Читать книгу To the Elephant Graveyard - Tarquin Hall - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThe Game Is Afoot
‘If you roamed every continent for thousands of years, coming to consider the globe your own private football, and you were then confined to an open prison . . . you too might become unbalanced.’
Heathcote Williams, Sacred Elephant
Rudra, the driver of the Hindustan Ambassador, had been chewing paan all night. He kept his stash in a stainless steel dabba, an Indian lunchbox, in the glove compartment and periodically would ask me to take it out and open it for him. Keeping one eye on the road, he would first extract a lump of lime paste with his index finger and smear it into the space between his teeth and his bottom lip. He would then pop one or two choice chunks of betel nut into his mouth. Finally, uttering a satisfied grunt, he would start to chew.
Rudra was clearly an addict. He had the desperate eyes of a junkie and had consumed so much paan over the years that his gums, tongue and lips were permanently stained a luminous red. His teeth had turned jet black at the roots, and when he grinned he looked like a prize-fighter who had just taken a beating in the ring.
Admittedly, his addiction was not as anti-social as some others I could think of, but having to watch him spit out of the window every other minute and wipe the drool from his chin with his shirtsleeve was something I would rather have done without, especially at four in the morning. Still, I took comfort from the fact that something in the betel nut seemed to be keeping him awake.
By Indian standards, Rudra was a good driver – that is to say, we only came close to death once during more than six hours on the road. But his vehicle’s shock absorbers were defunct and many of the back seat’s springs had come loose. As a result, I had managed only a few hours of continually interrupted sleep before midnight when Mr Choudhury turfed me off the back seat and put me in front with Rudra.
By now, I was in no mood for conversation. All I wanted to do was sleep. I tried conveying this to Rudra, but even when I closed my eyes and pretended to snore, he kept up his one-sided, tedious conversation. His main interest in life, apart from betel nut and playing chicken with oncoming heavy goods vehicles, was the vital statistics of Bombay’s Hindi film actresses. The latest goddess to grace the Indian screen, Karisma Kapoor, had won a special place in his heart – and, no doubt, in his fantasies.
‘She is the most beautiful pearl of our continent!’ he boasted, pushing the Ambassador into fourth gear around a tight bend.
He slapped me hard on the thigh and guffawed, grunting and breathing through his nose and mouth simultaneously, a feat that would have been remarkable had it not been so revolting.
‘You should see her dance! Her legs go all the way up! And as for her breasts – they are big! As big as mangoes!’
He sighed and for a moment his mind seemed to drift. Then he nudged me hard in the arm.
‘Who is your favourite chick?’ he asked conspiratorially.
‘I don’t have one, and I’m trying to sleep,’ I replied grumpily.
However, Rudra would not take no for an answer and prodded me again. I knew that I had to name a name, otherwise he would never leave me alone.
‘Madhuri Dixit,’ I said, not daring to mention that it had once been my pleasure to interview this beautiful lady in Bombay.
‘Madhuri! Yes, you are right. She is good!’ He spat another mouthful of betel-nut juice out of the window and grinned mischievously, displaying his stained gums. Some of his saliva flew back in through the window, splattering his forehead. He wiped it away with his shirtsleeve, drew a deep breath and, with his smile broadening into a maniacal grin, added with finality: ‘Madhuri Dixit is very good – very good for BAD purposes!’
While the Brahmaputra valley still lay under a cloak of darkness, the first rays of sunshine fell on the range of mountains to the north. Their snow-capped summits hovered above the viscous, milky haze, illuminated like so many shining cloud cities. Over the next hour, the morning light crept closer and the landscape below began to reveal itself, the sunlight dissolving the mist that swirled around us. Soon, I could make out dozens of paddy-fields stretching towards the horizon. Huts made of earthen walls, bamboo frames and straw roofs stood on little islands surrounded by floodwater. Farmers knee-deep in mud urged on their black water buffalo as they pulled wooden ploughs through the rich, sodden soil.
Near a roadside shrine that housed an effigy of the goddess Durga, women with lovely almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones harvested rice by hand. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were wearing saris, I might have mistaken them for Vietnamese or Cambodians. Children on their way to school played with fighting kites. Their strings were coated with finely ground glass, the object of the game being to rub against your opponent’s line in the hope of severing it. Fierce dog-fights were in progress, half a dozen red, yellow and green paper birds ducking and diving, attacking and retreating against a backdrop of pristine blue sky.
Ever since my arrival in India two years earlier, I had longed to visit this part of the country. Geographically, it is alluring, a misplaced piece of jigsaw puzzle. Assam is lodged between five nations: China, Bhutan and Tibet to the north, Bangladesh to the south and Myanmar, or Burma, to the east. And culturally, it is totally different from anything in the rest of the subcontinent. A land of diverse tribes, its peoples have more in common with those of South-East Asia and the Far East than with their Aryan or Dravidian cousins. The state is connected to the rest of the country by a slim corridor known as the Chicken’s Neck; a legacy of colonial diplomacy, it runs between Bhutan and Bangladesh
Despite its staggering beauty and rich folklore, India’s North-East is a part of the world avoided by even the most intrepid backpackers. As such there was little in my guidebook about Assam: it has been off-limits to tourists for many years. However it did say that the word Assam is derived from the Sanskrit assama, meaning ‘peerless’ or ‘unequalled’. It was so named by Thai or Shan invaders called the Ahoms who conquered the valley in the thirteenth century and loved it so much that they never left. I was beginning to appreciate why. Wherever I looked, the landscape was lush and green. Rickety wooden bridges spanned streams and brooks whose surfaces were covered with sweet-smelling water-lily blossoms. Peepul trees, their branches straining under flocks of white birds that suddenly lifted into the air at the sound of our approach, lined the road. In the distance, hills bristling with jungle rose up above the fields, mist crawling across the foliage and pouring down into the valley like smoke brimming off a witch’s cauldron.
