To the Elephant Graveyard Page 10

We stood there for a few moments in silence. I wondered about the occupant of the grave. More than likely, he had been my age and had travelled all the way from England and endured untold hardships and dangers only to die alone and forgotten.

  “Poor bugger,” I said out loud.

  “Yes, quite,” agreed Harry. “Suppose we should say a prayer for him, really. Us being fellow-countrymen and all that.”

  “Yes, I suppose we should,” I said.

  Harry placed his hat over his heart and lowered his head, clearing his throat.

  “Um. Yes, well. Lord, we humbly beseech you to care for the soul of this fella. Hum. Now and for ever more. The power and the glory. Um…Aaa-men.”

  “Amen,” I echoed.

  Harry put his hat back on.

  “Never been very religious. Couldn’t think of anything else to say,” he explained.

  “It’s the thought that counts,” I said.

  “Yes, quite,” replied Harry.

  And we turned and headed back to the Maruti Gypsy, Roger leading the way.

  ♦

  It was early afternoon by the time Harry dropped me back at the camp.

  “Better get home,” he said, although he was obviously tempted to stay. “Otherwise the wife’ll give me a bollocking.”

  Wishing me ‘God speed’, the old boy turned the vehicle and headed off towards his home, waving his panama hat out of the window. I watched him for a while until he disappeared from view.

  The elephant squad was camped on the bank of a river near the edge of the tea gardens. Raja and Jasmine, who stood face to face, their trunks curled around one another like a courting couple, were chained to a tree. The apprentices were playing cards near a smouldering log fire. Churchill sat on the ground in the lotus position, carving a piece of wood with his knife and listening to the BBC World Service on his shortwave radio. “Tarwin, you take long time, no? Waiting for you,” he scolded, jumping up.

  “Sorry. I was having lunch with a tea planter.”

  “Yes, I know. You’re eating good grub?” he asked.

  Noticing the pot of sticky black dhal spluttering like crude oil on top of the fire, which had, no doubt, been the mahout’s lunch, I thought it tactful to make my meal sound as unappetizing as possible.

  “Terrible English food,” I spat. “Disgusting.”

  “Ah yes,” replied Churchill. “English peoples eat very bad grub, no? Junk food. Same as Naga peoples. They eat all things. Dogs, cats, even snakes.”

  “That’s not junk food,” I protested. “And besides, we don’t eat cats or dogs. Anyway,” I added, trying to change the subject, “what news of the elephant?”

  “No news. Shikari and Mole searching,” explained the mahout. Apparently the rogue had been spotted entering the tea gardens that morning but had since disappeared.

  “How does an elephant simply vanish?” I asked.

  The mahout shrugged his shoulders. “Clever hathi,” was his explanation.

  For now, it seemed, there was nothing to do but wait for the others to return. When they did, I would have to face Mr Choudhury, who had yet to deal with my disobedience the night before. I was worried that he might confine me to Mole’s headquarters.

  “Now time for wash,” announced Churchill suddenly.

  “But I’ve already had a shower,” I protested, explaining that I had made use of Harry and Marjorie’s bathroom after lunch.

  “Not you. Washing hathi, no?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “In river. Come.”

  The mahout clapped his hands and the rest of the squad dropped their cards and set to work, quickly unfastening the kunkis’ chains and leading the animals down to the water’s edge. Jasmine trumpeted with glee as she waded in and keeled over on her side, half-disappearing into the murky eddies and sending a tidal wave surging towards the far bank. Raja lumbered in after her, slowly easing himself down into the water until his belly formed an island mid-stream, the current churning against the arch of his great spine.

  As Churchill explained, elephants are at their most vulnerable when they are lying down and it was a testimony to the unreserved trust that Raja and Jasmine placed in their human keepers that they so willingly presented themselves for their ablutions. For the mahouts, and especially the apprentices, washing the animals was the most important part of their routine. It was when they and the animals were at their most intimate, a daily ritual that helped strengthen the bond between them. But it was also just good plain fun for humans and elephants alike.

