To the Elephant Graveyard Page 9

  Shortly after hearing this news, we packed up our gear and set off once again, hoping to pick up his trail. According to a local informant, the rogue had been spotted in a tea estate only a few hours earlier. There was every chance of our catching him – if only we could reach the place quickly enough.

  4

  Bruiser Harry

  “To the elephant, our scrap of consciousness may seem as inconsequential as a space-invader blip.”

  Heathcote Williams, Sacred Elephant

  “A bugger of an elephant once broke into the medical centre, donchya-know,” Harry Baker told me, as we sat on the veranda of his sprawling bungalow. “Rather an unruly chap. Pulled down the building before he got at what he was after – or at least what he thought he was after…”

  My host was the last British tea-planter left in Assam as well as the manager of the tea estate where the rogue had been spotted. Mr Choudhury and I had gone to his office that morning to seek his permission to pursue the elephant across his land. Harry had been happy to oblige and allowed us to set up camp on the edge of his gardens. He had also invited me up to the house for lunch, so, with Mr Choudhury’s permission, I had slipped away for an hour or so.

  Harry, or ‘Bruiser’ as he was known, had a handlebar moustache and a lazy eye. Periodically, with a flourish like a magician on stage, he would pull a polka-dot handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blow into it until his bulbous nose turned red. His complexion was ruddy, his hair a dignified silver, and his chins and round tummy betrayed a weakness for sherry trifle.

  It was obvious that this old Harrovian was someone who enjoyed centre stage. He was also a mine of stories about life on the North-East Frontier. I felt as if I had struck a rich vein, even if Harry’s anecdotes were punctuated by numerous red herrings.

  “You see elephants love salt,” he continued. “And this old boy, a large tusker as I remember, got a whiff of some inside the medical centre – only the funny thing was that it wasn’t salt at all. It was a bag of…whatcher-ma-call-it.”

  He looked at me quizzically as if I might know what he was talking about.

  “Whatcher-ma-call-it?” I asked.

  Harry puckered up his lips and nursed his chin.

  “Damn memory’s gone,” he lamented. “Never been the same since I fell off Gregory.”

  “Gregory?”

  “Ma horse. Used to ride him around the estate every day. Can’t now, though, you know. Arthritis. Damn shame.”

  He called out to his wife who had gone inside to fish out the family albums.

  “Marj,” he bellowed, “what the deuce do you call that stuff you take when you’re all bunged up?”

  “All bunged up, dear?”

  “Yes, you know, when you can’t go.”

  “Can’t go?”

  “When you’re stopped up like a bottle of bubbly.”

  “Are you referring to laxatives, dear?” answered Marj cheerily.

  “Yes, that’s the ticket,” concluded Harry. “Laxatives. The fella ate the lot – a large sackful.”

  “So what happened to him?”

  “Well, that twit of a doctor chappy was absolutely convinced the tusker would die. What was his name, now? Adams or Arkwright, or was it Williams…? Anyway, where was I?”

  “The elephant,” I prompted.

  “Oh yes. Well, of course, all this did the beast the world of good. Cleaned out his stomach in a jiffy. Only problem was, he emptied it all over ma tea bushes. It was like having one of those mechanical fertilizers walking around. Damn shame.”

  Harry rang a hand-bell that lay on the table and, in the twinkling of an eye, a servant wearing a gleaming white uniform appeared at the far end of the veranda. The soles of his shoes clipped their way across the flagstone floor as he approached the antique cane furniture in which we sat. Like a soldier on drill, he came to attention, his chin as rigid as his starched collar and cuffs. My host looked down at his watch which he kept on ‘garden time’, an hour behind Indian Standard Time.

  “Time for my elevenses, Ravi. One whisky and soda if you please.”

  It was Sunday which, Harry pointed out as his ‘man’ marched off to fetch the sahib’s drink, was the one day of the week when my host had a ‘tipple’ before lunch.

  “Haven’t spent a day sick in bed in forty years, apart from the odd bout of malaria, of course. Whisky’s the answer to a healthy life, if you ask me.”

