by Mark Shand
Over celebratory drinks he told me of his journey. At first he was worried that Rajpath might escape from the train, but the mendicant seemed so sad, and so subdued, that he spent the journey gazing mournfully out of the window until even Aditya began to feel sorry for him. When they arrived in Benares, Aditya employed the services of a lawyer, and they left by taxi to Lakeshar village, about two hours by road north-west of Benares.
The owner of the elephant, an elderly man, was obviously a figure of some standing. He lived in the largest house in the village and was not at all surprised to see them. Sitting by his side was one of the other mendicants who, it seemed, had gone on ahead to warn him. The rest of his family were also present. There were fifteen of them. At this moment, Aditya felt concerned. But everything went smoothly. The gentleman wanted to sell the elephant: there was no bargaining and the lawyer drew up the papers which were duly witnessed and signed. The money was then handed over, and each member of the family wanted to count it. This took time. Finally everyone was satisfied and the deal celebrated with cups of hot milk sweetened with sugar. As they were leaving the old man told Aditya that he would now buy another elephant. When he and his brother were young men and first married, their wives were unable to produce a male heir; a saddhu was consulted who advised them to keep ‘Ganesh’ near the house. They immediately bought an elephant, and some time later his brother produced a son.
‘If he has to keep an elephant near his house at all times,’ I remarked, ‘what’s it doing traipsing across Orissa?’
‘He can’t afford to keep it all year round,’ Aditya explained. ‘An elephant costs about 300 rupees a week to feed, which in India is a great deal of money. From November to March, our marriage season in India, he rents the elephant out. On such occasions, it is auspicious to have “Ganesh” present. During the rest of the year it will just sit eating money, so he makes a deal with mendicants like Rajpath. During the off season, he lends it to them and they make a lucrative living by begging. He also gets a cut of their takings.’
I was astounded. ‘What a sensible arrangement.’
‘It’s actually quite a large business, particularly in the Benares area. Some of these landlords own up to thirty or forty elephants, or more. In many ways this is a good thing. Sadly, the use of elephants is dying out. Can you imagine India without elephants?’
Everyone in the hotel appeared to be involved in Tara’s destiny. When I arrived, the receptionist told me my elephant had refused to get on the truck. Aditya laughed. ‘It was quite an event. These two’ – he nodded towards Tripathy and Indrajit – ‘were most upset. They wanted her to be waiting for you at the zoo. Indrajit even tried to ride her himself, as if she were some huge taxi. And poor Mr Tripathy nearly got flattened when she shot into reverse. The trouble was caused by the crowd. You can imagine the scenario – the shouting and jeering. She was a nervous wreck.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘On the road. Let’s go and meet your new girlfriend.’
After driving about twenty miles we found them, taking shelter from the sun under the spread of a large banyan tree. It was, I realised, the first time I had seen her in the light of day. As often happens in life and love, she now presented a somewhat different picture. Even to my inexperienced eye, she appeared to be half starved. She lacked that roundness of girth that I had always associated with elephants. Her rib cage was clearly visible and her skin hung in folds like an ill-fitting suit. She looked at that moment exactly what she was – a beggar. It was only then, as I surveyed this immense bag of bones, that the enormity of the situation struck me. She was mine. I was the owner of an elephant, and the idea seemed so ludicrous that I began to laugh. Quickly I controlled myself for I thought – and this was even more absurd – that she might think I was laughing at her, and I had no desire to hurt her feelings.
I was also at a loss as to how to effect an introduction. She wasn’t exactly an average pet, like a cat or a dog, or even a hamster, which one can pick up and cuddle or stroke and expect a contented purr or a wet lick or, in the case of the hamster, a sharp nip. However, she soon solved that problem. As I approached her nervously she stretched out her trunk and with the utmost delicacy began to explore the front of my shirt. She’s making friends with me, I thought happily, enchanted by this apparent display of affection. It then stopped abruptly in the area of one of my trouser pockets into which she quickly inserted the tip of her trunk and deftly removed my lunch – an apple – and, with a squeak of delight, popped it into her mouth. It seemed the key to Tara’s heart was going to be through her stomach. I dispatched Indrajit to buy her some food.
