Ailing ‘tiger boy’ gets help from a foreign national

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A German woman from Japan has come to the aid of ailing 'tiger boy' Chendru, a primitive tribal of Chhattisgarh who shot to fame in 1960 for his amazing friendship with a tiger in jungles of Bastar.

Learning about the 78-year-old Chendru Mandavi’s sickness from a social networking site, Fenco Emmanuili, a German national settled in Tokyo, has provided a financial assistance of Rs1.17 lakh
for his medical treatment through Narayanpur district administration.

A member of primitive Muria tribe community, Chendru suffered a paralytic stroke on September 21 in his village of Gadabangar in south Bastar’s Narayanpur district, but was admitted in the hospital only a week later by the local administration after the national and local media highlighted his misery.

Chendru Mandavi rose to fame when he rescued a tiger cub in the jungles of Abujhmad, adjoining his village in 1959, and reared him till the wild animal became full grown. Their deep friendship had then become a talk in the region drawing even foreign tourists to the remote village then to witness their bonding.

This had prompted the noted Swedish film-maker Arnie Sucksdorff to visit the village in 1960 to make a movie A Jungle Tale on Chendru true life story. His wife Astrid, who had accompanied her husband during the filming of the movie, wrote a book titled, Chendru, the boy and the tiger, a best seller then.