. He has made an offer to purchase our belov'd tigre, Dhiren." [sic]
Yes, the missing quotation mark at the beginning appears in the book. Yes, "belov'd tigre." Also, if Ren is so "belov'd," why is Maurizio so happy to sell him?
It turns out that Mr. Kadam wants to take Ren back to a tiger reserve in India, and in return he'll pay the circus enough money to keep going for two years. Which is all well and good for two years, but since the tiger is a major selling point of the circus (as shown by the advertising featuring the fact that they have a tiger) I'm not sure how well they'll do in the long run.
The rest of the circus doesn't really seem to notice this either, and they're all pretty jazzed about it. Except Kelsey, who a) notices that this might impact Matt's dad and b) admits that she selfishly wonders how this will affect her. She signed on for two weeks of work, and it's already been about a week and a half. So she's getting all worked up about maybe not getting to talk to a tiger for, at most, three or four days. This also contradicts her thoughts in the previous chapter when she wanted nothing else than for Ren to not be in the circus. She cares about him when it's convenient for her, I guess.
Kelsey hangs out with Ren like she does whenever she has free time, and talks to him about his move to India. "Maybe you can find yourself a pretty female tiger," she says to him. Everything! Must! Relate! To! Romance! Ren seems to agree with me and harrumphs from his cage.
Mr. Kadam materializes out of nowhere and Kelsey feels a bit embarrassed for talking to Ren out loud. Mr. Kadam doesn't seem bothered by it, though.
He glanced from the tiger to me, studied me carefully, and then stated, "You seem to have...affection for this tiger. Am I right?"
My brain.
Kelsey says yes (gross) and asks him about his work rescuing tigers. Apparently, this isn't even his real job. He actually runs a large estate in India and his employer is the one who wants to purchase the tiger. So, Mr. Kadam didn't technically lie, but he is definitely misleading people. Hmm.
Kelsey responds to this bit of information not by asking what a normal person would ask in order to find out who this mysterious employer is, but by asking, "Are you from India?"
Couple things. Why does she ask this here? Because he mentioned India a couple of pages ago? This emphasis on "from" makes India into an exotic, special place, despite being where almost 20% of the global population lives. Is this an example of fetishization of non-Western cultures, or just bad dialogue? You decide!
Also, if Kelsey had just said something like, "Oh, do you live in India?" I wouldn't have a problem with it.
And only now does Kelsey ask about Mr. Kadam about his unnamed employer. This would make more sense directly after Mr. Kadam's explanation, so I'm not sure why it's so broken up. Except she doesn't ask who he is, but asks why he's so interested in Ren.
Mr. Kadam then launches into a story about Prince Dhiren, who the tiger is named after. It sounds suspiciously similar to the story we heard in the prologue. I wonder if that's a coincidence??
This book would be slightly better if it didn't do the Twilight thing of giving away the twist on the back of the book.
This story does give us some insight into this Prince Ren's character. Ren is a great military leader and is good at administrative aspects of rule and charming and modest and a great poet. I didn't make any of those up. Ren is just that great.
We do get to find out Ren's dad's name--King Rajaram. Ignoring the fact that Indian rulers weren't called "kings," there are several actual people named Rajaram, who were all rulers of the Maratha Empire in India. Their positions ranged from Chhatrapati (which is comparable to king or emperor) to Maharaja (which is less impressive than I initially thought, and can apply a ruler of a minor princely state, although in this case I believe Rajaram III ruled over several princely states). Rajaram I seems to have served as inspiration for Ren's backstory, since it involves a struggle between two brothers for the throne and he was married to a woman name Tarabai, which is suspiciously similar to Yesubai. Turns out that the ending -bai is really common among women's names at the time because all four of his wives had similar names.
Either that or Houck just Googled a cool-sounding monarch name.
The ending of the story is significantly different from the one we saw in the prologue. Mr. Kadam's story ends with Dhiren's torture and death as a political prisoner of "a prodigious and evil man." Ooh, ominous!
Everyone loved Dhiren so much that the entire population despairs at his death, and his parents were really sad, and his brother ran away, and Yesubai committed suicide because she was just so sad because Dhiren was so great, you guys. His death messes up the kingdom so much that the military takes over the government in the absence of a strong ruler (even though the king and the younger brother are still alive!) and the guy who killed Dhiren captures the kingdom fifty years later.