After two kilos of rice, which she consumed by poking her trunk into the sacks and sucking the contents out like a vacuum cleaner, four bundles of bananas and twenty-three coconuts, she seemed a little more replete and broke wind loudly as if to say thank you. As I watched her crunch up the last of the coconuts, her eyes, fringed by lashes long enough to suggest that they were false, closed contentedly.
3
Bandobast
IN HINDI THE word ‘bandobast’ means ‘arrangement’, and it was to bandobast that the next two weeks were devoted. On the 15th September the great festival of Ganesh was to be celebrated. We could not hope for a more appropriate and auspicious day on which to begin our journey.
Rajpath had spent five days with Bhim and Tara at the zoo handing over the reins of command. It was remarkable how quickly she adapted to her new master. Although the language of mahouts is universal – all originally derived from the ancient Sanskrit – local intonations are different. Rajpath’s was strong and sharp. Bhim’s was more sing-song and gentle. This encouraged me, for I had imagined an English accent causing terrible confusion. She was really a very clever elephant, though Rajpath told me before he left that she had one weakness: deep water. Always, he advised, shackle the front legs before her bathtime. Hardly a weakness, I thought. All elephants love water, even I knew that, and I forgot about it.
Her daily intake began with a morning snack consisting of thirty kilos of rice, wrapped in paddy, sprinkled with a few roots of turmeric (for digestion) and fed to her in bundles, like giant birds’ nests, by Bhim. She then disappeared behind a mountain of fresh fodder, namely bamboo, the branches of Bud and Peepul trees of which she ate only the bark, and if she was lucky, some pieces of sugar cane. Having slowly worked her way through this she would reappear in the late afternoon when her larder would be restocked for the night. In addition she picked up tit-bits from the busloads of visitors to the zoo, and from my daily visits, when I would bring the icing on the cake – gur. Gur is unrefined molasses, and to elephants it is like foie-gras to a gastronome. They love it. The moment I arrived Tara would drop anything that she was eating, shoot out her trunk, flap her ears and stamp her feet like an impatient child. I became the candyman, and I admit the greater part of her affection at the beginning was due to this treat.
One difficulty remained. How were we to satisfy the appetite of such an enormous beast once the journey had begun? I had no idea where to find a chaarkatiya or food-gatherer.
‘Not problem, Raja-sahib,’ Bhim announced. ‘My friend Gokul help us.’ He introduced me to a shy young man with a mischievous face whom Aditya interrogated closely. Gokul’s squeaky voice gained confidence with each statement, punctuated by laughter from Aditya. At last Aditya turned to me.
‘Well?’
‘He’s our man. He’s eminently qualified for the job. He has been a singer, an acrobat, a dancer, and most recently a tree feller. He now has a new ambition. He wants to be a mahout. Just like you.’
The legendary G. P. Sanderson, who was in charge of elephant catching operations in Mysore and Bengal in the late nineteenth century, reckoned a ton to be a good load for an elephant on continuous march. In his classic work, Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India, he also recommended that ‘in hilly country seven hundredweights is as much as he should carry.’ Now Sanderson was describing a male
elephant and probably a large one at that. Tara was a female and in reality quite small, though admittedly at the moment she was doing her best to change her image. Her pack gear alone was substantial. It consisted of a soft quilted pad, about one inch thick, that extended from her withers to her rump and halfway down her sides. On top of this came the gudda or saddle, made of stout sacking stuffed tight with straw, six feet long, four and a half feet broad, eighteen inches deep, and weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds. It had a longitudinal opening which to some extent relieved the pressure on the spine, one of the most vulnerable parts of the elephant. ‘Sore back,’ Sanderson continues, ‘often disables elephants for months, sometimes for years and may even result fatally.’ On top of the gudda came the howdah, which can be an elaborate and ornate affair, but in our case simply resembled a heavy, four-legged rectangular table turned upside down with a cushion to sit on and rails at each end to prevent us falling off. The whole contraption was strapped on by means of one length of thick rope which went round her head and girth and up under her tail. To prevent chafing, it passed through a crupper, which was made not of leather but of metal, in the shape of a piece of bent pipe. ‘Smoothness, not softness,’ Sanderson insists, ‘is the prime requisite in a crupper.’