We left Highway 37 and turned north, crossing the Brahmaputra on a high, mile-long bridge guarded by a legion of Indian soldiers armed with machine guns. The river, far below, was at least three times as wide as it had been at Guwahati. A dozen canoes bobbing on the surface of the water looked like miniature toys. Upstream, the Brahmaputra bulged northwards, the far bank lost in a haze of mist and bright sunshine, while downstream, thousands of water hyacinths lay beached on glistening sandbanks.
Just after six o’clock, a yawn from the back seat told me that the hunter was waking up. At last, I could talk to someone about something other than Bollywood bimbos.
‘Good morning,’ I said, trying to decide whether to call him by his first or last name. I settled on the latter. After all, he was old enough to be my father, and in India people still set store on courtesy.
Mr Choudhury stretched and glanced out of the window, quickly recognizing the area.
‘I used to come here as a boy to watch wild elephants,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘In those days, this was all jungle for miles and miles, as far as your eye could see. There were hardly any people. Now, there are millions of them.’
His voice had a bitter edge to it and he seemed sombre. Rolling down the window, he relaxed a little, breathing in the fresh air, relishing the smell of damp moss and pine.
‘See over there,’ he continued, pointing to a wide depression in the ground where sugarcane grew in abundance. ‘That area used to be a lake. Entire herds of hundreds of elephants would come down from the hills and eat the aquatic weed. It’s their favourite delicacy. I used to sit up in a tree and watch them down below me, all trumpeting, playing and splashing about in the water. It was wonderful.’
There was a glint in his eye as he reminisced. I sensed that he was in a talkative mood and I wanted to hear more.
Had he been much involved with elephants?
‘Oh yes. I grew up surrounded by them,’ he told me as we continued along back roads. ‘We used them as transport. My father owned a huge estate, thousands of acres, and he always collected rent from our tenants on the back of Chamundi Prasad, his favourite tusker.’
In those days, elephants were the ultimate status symbol, as prestigious as the BMWs and Mercedes of today. No special occasion was complete without them. When Mr Choudhury’s elder brother married, he arrived at the ceremony riding on an elephant in a silver lotus-flower howdah, or seat, and leading twenty other beasts, each decked out with bejewelled awnings and ornate headpieces decorated with gold braid and peacock feathers. Whenever a boy was born in the family, the child would be paraded around the estate on the back of a tusker. During religious festivals, the caparisoned animals were always the star attraction.
The Choudhurys employed more than a dozen mahouts, specialists who double as handler and rider, together with fifteen or so apprentices and several phandis, or professional catchers. It was the phandis’ job to capture and train wild elephants. Every year, with a great deal of fanfare and pageantry, these men would head off into the jungle and on to the plains to hunt down promising calves. Using an age-old technique unique to Assam called mela-shikar, they would lasso the animals in much the same way as American cowboys catch cattle. The captured elephants were either kept for the stable or, once trained, were sold at the annual elephant mela, or fair, at Sonpur on the banks of the Gandak River in Bihar, to this day the largest elephant market in the world.
‘All the mahouts and phandis lived in an encampment not far from the estate where I grew up,’ continued Mr Choudhury. ‘It was an incredibly busy place. Wherever you looked, elephants were being trained and taught to do tricks. It was like having my own private circus all to myself. From a young age, all I could think about was elephants.’
But Mr Choudhury’s father did not approve of his son’s fascination and affinity with the animals and sent him away to school in Shillong, the old British capital of Assam, a threehour drive from Guwahati.
‘He wanted me to become an engineer and planned to send me to England to study at Rolls-Royce,’ he said. ‘I used to sneak back from school and spend time with the mahouts without my father’s knowledge.’
Over the years, these men taught him all the tricks of the trade as well as some of their most closely guarded secrets. Eventually, however, thanks to land reforms introduced by India’s socialist governments, the Choudhurys were forced to sell their estate. With it went the elephants and the men who had been the hunter’s mentors.
‘Throughout my life, I have continued to be involved with these animals, often working with them,’ said Mr Choudhury. ‘My first love is my family and my second is elephants.’
‘How could you love elephants and still hunt them?’I blurted out, immediately regretting having showed my feelings.
‘Believe me, there is nothing that saddens me more in the whole world,’ he replied. ‘It breaks my heart, truly it does. But sometimes it just has to be done. Sometimes I have to play executioner. Perhaps, as our journey continues, you will begin to understand more of my dilemma. It is all very painful.’
Something in his voice seemed to smack of insincerity. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I was sure he was hiding something.
‘Why do you do it then, if it’s so painful?’ I asked.
‘I am the only one in Assam who is qualified. I’m a trained marksman and an elephant expert,’ he replied. ‘Besides, when you have a rabid dog, you cannot allow it to run loose. It has to be killed. Is it not so?’
I could tell that he was growing more and more uneasy with the conversation, so I let the subject drop. But our chat left me as confused as ever about Mr Choudhury’s intentions and motives.