  The servant soon returned carrying a crystal tumbler on a silver tray, together with a soda siphon.

  Harry fixed himself a drink.

  “Sure you won’t join me?”

  “I can’t,” I explained. “I made a promise to Mr Choudhury to keep off the sauce.”

  “Pity. Last of the foreign stuff.”

  Harry raised his glass.

  “Well, cheers.”

  ♦

  Half a century after India gained independence, there was something surreal about running into a British couple carrying on as if the Raj was still alive and well. I knew that some colonials had stayed behind after 1947, but I had never imagined that, fifty years on, any of them would be left, especially in such a remote part of the country. However, Harry had been born in Assam and, although he spent his formative years at Harrow, he regarded the North-East Frontier as his home. His polo-playing chums might be long gone, but he was determined to live out his years in his adopted land.

  “Love the place and the people. Could never leave,” he told me. “Besides, what the deuce would one do in Blighty? Sit in some two-up-two-down? Not me!”

  True to character, Harry still lived in the manner to which he had always been accustomed. His bungalow was set amidst a sea of perfect lawns interspersed with rose beds, a croquet lawn and an aviary full of green parrots. He also maintained a rifle range where he shot clay pigeons every morning, and there was a summerhouse complete with teak deck-chairs and an overhead wicker fan which used to be operated by a punkah-wallah.

  A few hundred yards down the pebbled driveway by the estate’s private club which boasted its own golf-course, squash court and library. In its heyday, the white families living in the district had frequented it.

  “We used to have grand parties. Dinner-jackets, ball-gowns – the works. Even had our own track where we raced ponies. Had a few winners m’self,” reminisced Harry fondly.

  Harry’s wife of forty years, Marjorie, emerged from the bungalow carrying a tower of photo albums frayed with age. She had spent most of her life in the tropics but was still as pale as the day she had left her native Hastings in 1936. Nevertheless, behind the fragility there lay a tremendous amount of strength and resolution. Marjorie had survived malaria more times than she could remember, had defied the Chinese when they invaded Assam in 1961 by remaining in her home, and had escaped from kidnappers when they seized her in 1988.

  She had been brought to Assam as a child and had only left a few times to visit Europe.

  “In the twilight of the Empire, we lived charmed lives,” she explained. “It was a lovely, lovely life, especially for a young girl like me. There was no shortage of romance as there were lots of young men to choose from and we got the pick of the crop.”

  Planters and their families enjoyed busy social lives and plenty of sport and, despite living in one of the most isolated patches of the Empire, they never wanted for luxuries. Every month, a flight from Calcutta would arrive at the estate’s private airstrip laden with goods imported from the best shops in Knightsbridge and Piccadilly.

  “You name it, we could get it,” Marjorie said as she showed me a catalogue dated 1938 which advertised everything from pith helmets and gramophones to pewter beer tankards, ‘anti-obesity preparations’, anchors, top hats, Knights Templar outfits, and ladies’ promenade shoes – not to mention Union Jacks and galvanized steel boats, the latter described as ‘SPLENDID FOR DUCK SHOOTING’. There was even a taxidermist’s advertisement that listed prices for the stuffing of elephants, rhinos and tigers.

  When t
he planters went on leave, they travelled on luxurious ocean-liners and stayed in five-star hotels. Their children were educated at the best private schools England had to offer. And upon retirement, managers and their wives could look forward to the security of a generous pension.

  “Wasn’t always like that, of course,” interjected Harry as he helped himself to his second whisky and soda. “Not for the original fellas.”

  Harry’s great-grandfather was amongst the first British pioneers to travel to Assam. He did so in the 1850s, shortly after wild tea was discovered growing in the valley, when the British administration encouraged adventurers to establish plantations in this obscure stretch of rain forest inhabited by hostile tribes.*

  ≡ Tea was discovered in Assam in 1823 by C.A. Bruce. Various histories give the impression that it was not used by the local tribes because they never cultivated it. In fact, many of them had used tea for centuries, primarily as a medicine for treating colds and fevers.