  “Roll up jeans,” instructed Churchill, who was busy pulling up handfuls of dry grass from the bank which he twisted into something resembling a loofah. This he soaked in water and then he scrubbed Raja’s side, rubbing the rough folds of skin and getting into every nook and cranny.

  “Insects, they living on hathi. Cause problems, no?”

  “Don’t you use soap?” I asked. “It would make them smell nicer.”

  “No soap. Hathi not like. Here, you try.”

  The mahout handed me the grass and I started on one of Raja’s hind legs. When I had finished, Churchill barked an order and the kunki raised his limb, enabling me to scrub underneath. The elephant’s ears floated on the surface like two giant water-lilies, his trunk coiling and slithering through the water, the tip blowing bubbles and making gurgling noises like a drain.

  Next, Raja was ordered to sit up and squat on his knees so we could get at his toenails. These we scoured with handfuls of pebbles to get rid of parasites and general muck. Soon, the kunki had been washed from top to toe, his dark skin glistening in the late afternoon sun.

  “Now my turn,” said Churchill.

  Stripping down to his underwear, the mahout dipped into the water and then proceeded to lather himself in suds. When he’d finished, he ordered Raja to suck up trunkfuls of water which the kunki sprayed over the mahout, rinsing off the soap in short, sharp bursts.

  “Like shower, no?” shouted the mahout as Raja rinsed his hair for him. “Hathi is best aneemal!”

  I ran back to the camp to fetch my camera. Along the way, I passed a stranger heading towards the river. He looked Nepalese or perhaps Tibetan and was wearing black army boots and fatigues. By the time I returned, the others were gathering round him, each of them taking turns to give him a hug.

  “Tarwin, meet my best, best, best friend. This is CP. He is Gurkha. Very danger man, no?” joked Churchill.

  CP, who had smooth yellow skin and high cheekbones, looked like a harmless, five-foot-tall version of a native American minus the war paint. I offered him my hand.

  “Hello. Pleased to meet you. Do you speak English?” I asked.

  “‘Course I do,” he said, “what d’ya fink I am?”

  I blinked, not sure whether I could believe my ears.

  “Where are you from?” I asked incredulously.

  “Darjeeling’s ‘ome,” he replied.

  “But your accent. It’s…”

  “…British Army. Twenty-two years. Plus I lived in the UK for six years,” he said, shaking my hand. “This lot call me CP, but I prefer Badger, my nickname in the forces.”

  Badger had been recruited as a teenager and trained in the UK. He was an expert in jungle warfare and had served in the Falklands, the Gulf and later in Hong Kong, where he patrolled the border with China, preventing illegal immigrants from crossing into the former colony. Sadly, during the hand-over of the colony to China, the Gurkha was ‘retired’ along with most of his comrades. For six months afterwards, he worked as a bodyguard for a Chinese ‘businessman’ who ran various dubious enterprises. But thanks to his short stature and innocent appearance, no one took the Gurkha seriously.

  “Whenever there was trouble, everyone would try to take me on,” explained Badger, who was a black belt in aikido and had trained with the Japanese riot police. “A bodyguard is supposed to stop fights from ‘appenin’, not encourage ’em, so it didn’t work out – even though I put a few people in ‘ospital.”


  After that, the veteran returned to the UK, but he found the going hard and, only recently, had returned to Darjeeling armed with just his kukri, the traditional curved knife carried by all Gurkha men, and his British pension.

  “The pension’s worth bugger all,” said Badger as we sat around the campfire, drying off.

  The Gurkhas, he claimed, were the most effective and loyal foot soldiers in the world and had won a record number of Victoria Crosses. Yet despite this, they weren’t treated as equals.

  “We take their bullets and this is ‘ow they repay us,” complained Badger bitterly.

  Now, the former soldier was trying to start a new life and had come to see Churchill, a childhood friend, to ask for help and advice.

  “I don’t know about nothin’ more than fightin’,” he said. “I’ve ‘ad plenty of offers to join terrorist groups, but I don’t want nothin’ to do with ’em.”

  As we had tea, Churchill told him about the rogue. Could he help track the elephant?