The Forest Department headquarters, our destination, lay near the border with the mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh, Indian territory claimed by the Chinese. The compound was built on a low-lying hill that, during the monsoon, sat above the Brahmaputra floodwaters. Seven wooden bungalows with teak decks stood in a semicircle facing an enclosure several hundred yards across. Hundreds of tree-trunks, confiscated from timber smugglers, were stacked against a fence, each one spray-painted with a series of numbers and letters. Many had obviously been there for some time, no doubt held as evidence in ongoing prosecutions, and they were beginning to rot.
In the centre of the compound stood an ancient banyan tree, its trunk at least twenty feet in diameter, its base a mass of tangled roots that jutted out of the soil like flying buttresses. Characteristically, its branches had grown shoots that dangled down to the ground. Some had burrowed into the earth and developed into saplings.
‘DO NOT TIE YOUR ELEPHANTS HERE!’ read a sign attached to the veranda of the main office. A pile of buffalo skulls lay by the front door, while above these, hanging incongruously from a nail, was a pair of bright pink underpants.
While we unloaded our bags and equipment, the forest officers and guards emerged, still half-awake, from their bungalows. A dishevelled bunch, they greeted Mr Choudhury, whom they addressed as Shikari or Hunter, with fond smiles and hugs, as if he were some long-lost brother.
‘I call these men the Dirty Dozen,’ joked the hunter while I shook hands with them all. ‘That’s because they tell the dirtiest jokes.’
The senior officer was called Mole because as a child he used to squint through his glasses, which were as thick as the bottoms of milk bottles.
Mole was the most successful young officer in the department, having put a record number of timber smugglers behind bars and confiscated thousands of illegally felled trees in the process. Not surprisingly, as a result he had made many enemies, chiefly among the powerful timber-smuggling syndicate who were rumoured to enjoy the patronage of a number of local politicians. Mole was a man with a price on his head.
‘The bounty stands at 25,000 rupees,’ he joked. ‘That’s all my life is worth! Half as much as an elephant!’
Mole was uncouth, cocky and unpredictable. He also had the annoying habit of calling me ‘man’ every time he spoke to me – ‘Hey, man’, ‘Good to see you, man’, ‘How are you, man?’ – something he had picked up in the United States while studying environmental protection. But he was streetwise and knew how things worked in Assam.
‘The local police are in on everything, man,’ he told me once. ‘So if I arrest someone, I keep him in custody until the court hearing so he can’t escape. Then I make sure the judge gives me a conviction.’
When he wasn’t arresting teak smugglers, Mole had to deal with the local wild elephant herds. As he explained over breakfast in the mess, there was very little rain forest left for the animals to live in.
‘The elephants have lost their home and their traditional migratory routes, man. They’re disoriented and angry.’
I asked him why the jungles and forests hadn’t been protected.
‘Corruption, man! The system is corrupt to the core. Mostly it’s the Bangladeshis who have cut down all the trees. Hundreds of thousands of them have settled here. And guess who’s allowed them in?’
I didn’t have a clue.
‘Our politicians, man! Our Assamese politicians!’
‘Why would your leaders allow all these Bangladeshis to settle on your land?’ I asked, confused.
‘Vote banks!’ cried the angry young man. He made it sound as if that was explanation enough.
‘Vote banks? How do you mean?’
Mole smiled at my naïvety.
‘They bring them over the border, teach them a few words of Assamese, give them ration-cards and assign them some land, usually a bit of forest,’ he explained. ‘When it comes to voting time, they show their ration-cards at the booth and they’re eligible to vote. Each one marks a cross in the box of the politician who’s patronized them. It’s that easy, man.’
‘Ingenious,’ I commented, scribbling it all down in my notebook and eager for more details. But our conversation was suddenly cut short by one of Mole’s deputies who came running into the mess.
‘The rogue . . . the rogue. He killed again . . . he killed again last night. In the middle . . . of the night,’ he stuttered. ‘A m . . . m . . . man. He was dragged from his house. He was dragged and then trampled to death. Horribly trampled.’
Mr Choudhury, who was sitting next to me at the mess table, put down his mug.
‘Where did it happen?’ he asked slowly.
‘Near Hathi Khal. Just a few miles from here.’
‘I know the place,’ said the hunter, standing up. He put on his Guwahati Rifle Association hat and made for the door.
‘Let’s go.’
Self-consciously, I followed everyone outside into the compound, hoping to be invited along. I felt like a dog anxious for a walk.
Mr Choudhury looked my way.
‘Tarquin. Okay, yes, I suppose you can come for this.’
Eagerly grabbing my camera-bag, I jumped into the back of the Land Rover together with Mr Choudhury, Mole and two armed guards. We took a left out of the compound, Rudra at the wheel. He floored the accelerator, shooting along the dirt track at top speed. I bounced up and down on the seat like an india-rubber ball.
‘I am Mister Grand Pree! Yes?’ yelled Rudra. ‘Just like Tom Crooooz!’
Our destination was an isolated hamlet surrounded by lush paddy and sugarcane fields. Along sandy lanes shaded by coconut trees stood rows of mock-Tudor cottages, a design introduced during the British Raj and still popular in Assam today. The white walls of each house were criss-crossed with black beams. Several homes had thatched or tiled roofs capped with chimneys. One or two even boasted porches over which crepe myrtle vines bloomed with brilliant scarlet flowers.
We parked the Land Rover in the middle of the village, leaving Rudra to keep an eye on it. A crowd had gathered near the scene of the disaster. We approached on foot and several of the villagers spotted us, whispering amongst themselves ‘Firang, firang. Foreigner, foreigner.’
Word of my arrival spread quickly and, one by one, with a nudge here and a wink there, the villagers turned to stare in amazement and curiosity.