Wow. If the death of a single prince was such a big deal in every kingdom, there would be zero stability in any monarchy. This is an absurd empire-wide reaction to the death of one dude, and it only happens to show how awesome Dhiren is. This is crazy.
Kelsey's question after the story is great. "Wow," I responded. "So, did he love her?" Everything must be about romance!
Mr. Kadam's reaction is pretty great because he seems to be just as confused as to why Kelsey asks this question since it's so off-topic to what he was just talking about. After answering that he honestly isn't sure, Kelsey reacts to the story. I want you to read this next bit out loud and try to imagine saying this to another human being:
"That was a very sad sequence of events. I feel sorry for everyone, except for the bad guy, of course. A great story, though a bit bloody. An Indian tragedy. It reminds me of Shakespeare. He would have written a great play based on that tale. So, Ren is named after the Indian prince?"
I like to imagine Mr. Kadam smiling blandly with a glazed-over expression, because he needs this girl for his plans but she's just so dull. Also, he literally began the story by saying that Ren was named after the prince, so I don't know why Kelsey asks this again.
After this bit of exposition, Mr. Kadam exposits further that his employer has an interest in this specific tiger because he feels responsible for the tiger's capture and subsequent sale to a lot of circuses.
And now the real craziness.
Mr. Kadam says that he would like Kelsey to accompany him to India to take care of Ren while in transit to the tiger preserve. His reasoning is that the tiger is used to her, and that she has experience taking care of him already.
What experience? She's been there for a week and a half! This is INSANE.
It gets better.Kelsey will travel unaccompanied (!) with Mr. Kadam and Ren to Mumbai ("what you might still call Bombay," except it hasn't been called Bombay since 1995) where he will leave her to do some business (!!) and she will travel alone with Ren to the tiger reserve (!!!).
I have no words. It would be highly irresponsible for Kelsey to go traipsing around India with a complete stranger, and even assuming his intentions are good, he's going to leave her alone in a foreign country for days at a time when she can't speak the language or arrange for transport home on her own if something goes wrong. And all of this is based on her lengthy experience of a little over a week of work.
And this isn't even justified by the whole "chosen one" thing that the book hasn't gotten to yet. Mr. Kadam isn't trying to specifically get Kelsey to India yet. He offered the job the Matt's dad, who turned it down and recommended Kelsey instead! He really does want her to die! Mr. Kadam isn't even lying about this, since Matt's dad confirms this later. This is the most improbable setup for a plot I've ever seen I DON'T EVEN HAVE WORDS FOR HOW NUTS THIS IS
Kelsey finally decides to call Mike and Sarah, who are inexplicably okay with this arrangement as long as they can meet Mr. Kadam in person to confirm that he isn't sketchy. They invite him to Kelsey's eighteenth birthday party later that night so they can meet him. Yeah, they will make this decision in less than 24 hours.
On her way back to Ren, Kelsey notices Mr. Kadam speaking to the tiger (again). Kelsey lets him know about the birthday plan, and once again knocks her guardians' lifestyle and mocks their dietary choices. I love repetitive "jokes."
Of course, Sarah and Mike love Mr. Kadam and give Kelsey the go-ahead. Mr. Kadam wants Kelsey's birth certificate (!) to make travel arrangements.
When Kelsey agrees, Mr. Kadam leaves happily and Kelsey goes to hang out with Ren again, and remarks about how strange Mr. Kadam is. That was a pointless scene.
The next morning, Kelsey goes to take care of Ren and he's not in his cage! Kelsey basically harasses him back into his cage. The odd thing is that he seemed to understand what I wanted him to do. He walked past me, rubbed his side against my leg, and...obeyed!
The ellipses are killing me. It was…………………………………………………….Dumblydore!
Mr. Davis is super chill about the fact that the tiger that they just sold for a ton of money got loose and could have escaped and/or eaten someone, which makes me think that he actually does want Kelsey to die. The weird thing is that Kelsey remembers locking the cage last night...hmm...
Later that week, Mr. Kadam shows up and tell Kelsey, pretty much word-for-word for what he said earlier, the travel arrangements he has made. Turns out they're leaving tomorrow morning and she has to go pack her stuff from home for her week-long tour of India. Mr. Kadam lends Kelsey his car to drive home for the night. It's a "Benley GTC Convertible," which I'm sure means something to people who are more into cars than I am.