Our personal gear, all the paraphernalia of a long expedition, tents, sleeping bags, cameras, cooking equipment, food, lamps, axes, kerosene, water, torches, and so on – hung from both sides of the howdah, so that the weight was distributed evenly and would rest on the upper part of her ribs, and not on her spine. This was all exclusive of her food, chains and shackles and, most importantly, the four of us. It became obvious, as I had been advised in Delhi, that we would need back up. With a vehicle to carry the bulk of our load, we could travel relatively unencumbered across the country, and then be supplied every few days at predetermined points of rendezvous. It sounded simple enough in theory, but whether it would work in practice remained to be seen.
Finding ‘back up’ was considerably easier than finding an elephant, and a jeep and trailer were kindly lent to us by friends for the duration of our journey. With the jeep came a driver, and without the driver we could not have the jeep, but there was, as Aditya and I agreed, something about Khusto that spelled trouble, though at that moment neither one of us could put our fingers on it. For a start, communication with him was a problem due to large well-chewed wads of ‘paan’ that were permanently wedged into his mouth, giving him the appearance of a squirrel with mumps. He was also more of a modist than a mechanic. The only spare part that he deemed necessary to take with him for this long and arduous journey was an extra rearview mirror, and he spent much of his time teasing his bouffant hair with the bright red comb he kept wedged in the back pocket of a tight pair of khaki trousers. Indrajit, on whose sagacity and faithfulness we had now come to rely heavily, also voiced his doubts about Khusto. To our great relief he insisted that he himself would come along as co-driver.
Although I knew he would decline, I asked Mr Tripathy to accompany us also. There were tears in his eyes. He clasped my hands, and I was as deeply affected as he was. ‘I am too old for such things, sir. With my reward, I have decided to start a new business.’
I was intrigued. ‘What kind of business?’
‘I will become a miner,’ he announced with marvellous inconsequence. ‘I will find gold and diamonds. With my riches I will buy elephants.’
‘But that was your last business.’ I was now confused.
His wise old eyes filled with laughter. ‘No, sir, o-r-i-g-i-n-a-l elephants. When you return to Orissa I will be selling them to you.’
4
Paint, Pujas and Pandits
WE HAD ASCERTAINED that the Sonepur Mela lasted two weeks, and that the peak day – Kartik Purnima (the day of the full moon) – fell on the 23rd November. Elephants could not be bought or sold before that auspicious date. To be on the safe side, we planned to arrive at the Mela around the 17th November, which would allow us sixty-four days to complete the journey. With the aid of some very out-of-date maps, we established a route. By my calculations (which were by no means accurate) the journey would be some seven hundred and fifty miles long, roughly the distance between John O’Groats and Land’s End, or from New York to Chicago, or Sydney to Adelaide.
‘Four miles an hour is a good pace for an elephant, but long-legged ones will swing along at five,’ Sanderson wrote. Tara had the most beautiful long legs. Even if we were to be on the move for only four hours a day, starting early to avoid the heat, it seemed to me that we had plenty of time.
I could scarcely believe it. We were ready to begin our journey on the most auspicious day of the year. Some friends had arranged a special puja for our good fortune. Early on the morning of the 14th September, the day before we were due to depart, Aditya and I went to the zoo to watch Tara being made ready for the puja by some students from the art school in Bhubaneshwar.
Decoration of elephants is usually carried out by mahouts – specialists in the art, using chalk and coloured paste – who are familiar with the dangers, the vagaries and the fidgetiness of this large animal. They can work with assurance, secured by their knowledge. Understandably, the students were nervous. An elephant is a different proposition to the stillness of a canvas. They were also working in watercolours, and moved warily round her, applying dabs of colour with their paintbrushes. Tara now nervous as well, and perhaps annoyed by the tickling sensation of bristles on her skin, shook her head violently and flayed out with her trunk and tail, sending students, pots and paintbrushes flying.