  “If ‘e’s ’ere, I’ll find ‘im,” said the Gurkha, as he sharpened his kukri. “He can’t ’ave gone too far, now can ‘e?”

  ♦

  We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to pick up the rogue’s trail, but our best efforts were hampered by what Badger called ‘local unintelligence’. Each time we stopped to ask someone whether they had seen the elephant, we were given conflicting information. Some people claimed to have seen him heading south, others north. A good few swore they had seen him leaving the gardens altogether, while one travelling sadhu, or holy man, tried to convince us that the elephant had the power to render himself invisible. The solution, he said, was to buy one of his charms which would enable us to see the enchanted animal.

  By nightfall, neither our party nor Mr Choudhury’s had come across his tracks and, when we all met back at the camp soon after seven, it was a dejected group that sat around the campfire eating their mandatory plates of rice, dhal and raw onions. Even Mole seemed downcast.

  “What am I going to tell the local people?” he asked me. “If the rogue kills again, it’s going to be on my head. We’ve got to find him and we’ve got to find him fast, man.”

  Only Mr Choudhury was still confident of success. Indeed, for someone who had spent the day chasing shadows, he seemed remarkably positive and upbeat. After returning to the camp, he had washed in the stream and put on a clean shirt and a pair of worn jeans. For the first time since I had met him, he had taken off his glasses. Without them, he squinted which made him appear less stern.

  “He will come out in the open soon, it’s only a question of time,” he said.

  Rather than wait until dawn to recommence our search, however, Mr Choudhury proposed setting up posts at several strategic spots along routes the elephant had used during recent raids. To do this, he divided up the squad and the forest guards into four teams, each equipped with torches and a walkie-talkie. Soon after ten o’clock they were sent off in various directions. Clearly still angry with me for having ignored his orders the night before, the hunter also gave me a severe reprimand. For a moment, I thought I would be confined to camp, but he was obviously in a forgiving mood.

  “You can come with me, Tarquin. I want to keep a close eye on you. You’re not to sneak off with Churchill again.”

  Privately, I was delighted. Spending time with the hunter was exactly what I wanted. Only then would I gain his confidence and only then would I be sure of being on hand when he confronted the elephant.

  Mr Choudhury, Mole, Rudra and I set off in the Land Rover. Three miles to the north, Rudra cut across fallow fields before stopping below a masang, a wooden platform built twenty feet up in a tree. This rickety structure was used as a lookout post by farmers anxious to keep elephants away from their crops. Mr Choudhury had chosen this particular masang because it enjoyed a commanding position over the land that lay between the rain forest up ahead and the village behind. It was also equipped with a bell, which could be rung to alert the villagers.

  Only a week earlier, the masang’s owner, a young Bangladeshi farmer called Latif, had had cause to ring the bell for all he was worth when he spotted the rogue coming across the fields. Hearing the alarm, all the families fled to the safety of a brick building. Only one person was caught out in the open, the local drunk, who was too far gone to register the impending danger.

  Latif, who appeared still to be suffering from shock, had watched from his masang as the elephant trampled the drunkard to death. As the farmer described what had happened, Mr Choudhury and Mole listened with expressions of disgust and sheer disbelief.

  “What did he say?” I asked, prodding the forest officer in the arm.

  Mole ignored me and proceeded to cross-examine Latif. I pestered him again. “What did he say?”

  “Impossible!” said the forest officer.

  “What’s impossible?”

  “No elephant does that, man.”

  “No elephant does what?”

  Mr Choudhury explained: “This man says he saw the elephant tear out the man’s intestines with his tusks and then eat them.”

  It was my turn to grimace.

  “That’s disgusting!” I said.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying. But he swears he saw it happen,” said Mole. “He swears it, man!”

  I asked Mr Choudhury what he thought.

  “I’ve heard tales of elephants doing this kind of thing before,” he replied. “It’s strange that this elephant always seems to attack drunken men. But most probably this man’s imagination has got the better of him.”

  Frowning, Mr Choudhury put his hands in his pockets and turned away.