Kelsey sure seems to think very highly of it. I opened the door, slid into the soft, buttery leather seats, and ran my hand across the elegant, pronounced stitching. The dashboard looked ultramodern, with handsome instrument controls and displays in a silvery metallic color. It was the most luxurious car I'd ever seen...[break]...I sighed in pleasure as I realized that it also included heated massage seats. I arrived home in just a few short minutes, groaning in disappointment that I lived so close to the fairgrounds.
Normally, I'd complain that something so inconsequential gets so much description when it is so unimportant, especially when I want description for things that are important, but I just remembered that the next entire chapter describes the interior of a plane for the next 17 PAGES so I'll leave that little rant for next time.
Mike obsesses over the car once Kelsey gets home, and spends several hours in the garage...cooing over and petting the convertible. Several hours?!
Kelsey packs her bags (conveniently not letting us know what she's taking with her so she can, presumably, pull whatever she needs out of her bag later on since the book never says she didn't take it) and says goodbye to her foster family. She dreams about a hot Indian prince who has a pet tiger, and I slam my book shut in frustration.
Closing Thoughts
What a brain-meltingly frustrating chapter. This is a pretty long chapter, and pretty much everything in it is important to the plot. The problem is that the plot setup is so stupid. Kelsey agrees to go to India with a complete stranger for over a week, several days of which she will be alone and at the mercy of hired truck drivers, and literally no one thinks this is a bad idea! The only people who are even slightly concerned are her foster parents, and they're okay with it after meeting this guy exactly one time for an hour or two. Matt's dad seems like he's trying to get Kelsey killed by recommending her for this incredibly sketchy job and not caring that his untrained intern is in a barn with a loose tiger.
My brain hurts.
Next time, my literal least favorite chapter in this entire book. Chapter 5: The Plane.
Basically, things in a story have to have some purpose. They can further the plot, develop character, or describe the world in a meaningful way, and, failing any of these, just be fun to read. Things don't have to directly relate to the plot for it to have a point in the story--creating atmosphere, fleshing out characters, and developing an overarching theme or symbolism are all very important parts of a story! Without these, a story will just read like a bullet-point list of stuff that happens. And you don't even have to do any of these all the time for something to be good or entertaining. Moments of brevity are important to let a story breathe and create good pacing. And, arguably most importantly, they make the story engaging to read. Some of my favorite parts in the Harry Potter books don't involve Voldemort or the setting or even any characterization, but they make the world feel real and lived-in, rather than existing purely as a constructed narrative.
Tiger's Curse, however, doesn't really do anything with its filler (and much of the first few chapters is certainly filler). Let's work through this a bit more.
The circus is only tangentially related to the overall plot, since that's where Ren is. There's no real reason for it to be a circus, because nothing outside of Ren impacts the plot. Maurizio and the other circus folk never show up again or affect the plot in the rest of the entire story. You could replace the circus with a zoo and have Kelsey be a temporary zookeeper and nothing would change.
"But not everything has to be directly related to the plot!" you say. "You just said so a couple paragraphs ago! You have less consistency than Tiger's Curse!" Well, what else does it do? It doesn't develop anyone's character, outside of maybe Kelsey (but since she is such a static character in this book, I will disagree with you). What can you tell me about Maurizio other than the fact that he's an outrageous Italian stereotype? Matt or Cathleen? Matt's dad (who, uh, I mistakenly said was never named but it turns out that Kelsey refers to him as both "Matt's dad" and "Mr. Davis" interchangeably)? These characters don't exist as people. They're narrative devices to get Kelsey from point A to point B (meeting Ren). This makes all these pages describing the circus and the interactions of the circus folk really boring because it doesn't feel like real people doing things. It feels like a bunch of robots are performing a predetermined routine so Kelsey can meet Ren.
The circus stuff also doesn't describe the world in a meaningful way. We're given very bare-bones descriptions of the circus itself, and the only details we get can be immediately associated with the first thing you picture in your head when you hear the word "circus": big tent, posters everywhere, clowns. There's a half-hearted attempt to paint the circus as being in some hard times (potentially as an excuse for the circus wanting to sell Ren--spoilers for this chapter) but it's brought up exactly one time at the beginning of chapter two and is never mentioned again after this. In a more general picture, the circus isn't related at all to the rest of the story's worldbuilding. Hindu mythology is real in this story--magic and strange creatures and actual gods and goddesses exist in the physical world. What the hell does an Italian circus in the middle of Oregon have to do with any of this?