Bhim and another mahout immediately took charge, forcing her to sit. They grabbed her trunk and her tail and held them tightly. Apart from her huge flapping ears Tara now remained steady enough for the students to work. With wonderful imagination, a trait seemingly inbred amongst artisans of Orissa, Tara was transformed into a bride. The insides of her ears were decorated with painted earrings of yellow diamonds and rubies, her forehead became a fringe of lacy pearls, her trunk a fretwork of flowers, lotuses, frangipani blossoms and blood red hibiscus, and around her legs appeared anklets of silver and gold. She emerged resplendent, a princess fit for the mightiest of kings.
When the truck arrived to transport Tara to Konarak, it was backed up against the side of a wide stone terrace about four feet high which fronted the zoo’s museum, a long low building, from the roof of which bougainvillaea spilled. It was a venue, I thought, more picturesque than practical. The interior of the truck was littered enticingly with every kind of elephant delicacy – succulent stalks of sugar cane, thick sheaves of bamboo leaves and three or four large bundles of bananas. Bhim astride a closely hobbled, radiant Tara clanked up the steps on to the terrace. They approached the truck and then stopped. From where she stood she explored the back of the truck with her trunk. She crept all the way around it, testing and checking everything. She then leant forward, managing to reach the nearest of the delicacies which she popped into her mouth. Bhim urged her forward. She remained stationary. Two or three other zoo mahouts, armed with sticks, crept up behind her and began to beat the back of her legs, while another climbed into the truck and tried to interest her in the food. With a squeal of rage, she shot into reverse, scattering the mahouts and a group of enthusiastic onlookers in her path. She then halted and, regaining her composure, methodically consumed the contents of a flower bed which lined the other end of the terrace. Inevitably, a large crowd had congregated. They had not expected this added attraction on their day out at the zoo.
After three hours the experts (and there were a great many of them by then) decided that this was the wrong approach. I began to doubt their expertise and wondered if they had ever attempted such a manoeuvre before. The arrival of one of the other zoo elephants, a big docile female, who was in theory going to show Tara the way, proved it. She too refused to enter the truck. An impasse had been reached. There was only one solution. Tara, accompanied by Bhim and Gokul, would have to walk to Konarak, a distance of some thir
ty miles.
As I squeezed into the jeep, my backside wedged uncomfortably on a sack containing tins of corned beef and my head squashed at right angles against one of the metal roof struts, I agreed wholeheartedly with Louis Rousselet, who said of his travels in central India and in the presidencies of Bombay and Bengal that ‘It is neither a slight responsibility nor a trifling matter to have to keep and maintain an elephant for a month or two.’ I couldn’t believe the amount of paraphernalia that had collected. Did an elephant journey really need all this equipment and all these people? But it seems I had got off lightly, for he goes on to tell us that ‘a mahout usually takes his wife and children with him on the journey’.
It had been agreed that Tara and Bhim would meet us that evening at the government inspection bungalow, close to the great Temple of Konarak. By midnight there was no sign of them. A search party was sent out and returned without success. By 7.30 the following morning there was still no sign of Tara. The pandit who was to perform the puja deemed the early morning as the propitious moment for devotions. I had washed, had not taken food and was therefore clean.
For two hours I sat cross-legged in a sandy hollow outside the inspection bungalow which overlooked the Bay of Bengal. Facing me was a small, pink clay idol of Ganesh. Being a foreigner, I could not help feeling self-conscious and somewhat of a fool. Sand flies shot up my shorts and stung me on the backside. I was desperately worried about Tara. As the pandit muttered the last incantation in a cloud of incense, and I showered the little pink effigy with yet another handful of nuts, flowers and coins, news reached us that Tara had been located fifteen miles from Konarak. The Indians have a proverb, ‘Listen to the elephant, rain is coming.’ At that moment it started to rain.
