Monk who tamed the tiger

In the early 1870s when a sturdy and stubborn teenager from a middle-class Bengali Hindu family joined a wrestling gymnasium in Dacca, little did his family and friends know that this young wrestler will be extolled in the distant future as the pioneer of the cult of physical strength and courage in Bengal. At the age of 23 to prove his masculinity and extraordinary fortitude and physical strength, Shyama Kanta Banerjee chose an unusual vocation – wrestling with wild tigers. For seventeen years people across Bengal were captivated by the breathtaking circus shows of Professor Banerjee, the first tiger tamer of India. At a time when revolutionary movement in Bengal was in its nascent stage, through the tiger wrestling acts, Shyama Kanta covertly spread the message of fearlessness. Wrestling with tiger was a celebration of the new physical culture movement that developed in Bengal to encourage young men to prepare themselves for a revolution to break the shackles of servitude.

At the peak of his fame, at the age of 41, Shyama Kanta underwent a complete mental transformation, and renounced the material world. He became a monk, and was renamed Soham Swami by his preceptor Nabin Chandra Chakroborty alias Tibbatibaba, an advaitin ascetic. Soham Swami now started the search for the true meaning of life. His quest was finally answered through the realization of the super-consciousness or the Absolute Truth.