The crowd parted and we made our way through a gate into a garden with a pathway leading up to a pretty cottage. It was a lovely place, the air filled with the perfume of jasmine bushes. Bottlebrush trees with red bushy flowers and weeping branches stood on either side of the path. White roses grew in carefully tended flowerbeds. Ostensibly, everything was peaceful.
We made our way around the cottage and into the back yard and suddenly I stopped short. On the ground just a few feet away, lying under a dirty, stained tartan blanket, was the crumpled, mangled body of the dead man.
Only a single foot jutted out from beneath the undignified shroud, the veins black against the deathly, bluish-grey skin. The ankle was twisted gratuitously, as were some of the toes. In places, slivers of bone jutted out from beneath the surface.
Nearby, the victim’s grieving widow was slumped amidst rows of trampled cabbages, her expression empty, her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks stained with tears. She grabbed at her hair and moaned. The rest of the immediate family stood, traumatized, in tightly knit groups. One by one, we filed past them, offering our condolences and explaining our purpose for being there. Then, with the family’s permission, Mr Choudhury, Mole and I approached the body.
The hunter kneeled down, peeling back the top half of the blanket. The forest officer stood back while I peered with trepidation over Mr Choudhury’s shoulder. What I saw was to haunt my dreams for months to come.
The man had been reduced to little more than a pulp, barely recognizable as a human being, his face frozen in a contorted, agonized expression which told of an unbearable death. I had seen dead bodies before in various war zones, but nothing as grotesque as this. Feelings of nausea overwhelmed me and my immediate instinct was to look away. But curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I braced myself to take a closer look at the bruised, blood-encrusted body, grimacing at the sight of the head, crushed as if by a steamroller.
Gingerly, Mr Choudhury pulled the blanket back still further, revealing the man’s arms. These had been wrenched from their sockets and were now hanging by a thin thread of skin.
The hunter let the blanket fall.
‘This is just how we found the other bodies,’ whispered Mole, his voice edged with fear. ‘This elephant is evil. He has the devil in him, I’m telling you. He rips off the arms and legs, and crushes the body. He’s a monster.’
‘Are you sure there’s only one elephant?’ asked Mr Choudhury.
Mole nodded energetically.
‘Yes. All the eye-witnesses have seen only one. They describe him as a giant. Some say his tusks are fifty feet long. They’re terrified.’
Mr Choudhury looked interested but curiously unimpressed by these details.
‘Look, you know that’s not true. Come now, let us find out exactly what happened here.’
He rose and turned to the family, asking whether anyone had seen what had happened. An old man leaning heavily on his cane shyly volunteered to relate the story.
‘The elephant came while we were eating,’ he began, his voice croaking. ‘We heard it trumpeting and then it crashed through the fence and came towards the hut.’
He pointed at a mud and straw structure in the right-hand corner of the compound.
‘We felt the ground trembling as he came nearer. Stomp, stomp, stomp.’
The old man beat against his shrivelled thighs with clenched fists, making elephant sound-effects to add to the drama of his storytelling.
‘He pushed against our hut. It shook as if there was an earthquake. There were seven of us inside. We were all terrified. None of us could even move. We did not make a sound. I was certain that any moment the elephant would kill us all. But he turned and attacked the other hut.’
The old man watched through a window as the animal tore down the other structure.
‘He grabbed the roof and wrenched it off, tossing it on to the ground,’ he continued. ‘He tore down the wall as if it was paper. My son was inside. He was down on his knees, praying. The beast grabbed him with his trunk. He lifted him up high in the air.
‘My son called out, “Help, Father, the elephant is killing me! The elephant is killing me!” Then it smashed him down on the ground. My son begged for mercy. Again, the animal threw him down. All the time, my son was screaming. I could do nothing.’
The father clutched at his face, the tears rolling through the gaps in his fingers. His shoulders rose and fell. Mr Choudhury put his arm around him and whispered a few kind words, while other members of the family stepped forward to console him. It took the old man some time to regain his composure.
‘The elephant swung him against that tree until there was hardly anything left,’ he continued, his voice now barely audible. ‘Finally, it dropped him on the ground . . .’ The old man paused for a moment to hold back his tears and then continued. ‘The animal raised one foot and brought it down on my son’s head.’
A sudden silence fell over the place, broken intermittently by sobs. I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, uneasily digesting this story, trying to reconcile the image of the mad, murdering rogue with my own mental picture of elephants gently grazing and splashing in watering-holes.
Save for a few details, the old man’s story was very similar to that told by Monimoy in Das’s Guwahati office. It seemed the farmer had been telling the truth.
Mr Choudhury was once again kneeling on the ground, examining the footprints in the soil.
‘The rogue escaped that way,’ he said to me, pointing to the north. ‘See where the fence is broken again over there. He stayed here for some time before leaving. His tracks move over here.’
He followed the footprints around the compound like Sherlock Holmes on the trail of a promising clue. Mole and I tagged along behind him like a couple of confused and ignorant Watsons. At length, he stopped in front of an overturned plastic barrel lying by a fence.
‘Well, what do we have here? Hmm, let’s look at this.’ He gestured for us to come closer.
I helped him lift the barrel and place it the right way up. Near its base, we could see that the thick plastic was punctured by a large round hole.
‘Yes, just as I thought,’ said the hunter. ‘There’s no doubt about it. This shows that this elephant is an alcoholic tusker.’
‘An alcoholic? What on earth do you mean?’ I asked.