  ♦

  It was a bitterly cold, dark night. The only light for miles around came from the blinking beacon of a television tower high up on the faraway hills. Giant bats swooped all around us, flapping their elastic wings as we sat on the edge of the masang. Ahead, the landscape was a patchwork of faint shadows cast by billowing clouds as they passed in front of the moon. Off in the distance, I could hear the eerie chanting of mantras coming from a Hindu temple.

  Soon after midnight, the wind changed direction and began to blow from behind us. This was exactly what Mr Choudhury had hoped for. Before climbing up on to the masang, he had placed a barrel of locally made rice wine at the bottom of the tree in the hope that the wind would carry the smell into the rain forest and draw out his quarry.

  Should this bait prove effective, Mr Choudhury was ready. His Magnum rifle, which was loaded, lay across his lap. Rudra sat in the Land Rover, ready to flick on the headlights and two specially mounted searchlights screwed on to the bonnet at a moment’s notice. I didn’t envy him his exposed position.

  “Shooting an elephant is a difficult undertaking at the best of times, but at night it is practically suicidal,” explained Mr Choudhury. “To kill an elephant you must be close. You have to bring him down in one shot. So you need an extremely powerful rifle and you must aim for the heart or for the brain. That is the only way to stop him.”

  Any mistake might cause the tusker to stampede into the neighbouring village where he would cause havoc.

  “He could kill many people and I would be blamed,” he added.

  There was also the hunter’s own safety to consider. In order to shoot the elephant, he would have to be standing or kneeling on the ground and, as a result, risked being trampled. Elephant Gold and Charles’s diaries were full of tales of hunters who had only managed to wound charging elephants and who had died as a result. Mr Choudhury had no intention of becoming another fatal statistic.

  “Unless I can get a clear shot, I will not shoot at him. I will fire over his head to frighten him away. Then I will track him until first light,” said the hunter. “This will also go down better with the farmers. They believe bad elephants come back as ghosts. If I shoot the rogue here, they will say that he is haunting their fields and homes, and they will want compensation. Some of them might even lynch us.”

  While we w
aited, I asked to see the hunter’s rifle. I had always imagined that a Magnum was a handgun, like the one used by Dirty Harry which he claimed would ‘blow your head clean off your shoulders’.

  “A Magnum is a type of handgun and rifle,” explained Mr Choudhury. “Mine is made by Winchester. It’s a ·458, one of the most powerful rifles available.”

  “What about bullets? Do you use dum-dums?” I asked, remembering that they had been invented by the British in Calcutta.

  He shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re banned by the Geneva Convention. I use Remington high-speed bullets with a 500 grain full metal jacket.”

  He showed me one. It was three and half inches long and made of brass. When fired, it would travel at a velocity of 2,130 feet per second.

  Next he told me about the sights.

  “I don’t use telescopies for shooting elephants because you have to get up close and they’re too powerful. I rely on the mounted sights on the rifle. They’ve never failed me.”

  The conversation drifted away from elephants and I began to ask Mr Choudhury about his personal life. Did he have a family?

  “I’ve been married nearly twenty years,” he whispered, pausing to listen for any movement up ahead. “It was an arranged marriage, but from the start I loved my wife and she loved me. An arranged marriage can be a wonderful thing.”

  Indeed, as I discovered, Mr Choudhury was fairly conservative, although ready to bend with the times. Two of his three children were approaching their twenties and, once they were of marriageable age, he hoped to find them partners.

  “If they meet someone independently, then so be it,” he said. “But you must appreciate that we are more traditional here than in London. The family is our most sacred treasure and we must protect it, is it not so?”

  Mr Choudhury also strove to protect his way of life from modern influence and was determined never to own a fridge. Instead, he bought fresh produce from the market every day. He also grew his own rice, which he stored in a bamboo hut in his back garden. But he did have a weakness for one Western appliance.

  “Television is wonderful,” whispered the hunter, who had recently bought his first set. “We have cable and my favourite is the Discovery Channel. They have excellent documentaries, even some on elephants.”