  In what amounted to a ‘Tea Rush’, thousands of young men set off for the new frontier, many of them with only a few pounds in their pockets, determined to make their fortunes.

  It took these pioneers ten weeks to travel from Calcutta by paddle-steamer up the Brahmaputra, a notoriously difficult river to navigate thanks to its shifting sandbanks and raging monsoon floodwaters. During the journey, there was little to do but shoot crocodiles on the banks of the river. Upon their arrival in the promised land, they found conditions hostile and dangerous. The valley was infested with ferocious animals, most of the land was flooded for three months of the year, clean water was scarce and disease rife. And since there was little stone available for building, the planters had to live in flimsy bamboo huts while they worked to cultivate their precious tea from dawn to dusk.

  Planters were isolated for months and sometimes years on end. Visits from other Europeans – even fellow-planters – were rare and, in their loneliness, many turned to drink and some to suicide.

  “Quite a number topped themselves,” said Harry, as Marjorie headed back into the bungalow to check on lunch. “It was the isolation that did it, of course. That and the lack of fillies. In those days, a white woman was as scarce as a white elephant.”

  Nevertheless, like Harry’s great-grandfather some did survive and they gradually pushed back the rain forest and drained the swamps. Over the years, they turned Assam into the largest tea-producing region in the world.

  “Nowadays the life of a manager is comfortable, of course,” said Harry. “But it’s still a hard grind. Can’t take your eye off the ball, not for a moment.”

  Harry, who was sixty-eight, spoke fluent Assamese and Bengali. He still rose at five and worked at least ten hours a day, six days a week. Much of his time was spent managing the five thousand employees who lived in various villages on the estate. His main interest, however, was the tea itself. He prided himself on its quality and, with the aid of his highly sensitized taste-buds, he kept a careful check on each new batch. Every few hours, he would prepare a brew from the various strains of leaves growing in his gardens. Much like a wine taster, he would suck the liquid into his mouth, swill it around and then spit it into a spittoon.

  “Won a few awards in my time,” he said proudly, before we went in for lunch. “Tea’s my life. Always has been. Imagine I’ll be buried in the gardens. Nothing fancy.”

  ♦

  The bungalow, which boasted seven bedrooms, was decorated like a cosy Sussex cottage and oozed British gentility and an old-world tranquillity. The lavender-coloured curtains matched the furniture, which was upholstered in Warner fabrics brought from Chelsea. Porcelain figures of Peter Rabbit and friends stood on the mantelpiece above the wide fireplace. On the far wall hung a portrait of Harry’s greatgrandfather who had started out life as a lowly foot soldier in the Indian Army and who eventually made his fortune in the tea business.

  The only reminders that we were in India were the geckos on the walls, the fans whirring above our heads, the smell of spices emanating from the kitchen and the sound of a Hindi news programme coming from a television playing somewhere in the bungalow.

  “Did you know that bungalow’s a Hindi word,” said Harry, as we moved into the dining-room. “In fact, there are dozens of Indian words in English. Been a bit of a hobby of mine collecting ’em. Kedgeree’s another one. And Blighty, of course, is a corruption of bilayati, which means foreign or European. British troops during the Great War started using it, and soon it came to be known as England. Caught on after that.”

  We ate at a polished mahogany table laid with silver. A number of mounted leopard and bear heads stared down at us from the walls. Servants bearing platters served various north Indian curries followed by a selection of British desserts.

  “I had the cook trained in Calcutta at the Oberoi Hotel,” said my host when I praised the food. “They soon whipped him into shape.”

  Harry’s last cook had been involved in Marjorie’s kidnapping and was currently serving ten years in a prison not far from Guwahati. He had acted as the inside man for a group of Naga dacoits, whom he informed about the comings and goings of the household.

  “They abducted me one Thursday when Bruiser was out for his bridge night,” said Marjorie. “It wasn’t very nice being tied up and shoved into the back of a jeep.”