Mr Choudhury paused and his face broke into a smile. Patiently, he explained that the villagers had been making bootleg liquor.
‘That’s what was in the barrel. Look at the hole. He’s pierced it with his tusk.’
Mole and I examined the container again more carefully.
‘This elephant is a heavy drinker, amongst other things,’ concluded Mr Choudhury. ‘Elephants love alcohol, particularly the rice wine these people make. They can smell it from miles away and they often break down houses to steal it.’
I learned later that such raids are extremely common. Every year across the subcontinent marauding elephants regularly go out for a night on the razzle, consuming hundreds of gallons of home-made booze. In Bengal, a wild herd recently invaded a military base, tearing down electric fences to get at the soldiers’ supply of rum. As the distraught troops looked on, the elephants broke off the tops of dozens of bottles and guzzled the contents. While in southern India, a wild elephant attacked an off-licence, and was seen heading into the jungle with a case of whisky tucked under his trunk.
As with humans, drink seems to influence the animals in a variety of ways, depending on their character. Some turn rowdy, most simply stagger around belching, and many have been seen nursing hangovers. The experts cannot tell whether elephants drink for the taste or for the effect. But bootleg liquor, which is often laced with methyl alcohol, does the animals little good, causing severe damage to their internal organs.
Mr Choudhury was now back on the trail, reconstructing the crime and muttering to himself as he scanned the ground for signs and clues.
‘He got hold of the barrel, punctured it with a tusk and drank its contents. This is a very clever and dangerous elephant. But why kill the man? There has to be something more.’
Before I could say anything, he was off again, walking briskly along the elephant’s trail. He climbed over the broken fence and into the paddy-field beyond, surveying the ground. Mole and I followed. After a mile or so, he suddenly stopped.
‘Yes, look at his tracks. Do you see?’
The earth was soft and the huge round footprints were clearly defined.
‘Sure, we see them,’ said Mole.
‘No, look very closely,’ said Mr Choudhury. ‘Usually an elephant’s back feet fall where the front feet have already walked. See his prints. His back foot falls off to the side.’
‘So he’s lame,’ guessed Mole.
‘Perhaps,’ concluded the hunter. ‘Most probably, he has been wounded, maybe by an arrow. That helps explain why he’s so angry.’
‘You can tell all that by just looking at some footprints?’ I asked.
Mole looked equally impressed by his colleague’s deductive powers. But the hunter didn’t acknowledge my question. Instead he muttered, ‘I have to check one more thing,’ and knelt down on the ground in front of one of the deepest footprints. Taking a measuring tape from his jacket, he laid it around the circumference of the impression.
‘You can calculate an elephant’s height by doubling the circumference of its foot, man,’ explained Mole, pleased to show off some of his knowledge.
Mr Choudhury read from the tape. It was four and a half feet long which made the animal about nine foot tall. He took the proclamation order printed with the elephant’s description from his shirt pocket. A quick glance confirmed that the height matched that of the wanted rogue.
‘That seems proof enough that this is our man, or rather our elephant,’ he said as he cast his eye along the tracks that led over the fields to distant green jungle. ‘And I believe I have a very good idea where we are likely to find him.’
With that, he turned and headed back towards the scene of the crime, deep in thought. I hurried after him.
‘What kind of elephant is this?’ I asked. ‘Why has he done all these terrible things?’
‘He’s definitely dangerous. There’s no question about it. But we must find out whether he’s a genuine rogue or not,’ said Mr Choudhury. ‘Some of the elephants sanctioned for execution by the government are just bad-tempered, sick or injured animals. If you give them time, they’ll eventually calm down and go back into the jungle.’
The hunter explained that elephants periodically suffer from a strange and little-understood condition called musth, a period of psychological disturbance associated with sexual maturity and desire. During this time, they excrete a sticky substance from their temporal glands which runs down their cheeks.
‘Many elephants turn dangerous and disobedient,’ said Mr Choudhury. ‘It lasts about three months. Then they calm down and become quite placid again.’
According to the hunter, a genuine rogue was an elephant turned man-killer. Although rare, the Assamese have a name for such an animal – goonda.
‘Once in a while, a real goonda comes along,’ he said. ‘If we are dealing with such an elephant, then nothing can be done for him.’
‘Surely, he could be put in a zoo or a wildlife sanctuary,’ I said.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said the hunter. ‘It would be too dangerous for the general public. Killing him would be the only humane thing to do.’
Preparations were soon underway for the funeral of the crushed victim. The body was carried into the cottage where it was washed and prepared for cremation. An hour or so later, wrapped in a white cotton cloth, it was placed on a stretcher constructed from bamboo and carried into the front garden where the rituals began.
In front of the cottage, I stood by the gate, watching a Hindu pandit, or priest, recite holy mantras while the family scattered rose petals over the shrouded body. Six male relatives then picked up the stretcher, lifted it up on to their shoulders and carried it into the lane. With the priest in the lead, the solemn procession wound its way through the village past kindly neighbours who lined the route, offering their condolences to the bereaved family.
It took just half an hour to reach the cremation site, positioned on the edge of a stream, down-wind from the village and its thatched roofs. Here, the stretcher was placed on a pile of wood five or six feet high that had been coated in ghee. Nearly a hundred people gathered in a semicircle around this edifice and, as the priest recited more prayers and the family wept more tears, the eldest son, carrying a flaming torch, circled the pyramid. Then he stooped down and, holding out the torch with one trembling hand, lit the kindling at the base of his father’s funeral pyre.