The last part is really subjective. If you find this story fun to read, then this stuff isn't pointless even though it doesn't do any of the above. I'm not trying to police people's personal taste, but I think I've made some good points about why none of what's happened so far is fun to read (for me, at least). I don't like Kelsey as a character, and I think most of the dialogue is really badly written. I was promised a whirlwind tour of India with a hot magical prince, and I'm stuck here in Oregon with characters I don't like in a setting that sucks.
Anyway. Just wanted to clarify some points I made before. Without further ado:
Chapter Four: The Stranger
A couple days go by without description (yay!) and a mysterious man shows up snooping around Ren's cage. Kelsey asks him who is is and what he wants, since he's dressed too nicely to be standing in a dirty barn. In what is possibly the only instance of good writing in this entire book, the man addresses Kelsey by name and asks for her to help him find the owner of the circus. This is never called attention to in the narration, but a careful reader will notice that this guy doesn't know anyone else in the circus, and only had contact with the tiger. So how did he learn her name? There must be something going on behind the scenes with that tiger!
Sadly, I don't think this was intentional. Because if it was, Kelsey would have wondered about how he knew her name for the next thirty pages.
The stranger introduces himself as Anik Kadam, and then clasps his hands together and bows to her. Is, uh, is this racist? I don't want to sling around labels when they're not deserved, but this feels weird. Kelsey is charmed by this display of "chivalry" (uh, I don't think that's what this is) and directs Mr. Kadam to Maurizio.
After he leaves, Kelsey remarks to Ren that she thinks that the Mr. Kadam situation is weird. "Maybe he has a thing for tigers," she says to Ren, which has created some extremely unpleasant images in my brain, so thanks a lot, Houck. Kelsey goes on to call Ren handsome, which is very much not helping, Houck!!
I...I think Kelsey wants to bang a tiger, you guys. I need a minute.
Kelsey goes to get breakfast and the circus is busier than normal. Everyone's talking about this Mr. Kadam having a serious meeting with Maurizio, but no one's really sure what's going on. Pretty soon, though, Maurizio walks into the dining hall with Mr. Kadam, and says that he's agreed to sell the tiger to Mr. Kadam, which he is happy about. Oh wait, that's what he would say if he even remotely spoke like a human being. Instead, we get:
This man, Mr. Kadam, has made me the most happy of men. He has made an offer to purchase our belov'd tigre, Dhiren." [sic]
Yes, the missing quotation mark at the beginning appears in the book. Yes, "belov'd tigre." Also, if Ren is so "belov'd," why is Maurizio so happy to sell him?
It turns out that Mr. Kadam wants to take Ren back to a tiger reserve in India, and in return he'll pay the circus enough money to keep going for two years. Which is all well and good for two years, but since the tiger is a major selling point of the circus (as shown by the advertising featuring the fact that they have a tiger) I'm not sure how well they'll do in the long run.
The rest of the circus doesn't really seem to notice this either, and they're all pretty jazzed about it. Except Kelsey, who a) notices that this might impact Matt's dad and b) admits that she selfishly wonders how this will affect her. She signed on for two weeks of work, and it's already been about a week and a half. So she's getting all worked up about maybe not getting to talk to a tiger for, at most, three or four days. This also contradicts her thoughts in the previous chapter when she wanted nothing else than for Ren to not be in the circus. She cares about him when it's convenient for her, I guess.
Kelsey hangs out with Ren like she does whenever she has free time, and talks to him about his move to India. "Maybe you can find yourself a pretty female tiger," she says to him. Everything! Must! Relate! To! Romance! Ren seems to agree with me and harrumphs from his cage.
Mr. Kadam materializes out of nowhere and Kelsey feels a bit embarrassed for talking to Ren out loud. Mr. Kadam doesn't seem bothered by it, though.
He glanced from the tiger to me, studied me carefully, and then stated, "You seem to have...affection for this tiger. Am I right?"
My brain.
Kelsey says yes (gross) and asks him about his work rescuing tigers. Apparently, this isn't even his real job. He actually runs a large estate in India and his employer is the one who wants to purchase the tiger. So, Mr. Kadam didn't technically lie, but he is definitely misleading people. Hmm.