  “What did they do with you?” I asked.

  “Oh, they took me up into the hills. Fortunately, they didn’t hurt me. They were just young bullies. All they wanted was some money from Bruiser. They’re always kidnapping people. These so-called freedom-fighters hold the whole tea industry to ransom.”

  I read later that all the big-name tea companies have paid tens of millions of pounds in protection money to the various insurgency groups such as ULFA, who are estimated to hold large fortunes in Bangladeshi bank accounts. The militants are a ruthless bunch, armed with machine guns and bombs, and tea-estate managers are, on the whole, powerless to protect themselves. Those who have tried standing up to them have been dealt with harshly.

  “You see, Bruiser refused to pay his dues, so that’s why they took me,” continued Marjorie, as the servants cleared the table and laid it for tea. “In the end, he had to raise thousands of pounds and hand them over. Poor old Bruiser. What he didn’t know at the time was that I had already escaped.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “When the guards were asleep, I slipped my ropes off and got away. After that, I walked down from the hills and was back at home in time for breakfast,” said Marjorie.

  Just then, a pot of tea was carried in and Harry helped me to a cup. I took a sip. It tasted smooth and mellow, without a hint of acidity.

  Harry took his without milk.

  “Don’t need it. Not like the rubbish you get off the shelf in Blighty, all mixed in with old and inferior leaves,” scoffed Harry. “This is the real thing.”

  Harry claimed to have developed the secret of producing the perfect cuppa. When and how you added boiling water was academic, he insisted. It was all a question of blending together just the right selection of leaves. Those picked from his garden’s southern, steeper slopes produced a mellow flavour, while leaves from the north-facing slopes lent a tangy taste, which he added for zing.

  “The riff-raff say Darjeeling’s the best, but that’s poppycock.”

  He took a sip and swilled it around in his mouth before swallowing.

  “Golly,” he exclaimed, reaching for his third plateful of sherry trifle, “that really is a damn nice cup of tea, donchya-know.”

  ♦

  With his riding days over and Gregory put out to pasture, Harry relied on India’s version of the Jeep, the Maruti Gypsy, to move around his gardens. As he drove at a leisurely pace, giving me the grand tour of his estate, we passed through thousands of acres of tea bushes, a regimented ocean of emerald green. Dark-skinned women wearing conical straw hats and dressed in bright reds, pinks and yellows, stood picking the new flush, singing as they worked.

  In
the middle of the gardens stood the factory. Harry was critical of many production methods and had not updated his plant for nearly thirty years. Inside, the machinery was archaic, the air full of the chug of bolts and pistons and the hiss of bellows and pumps. Harry claimed his old techniques, taught to him by his father, still produced the best flavours and he was one of the few to continue packing his product in wooden tea-chests.

  From the factory, Harry drove to the other side of the estate, where the bushes stretched towards the foothills to the north. All the while, we kept an eye out for the rogue elephant who was thought to be hiding somewhere on the estate. Harry turned down a lane and pulled up next to a footpath.

  “Want to show you something,” he said.

  He opened the door and his Dalmatian, Roger, raced off along the footpath. We followed, my host waddling like a goose, cane in hand. Another group of women workers filed along the path, their baskets brimming with leaves. They all averted their eyes as we approached and giggled shyly amongst themselves.

  “Dainty things but damn hard workers,” commented Harry. “Don’t know what one would do without ’em.”

  Half a mile on, he led me in amongst the tea bushes and came to a halt next to an old grave marked only by a flat granite stone.

  “Thought this might interest you. Bit of a story behind it.”

  I searched for a name but was unable to find one. Who did it belong to?

  “I call it ‘The Grave of the Unknown Planter’,” said Harry. “Father told me the resident was a British fella who died after eating a wild duck. Must have been a bit off.”

  Harry took off his panama hat and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “Story goes he wasn’t discovered for at least a week after he’d kicked the bucket. No one knew who the devil he was, so they buried him where he dropped. Rotten luck.”