Smoke rose up around the body, encircling it in a ghostly haze as flames licked their way up the branches, the clarified butter hissing and spitting like a pit full of snakes. The bamboo stretcher turned black, the flower blossoms shrivelled into nothing, and soon the shroud was alight. Sparks shot up into the air, flames reaching towards the sky, and while the rogue’s latest victim was consumed in a blistering conflagration, his widow sobbed and wailed, the sounds of her grief barely audible above the roaring blaze.
As a final act, the eldest son took a wooden club in both hands and, raising it above his head, brought it down on his father’s skull. There was a decisive crack and then, and only then, was the man’s spirit finally released.
Back at the Forest Department headquarters, I caught up on some sleep in the guesthouse bungalow while Mr Choudhury and Mole went into town to stock up on supplies.
An hour or so later, I was woken by a strange noise coming from outside my door. It sounded like a young boy learning to play the trumpet. The notes, which were mostly spit and wind, were out of tune. Still half asleep, I pulled on my trousers and opened the door. Walking cautiously out on to the grass and rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I took a step forward and bumped straight into the backside of an elephant.
After everything I had seen and heard in the past twentyfour hours, my first instinct was to race back inside the bungalow, slam the door, fasten the latch and hide in the bathroom. I was certain that at any moment the animal would smash down the wall and tear me limb from limb. Several minutes passed. Nothing happened. Even the trumpeting stopped. I crept out of the bathroom and over to the window and very slowly pulled back the curtains to see if the coast was clear.
The elephant was still standing near my door. Now that I had got over my initial shock, I could see that she meant me no harm. Indeed, she was holding a pathetic-looking deflated football in her trunk and I got the distinct impression that she was looking for a playmate.
She was a beautiful, graceful, well-proportioned creature and there was no doubt that when she walked through the jungle, male elephants would look her way. She had lustrous brown eyes and long black eyelashes which she fluttered like a catwalk model. Her forehead and ears were speckled with pink freckles. Nature had also endowed her with a petite tail that swished flirtatiously, perfect ears the shape of India, and a little tuft of coquettish curly hair on the top of her sculpted forehead.
As this was the first elephant I had ever met, I was naturally nervous. My new acquaintance, however, was not lacking in confidence. Spotting me emerging from the bungalow, she strode straight over to the door and, without a moment’s hesitation, extended her trunk in my direction as if she was offering to shake my hand. The end of her trunk hung before me, its spongy nostrils twitching. The proboscis then moved down over my chest, stomach and thigh. I felt it brush against my leg and, before I knew it, she had reached inside my pocket and pulled out a packet of strawberry-flavoured Fruitella sweets that I had been saving for later. As quick as a flash, she threw the whole lot, wrappers and all, into her mouth and began to chew, squinting at me and making satisfied gurgling noises.
‘I see you’ve met Jasmine,’ said Mr Choudhury, approaching us from the other side of the compound, having just arrived back from the shopping trip.
I chuckled.
‘Yes, she just robbed me and ate the evidence!’
Mr Choudhury ran his hands down Jasmine’s trunk. She stomped her feet lightly, apparently pleased to see him. The hunter patted her cheeks and she drooped her trunk over his shoulder affectionately, giving him a hug. Digging into his pockets, the hunter produced a handful of peanuts which Jasmine picked up with the end of her trunk and dropped into her mouth.
‘Sometimes she’s a very naughty elephant, especially when she meets someone new and she knows she can take advantage,’ said Mr Choudhury.
‘Is she trained?’
‘Yes, she’s a kunki, a domesticated elephant.’
‘Domesticated?’ He made it sound as if Jasmine was qualified to do the housework and eat with a knife and fork.
‘She was caught in the wild when she was a calf,’ he explained, patting her forehead. ‘Now she’s employed by the Forest Department.’
Jasmine belched quietly to herself as her digestive juices got to work on my Fruitellas and the peanuts.
‘Go ahead and touch her,’ said Mr Choudhury. ‘Don’t worry, she won’t bite.’
I reached out with my right hand and, like one of the blind men in the story of the Elephant in the Dark, ran my palm over her trunk. I had expected the skin to be smooth but it was coarse and covered in prickly black hairs. Jasmine seemed to enjoy human contact and made a satisfied rumbling noise deep inside her chest that sounded like a cat purring.
‘She’s a new member of my elephant squad,’ said the hunter. ‘Come and meet the others. They’ve just got back from gathering fodder. They’re over there.’
He pointed towards the banyan tree where one or two figures were busy cooking over a log fire.
‘Who are the elephant squad?’
‘They’re the SAS of the elephant world.’
‘The SAS?’
‘My specially trained team. We work together during the winter when the herds come down from the hills looking for food.’
The elephant squad, he explained, was employed by the Forest Department to patrol the district and prevent wild elephants from straying into the fields and destroying the farmers’ crops.
‘The herds come every year and we have to drive them back,’ he said. ‘There’s not enough food left for them up in the hills and the jungle. Down here, there’s a lot on offer. For the elephants, it’s like going to the supermarket – only the food is all free.’
Mr Choudhury took hold of one of Jasmine’s ears and led her over to where the elephant squad was camped near the banyan tree. As I followed, watching Jasmine’s sagging bottom bob up and down, another elephant strode through the compound’s main entrance carrying a load of freshly cut banana trees. He was a gigantic animal, almost twice the size of Jasmine, with a great arching spine and a gigantic cranium crowned by two prominent frontal lobes. His ears, which flapped and beat continuously against his sides, were frayed and torn around the edges like pieces of worn leather. His tail, which was covered in porcupine-like hairs, swung from side to side as rhythmically as the pendulum of a clock.