Kelsey responds to this bit of information not by asking what a normal person would ask in order to find out who this mysterious employer is, but by asking, "Are you from India?"
Couple things. Why does she ask this here? Because he mentioned India a couple of pages ago? This emphasis on "from" makes India into an exotic, special place, despite being where almost 20% of the global population lives. Is this an example of fetishization of non-Western cultures, or just bad dialogue? You decide!
Also, if Kelsey had just said something like, "Oh, do you live in India?" I wouldn't have a problem with it.
And only now does Kelsey ask about Mr. Kadam about his unnamed employer. This would make more sense directly after Mr. Kadam's explanation, so I'm not sure why it's so broken up. Except she doesn't ask who he is, but asks why he's so interested in Ren.
Mr. Kadam then launches into a story about Prince Dhiren, who the tiger is named after. It sounds suspiciously similar to the story we heard in the prologue. I wonder if that's a coincidence??
This book would be slightly better if it didn't do the Twilight thing of giving away the twist on the back of the book.
This story does give us some insight into this Prince Ren's character. Ren is a great military leader and is good at administrative aspects of rule and charming and modest and a great poet. I didn't make any of those up. Ren is just that great.
We do get to find out Ren's dad's name--King Rajaram. Ignoring the fact that Indian rulers weren't called "kings," there are several actual people named Rajaram, who were all rulers of the Maratha Empire in India. Their positions ranged from Chhatrapati (which is comparable to king or emperor) to Maharaja (which is less impressive than I initially thought, and can apply a ruler of a minor princely state, although in this case I believe Rajaram III ruled over several princely states). Rajaram I seems to have served as inspiration for Ren's backstory, since it involves a struggle between two brothers for the throne and he was married to a woman name Tarabai, which is suspiciously similar to Yesubai. Turns out that the ending -bai is really common among women's names at the time because all four of his wives had similar names.
Either that or Houck just Googled a cool-sounding monarch name.
The ending of the story is significantly different from the one we saw in the prologue. Mr. Kadam's story ends with Dhiren's torture and death as a political prisoner of "a prodigious and evil man." Ooh, ominous!
Everyone loved Dhiren so much that the entire population despairs at his death, and his parents were really sad, and his brother ran away, and Yesubai committed suicide because she was just so sad because Dhiren was so great, you guys. His death messes up the kingdom so much that the military takes over the government in the absence of a strong ruler (even though the king and the younger brother are still alive!) and the guy who killed Dhiren captures the kingdom fifty years later.
Wow. If the death of a single prince was such a big deal in every kingdom, there would be zero stability in any monarchy. This is an absurd empire-wide reaction to the death of one dude, and it only happens to show how awesome Dhiren is. This is crazy.
Kelsey's question after the story is great. "Wow," I responded. "So, did he love her?" Everything must be about romance!
Mr. Kadam's reaction is pretty great because he seems to be just as confused as to why Kelsey asks this question since it's so off-topic to what he was just talking about. After answering that he honestly isn't sure, Kelsey reacts to the story. I want you to read this next bit out loud and try to imagine saying this to another human being:
"That was a very sad sequence of events. I feel sorry for everyone, except for the bad guy, of course. A great story, though a bit bloody. An Indian tragedy. It reminds me of Shakespeare. He would have written a great play based on that tale. So, Ren is named after the Indian prince?"
I like to imagine Mr. Kadam smiling blandly with a glazed-over expression, because he needs this girl for his plans but she's just so dull. Also, he literally began the story by saying that Ren was named after the prince, so I don't know why Kelsey asks this again.
After this bit of exposition, Mr. Kadam exposits further that his employer has an interest in this specific tiger because he feels responsible for the tiger's capture and subsequent sale to a lot of circuses.
And now the real craziness.
Mr. Kadam says that he would like Kelsey to accompany him to India to take care of Ren while in transit to the tiger preserve. His reasoning is that the tiger is used to her, and that she has experience taking care of him already.
What experience? She's been there for a week and a half! This is INSANE.
It gets better.Kelsey will travel unaccompanied (!) with Mr. Kadam and Ren to Mumbai ("what you might still call Bombay," except it hasn't been called Bombay since 1995) where he will leave her to do some business (!!) and she will travel alone with Ren to the tiger reserve (!!!).
