To the Elephant Graveyard Read online

  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 Buckingham 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 fle
sh.

  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 hosepipe.

  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 mess-room 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.

  That took care of everyone except me. My agreement, struck with Mr Choudhury, was that I would stay in the camp out of harm’s way. However, given the chance, I was sure that I could persuade him to allow me to tag along. In the event, I was wrong.

  “I am afraid you have to stay here,” said the hunter. “This may get very rough. At night, there are many insurgents in the area. Besides, there is a killer elephant on the loose.”

  He placed his rifle and ammunition in the back of the Land Rover and climbed inside with Mole and the guards. With that, Rudra revved the engine, slipped into gear and they all sped out of the compound. I was left behind with the elephant squad in the twilight, bristling with disappointment.

  3

  The Elephant Wars

  “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing that befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is vanity.”

  Ecclesiastes 3:19

  As he knelt in front of the compound’s shrine and began to intone his prayers, flickers of mellow orange light darted across Churchill’s face. In his right hand, he held a green coconut; in the other, a fistful of marigold petals. These he placed on the ground in the centre of a semicircle of burning candles, taking care not to singe his hand. Stooping piously, the mahout lit several incense-sticks, pushing the ends down into the soft earth. He stared reverently at the deity before him, pressing the palms of his hands together in front of his chest. Sweet-smelling smoke wafted up into the cold night air. The rest of the elephant squad knelt behind him, lowered their heads in obeisance and began to say the prayers traditionally recited at the beginning of a journey.

  I stood just a few feet away, eager to watch their act of worship, yet at the same time anxious not to disturb them. The shrine was positioned at the base of a towering oak tree not far from the front gate of the compound. By the Light of the candles, I caught a glimpse of the clay idol, housed in a shallow alcove fashioned like a seashell. It was Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, one of India’s most popular deities.

  Painted in gaudy pinks and purples reminiscent of a Las Vegas casino, he lounged atop the black rat Vahana, his traditional servant and vehicle. A garland of flowers hung from the god’s neck and a golden crown perched on his head. His trunk curled above his characteristic pot-belly, while in his four hands he held a shell, a discus, a club and a modaka, a sweetened rice ball, his favourite food.

  One by one, Churchill and the others made their offerings. Whispering invocations, they poured coconut milk over the statue. The liquid dribbled down the god’s body, dripping off his belly and forming a pool at his feet.

  “King of all beings, the Eternal,” they mumbled, “blood red of hue, whose forehead is illuminated by the new moon, Remover of all Difficulties…”

  The sound of their devotions mingled with the chirping of an orchestra of crickets and the urgent croaking of toads – as if all of them, animals and humans, were paying homage to the elephant-headed god together. A breeze rustled in the oak tree, its branches creaking in a gentle, hypnotic rhythm. Up above, a million stars sparkled in the darkness like jewels in a vast celestial treasure-trove. A satellite passed across this canopy in a wide arc above the earth, an insignificant speck amidst the countless galaxies.

  I began to daydream and thought back to the time, some years earlier, when I had attended Ganesha’s annual birthday celebrations in Bombay. Under a similar sky, an elderly guru had told me the legend of the elephant-headed god.

  Originally, Ganesha, son of the goddess Parvati, was a perfectly normal little boy. But one day, as a result of a misunderstanding, his father Shiva cut off his head. Ganesha’s mother, who was naturally distraught, called upon the other gods to bring her son back to life. To do this, the deities required a new head, so they set off around the world in search of one.

  The first living being whom they met along the way happened to be an Asian male tusker elephant. The unfortunate animal was quickly relieved of his head by the gods and it was duly placed on the boy’s shoulders. In a flash he was miraculously resurrected as Ganesha, the corpulent and often mischievous deity.

  Until the seventh century, Ganesha was feared as a god who brought nothing but catastrophe. In about AD 650, however, a powerful sect sprang up called the Ganapatyas who looked upon the elephant-headed god as the supreme deity and
built countless temples dedicated to his worship alone. Because the cult did not recognize any caste distinctions, it grew in popularity, and over the next three hundred years, the pot-bellied deity underwent a complete transformation. Today, Ganesha is worshipped by Hindus as the god of wisdom and the remover of obstacles. Businessmen always make an offering to Ganapati, as he is also known, at the start of a new venture, and before embarking on a journey Hindus invoke his name. It is also believed that whoever recites his twelve sacred titles every morning will enjoy good fortune.

  The prayers came to an end and the elephant squad rose from where they were kneeling. Bodo, the apprentice with the broken nose, lit a kerosene camping lantern. At first, it hissed and spluttered and sent flames shooting four feet into the air, but soon the silk wick began to burn with dazzling intensity, lighting up half the compound and casting evil-looking shadows behind the twisted branches of the banyan tree. The devotees gathered their offerings from the foot of the idol. According to Hindu custom, these were now considered blessed and, asprasad or sanctified food, must be shared and eaten.

  Churchill handed me a chunk of coconut and dropped two yellow sugar balls called ladoos into my cupped hands. Although I’m not particularly partial to dry Indian sweets, I knew that it would be bad etiquette to refuse them, and to throw any away might be construed as an insult, so I ate everything.

  The kunkis were also given their share of the puja spoils. Jasmine took just a few seconds to cram most of the bananas into her greedy little mouth and gulp them down in one go, and no sooner had she swallowed these than her trunk, acting like a guided missile, went in search of more treats. She homed in on a bowl of sugar balls and, before anyone could stop her, had vacuumed up the lot in her trunk, quickly blowing them into her mouth. Apparently pleased with herself, despite the mahouts’ protestations, she waggled her bottom from side to side and squawked excitedly.