‘That’s Raja,’ said Mr Choudhury.
I stared at him transfixed, suddenly feeling incredibly small.
‘He’s what we call a makhna, a tuskless male. Isn’t he magnificent?’
A mahout sat astride Raja’s thick neck, gently rocking back and forth in time with the elephant’s stride. The mahout’s back was erect and his feet were lodged behind the animal’s ears. He was a short man with rock-hard calf muscles. Chunky blue veins ran across the length of his arms like the roots of a well-nourished plant. With an apricot complexion, slanting eyes and a wispy beard, he could easily have been mistaken for a Turkoman from Central Asia. His clothes – a rough tunic, old shirt and fatigues – were scruffy and marked with dirt and grease stains. He went barefoot and his toes were like bits of gnarled ginger. His hands were filthy and the palms had the texture of sandpaper. And yet, despite his slovenly appearance, his face exuded character. Like a piece of antique furniture, it had a worn, mellow finish, the grain and lines of his skin adding depth and substance.
Raja approached the banyan tree and the mahout barked out an order. The elephant stopped dead in his tracks. The rider called out again and this time the animal sank to his knees, allowing his master to slide down his bulky side on to the ground.
While we watched the two at work, Mr Choudhury told me something about mahouts.
‘They are revered by many people because they have power over the elephants,’ he said. ‘Some believe they use jadoo, magic. But this is nonsense. They just know and understand the elephants and have a special affinity with them.’
Mahouts, he said, were inseparable from their kunkis and they spent every waking moment together.
‘There have been many cases in the past when an elephant has died and soon after the mahout has died from a broken heart, and vice versa,’ said Mr Choudhury.
‘Do you ever get female mahouts?’ I asked.
‘I have only ever heard of one,’ he said. ‘The mahouts believe that elephants do not like women riding them because they menstruate. But I’m sure that’s just a way of keeping their wives at home.’
The head mahout walked over to where we were standing and clamped my hand in a vice-like grip.
‘Tarquin, this is Churchill,’ said Mr Choudhury before leaving us together.
‘Churchill? Well, that’s an interesting name.’
The mahout grinned, the creases around his mouth spreading from one side of his face to the other.
‘Yes. I am christened Churchill Nongrang,’ he replied. ‘We’re given different names in my tribe, no? My niece is “Dolly”, like “Dolly Parton”. My cousin is “Elvis”, like Elvis Presley. My younger brother, he is “Nasser”.’
‘Like the Egyptian president?’
‘No, no. Like NASA. American space peoples.’ I tried to disguise my amusement.
‘You said you were christened. Are you a Christian then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Presbyterian, all the way,’ replied the mahout. ‘I was teached by Welsh missionaries, no?’
He explained that many of the hill tribes of the North-East Frontier, including the infamous Nagas, were never converted to Hinduism by the Aryans, sticking instead to their own animistic religions. When European missionaries of various denominations flooded into the area during the nineteenth century, offering education as well as the concept of one god, many converted. Churchill’s tribe, the Khasis, who live in a range of hills in Meghalaya, another Indian state bordering Bangladesh, are a mix of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians. And yet much of their culture remains intact, including a matrilineal system which ensures that all property and land remain in the hands of the tribe’s women. It is a tradition that is resented by many Khasi men, Churchill included.
‘We men, we have nothing. We can be throwed from the home!’ he complained. ‘Women. They in charge. Women nightmare. That why I become mahout. I am free man!’ Once again, his face broadened into an infectious smile.
‘What you do here?’ he asked, curious.
I explained that I had come to write a book about the rogue and Mr Choudhury.
‘What you want with book? Book boring, no?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You learn about hathi!’
‘Hathi?’
‘It mean eley-phant in my language,’ he explained. ‘You stay here. Learn many thing.’ He shook me playfully by the shoulder. ‘Make you mahout. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
He showed his excitement by doing a little jig.
‘Come, meet eley-phant squad. They never seen firang. What kind of firang you? You not white. You red. Why so red?’
It was true that I had caught a little too much sun during the funeral.
‘I’m British.’
In most parts of the world, this would have sufficed as an explanation. Churchill needed more persuading.
‘Britishers not red.’
‘Some of us are, if we stay in the sun too long.’
‘Yes, yes. Your country weather very bad. Worse than Himalayas, no?’
I had to agree.
The rest of the squad were a rough-looking bunch, unshaven, dirty and as thuggish as a group of escaped convicts. Chander, the ‘number two mahout’, had a deep scar running across his right cheek and neck, which he claimed to have been given during a tumble with a wild bear. Bodo, the senior apprentice, had a broken nose that jutted out at a sharp angle. And the other two apprentices, Prat and Sanjay, who were covered in tattoos, looked as if they might come in handy in a bar brawl.
When we were introduced, the four of them gawked at me, shaking my hand cautiously. Amazingly, none of them had ever seen a white man before, even if he was, well, red. What’s more, none of them, with the exception of Churchill, had ever travelled to Guwahati, let alone New Delhi, and between them they had seen very little of the world, even on television.
We crouched around the campfire and they served me ‘ready-made tea’, the leaves and milk boiled together in a spitting steel kettle. There was an awkward silence followed by much whispering amongst the men who were, no doubt, puzzling over my presence in their midst.
Eventually, Chander plucked up the courage to ask me where I was from and, before too long, all of them were firing random questions at me in rapid succession.