I have no words. It would be highly irresponsible for Kelsey to go traipsing around India with a complete stranger, and even assuming his intentions are good, he's going to leave her alone in a foreign country for days at a time when she can't speak the language or arrange for transport home on her own if something goes wrong. And all of this is based on her lengthy experience of a little over a week of work.
And this isn't even justified by the whole "chosen one" thing that the book hasn't gotten to yet. Mr. Kadam isn't trying to specifically get Kelsey to India yet. He offered the job the Matt's dad, who turned it down and recommended Kelsey instead! He really does want her to die! Mr. Kadam isn't even lying about this, since Matt's dad confirms this later. This is the most improbable setup for a plot I've ever seen I DON'T EVEN HAVE WORDS FOR HOW NUTS THIS IS
Kelsey finally decides to call Mike and Sarah, who are inexplicably okay with this arrangement as long as they can meet Mr. Kadam in person to confirm that he isn't sketchy. They invite him to Kelsey's eighteenth birthday party later that night so they can meet him. Yeah, they will make this decision in less than 24 hours.
On her way back to Ren, Kelsey notices Mr. Kadam speaking to the tiger (again). Kelsey lets him know about the birthday plan, and once again knocks her guardians' lifestyle and mocks their dietary choices. I love repetitive "jokes."
Of course, Sarah and Mike love Mr. Kadam and give Kelsey the go-ahead. Mr. Kadam wants Kelsey's birth certificate (!) to make travel arrangements.
When Kelsey agrees, Mr. Kadam leaves happily and Kelsey goes to hang out with Ren again, and remarks about how strange Mr. Kadam is. That was a pointless scene.
The next morning, Kelsey goes to take care of Ren and he's not in his cage! Kelsey basically harasses him back into his cage. The odd thing is that he seemed to understand what I wanted him to do. He walked past me, rubbed his side against my leg, and...obeyed!
The ellipses are killing me. It was…………………………………………………….Dumblydore!
Mr. Davis is super chill about the fact that the tiger that they just sold for a ton of money got loose and could have escaped and/or eaten someone, which makes me think that he actually does want Kelsey to die. The weird thing is that Kelsey remembers locking the cage last night...hmm...
Later that week, Mr. Kadam shows up and tell Kelsey, pretty much word-for-word for what he said earlier, the travel arrangements he has made. Turns out they're leaving tomorrow morning and she has to go pack her stuff from home for her week-long tour of India. Mr. Kadam lends Kelsey his car to drive home for the night. It's a "Benley GTC Convertible," which I'm sure means something to people who are more into cars than I am.
Kelsey sure seems to think very highly of it. I opened the door, slid into the soft, buttery leather seats, and ran my hand across the elegant, pronounced stitching. The dashboard looked ultramodern, with handsome instrument controls and displays in a silvery metallic color. It was the most luxurious car I'd ever seen...[break]...I sighed in pleasure as I realized that it also included heated massage seats. I arrived home in just a few short minutes, groaning in disappointment that I lived so close to the fairgrounds.
Normally, I'd complain that something so inconsequential gets so much description when it is so unimportant, especially when I want description for things that are important, but I just remembered that the next entire chapter describes the interior of a plane for the next 17 PAGES so I'll leave that little rant for next time.
Mike obsesses over the car once Kelsey gets home, and spends several hours in the garage...cooing over and petting the convertible. Several hours?!
Kelsey packs her bags (conveniently not letting us know what she's taking with her so she can, presumably, pull whatever she needs out of her bag later on since the book never says she didn't take it) and says goodbye to her foster family. She dreams about a hot Indian prince who has a pet tiger, and I slam my book shut in frustration.
Closing Thoughts
What a brain-meltingly frustrating chapter. This is a pretty long chapter, and pretty much everything in it is important to the plot. The problem is that the plot setup is so stupid. Kelsey agrees to go to India with a complete stranger for over a week, several days of which she will be alone and at the mercy of hired truck drivers, and literally no one thinks this is a bad idea! The only people who are even slightly concerned are her foster parents, and they're okay with it after meeting this guy exactly one time for an hour or two. Matt's dad seems like he's trying to get Kelsey killed by recommending her for this incredibly sketchy job and not caring that his untrained intern is in a barn with a loose tiger.
My brain hurts.
Next time, my literal least favorite chapter in this entire book. Chapter 5: The Plane.
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