How old was I? Where was my country? Was it near America? Was it true that we ate cows? What did I think of Punjabis? Did we have elephants in Britain? How did I like India? Did I have children? How did British people drink tea? Had I ever met Princess Diana? Had I seen the ocean?
Eventually Churchill broke in.
‘I have been London,’ he said proudly. ‘I have seen the Big Ben and the Bucking-ham Palace. Also, the zoo. Many hathis there, no?’
I was surprised to learn that Churchill was an extremely well-travelled man who had worked in zoos around the world.
‘How many country you visit?’ he asked, his eyes shining with anticipation.
‘About twenty-five or so,’ I replied.
The mahout cried out with joy. He obviously had me trumped.
‘Me, thirty country – yes,’ he said. ‘I have been all Asia, all Europes – all places.’
For several years, Churchill had worked in a zoo in Malaysia and had used his savings to travel all over the Far East. In the 1970s, when India donated an elephant to Iraq, he was recruited to accompany the animal to Baghdad.
‘I wash hathi in Euphrates River. Iraqi peoples, they come to watch. Very nice peoples. One day, Saddam he come give me sword. I make many friend, no?’
After travelling on to Europe, eking out a living as a manual labourer, Churchill returned to his beloved Assam and joined the Forest Department.
‘Now I’m here, no? This is my belonging.’
By the time the mahout had finished telling me his life story, it was feeding time.
‘Come,’ said Churchill. ‘To be mahout, you learn many thing.’
Draining their glasses, Chander, Bodo, Prat and Sanjay then offloaded the banana trees from Raja’s back and started cutting the curly outer bark into squares roughly one foot across. These they folded in half, making pouches, or ‘rolls’ as they called them, which they filled with uncooked rice and tied up like packages using lengths of vine. Once we had prepared about forty, they were split into two uneven piles.
‘Now watch,’ instructed Churchill.
Turning his back on the kunkis, he extracted a container from one of his trouser pockets and took out an antibiotic pill. This he crushed between his fingers, adding the powder to one of the rolls.
‘Medicine. Let’s see if Jasmine is eating,’ he said, putting it back amongst the others.
Prat laid the pouches in front of the animals. Raja and Jasmine’s trunks slithered about, pulling, touching, feeling and smelling, like Kipling’s Elephant Child with its ’satiable curiosity. One by one, they picked up the pouches, popping them into their mouths, their powerful molars making short work of the crunchy banana flesh.
Soon, all the pouches had been devoured, all, that is, except the one loaded with antibiotics which Jasmine treated with suspicion and pushed to one side.
‘How did she know?’ I asked Churchill.
‘She was smelling,’ he said, clearly frustrated. ‘I am trying to trick her for days, but no, she is too clever for old mahout.’
The squad kept me busy for the rest of the day. As a new recruit, I was assigned all the menial tasks. There were pots and pans to clean, clothes to wash, tents to sweep out and firewood to collect. It was hard work but it was more physically satisfying than anything I had done for months. More importantly, it was the perfect way to get to know the elephant squad and gain their confidence. Prat and Sanjay were delighted to have a helper, and in spite of the language barrier, we soon hit it off.
At dusk, we led the kunkis to the edge of the compound near the main gate where they were provided with cakes of rough wheat, or ragi, which was mixed with jaggery, a kind of molasses distilled from sugarcane juice. Chains were attached to their legs, which in turn were secured to two trees. As the sun dipped down behind the hills, leaving subtle hues in the sky, Prat showed me how to brush down the elephants with a coarse broom. Afterwards, he applied some cream to an open sore on Raja’s back to prevent any infection.
Our chores done, we sat on some logs watching the scene unfold around us. The kunkis were stripping the banana trees and shoving pieces into their mouths. Periodically, Raja tilted back his head and roared like a lion, showing us his gums. Jasmine replied with a little squeal, blowing air down her trunk and making a noise like water going down a hose-pipe.
Flashes of bright light burst across the compound from inside the garage where a forest guard was busy welding together two pieces of metal. At the entrance, an armed guard paced languidly back and forth, a cloud of insects circling above his head. Laughter spilled out from the main office where Mole and his deputy were sharing a drink.
At eight o’clock, the clanging of the dinner gong resounded across the compound. Churchill rubbed his hands. ‘Let’s go get some grubs,’ said the mahout.
‘Actually, Churchill, the word is grub, not grubs,’ I said.
‘Are you sure? I was taught grubs.’
‘Absolutely certain,’ I said, as diplomatically as possible. ‘Grubs are insects and you wouldn’t want to eat them.’
Churchill screwed up his upper lip.
‘That odd thing. A Britisher teach-ed me this word. Twenty years ago he teach-ed me,’ said the mahout. ‘I am using it since.’
As we walked into the mess-room and washed our hands, I said nothing further on the subject. But privately I smiled to myself, certain that Churchill had been the victim of a practical joke.
Mr Choudhury had spent the afternoon making preparations for a night-time operation. After dinner, he called everyone together for a meeting. We gathered round a map of the Sonitpur district which he spread out on the table in the messroom and listened as he outlined his plan.
According to ‘local intelligence’, the hunter told us, the rogue had visited the same village every night for the past week, killing three men. The chances were therefore high that he would visit the village again. But there was one serious complication. A wild herd had moved into the vicinity and they would first have to be driven back into the rain forest and hills to the north. Mr Choudhury, Rudra, Mole and the guards were to go on ahead and set up look-out posts, while the elephant squad followed. It would take the kunkis roughly two hours to cover the distance.
