by Mark Shand
Near the village of Hirapur we came across an exquisite and seemingly forgotten temple, surrounded by verdant paddy fields. We approached it by skirting a small lake in the centre of which stood a tiny, overgrown shrine, like a little gazebo in an English country garden. The temple was quite empty and of a curious design – a perfect stone circle about nine feet in height, standing open to the sky. Access was made by a narrow, low entrance way, which was no more than an interruption of the surrounding wall. Inside sixty-four perfect goddesses, carved in black chlorite, each about a foot high, sat in little niches facing an open pavilion in the centre. It held a beautifully seductive atmosphere and I imagined music, incense, flesh, colour, laughter, accompanying orgiastic love. The wall was built at just the right height so that people could not peep in. Later I found out that it was the Chausath Yogini Temple, one of only four in the whole of India, built in the ninth century ad. The goddesses or Yoginis were attendants on the goddess Durga, an image of whom at one time sat on the open pavilion in the centre. It was a place of worship exclusive to Orissa’s kings.
On the main road we passed a tourist bus which screeched to a halt and reversed up alongside us. Excited cries of ‘Slon, slon’ poured out from the opening windows as I realised it was full of Russians. ‘Slon’ is Russian for elephant, and curiously the only word I know in that language. Tara, never one to miss an opportunity for food, worked the bus like a professional. Her long trunk dipped into every window emerging with oranges, bananas and apples, and finally a bottle of vodka which, before I could grab, she inserted into her mouth and sucked dry. Bhim reprimanded her fiercely by rapping the blunt end of the ankush on top of her bony head. This had about as much effect as hitting a hippopotamus with a lollipop, but I could see from the mournful expression on his face as he looked at the empty bottle, where his anger really lay. Luckily another was produced and we toasted each other uproariously.
‘Do dra’ (to the bottom literally, or bottoms up) came from the Russian contingent. ‘Jai Mata,’ from the Indians, a strange rumbling belch from Tara, and from the lone Englishman, ‘Up yours.’ With the aid of an elephant I had done my bit for ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’.
For a while the hot snap of the vodka warmed our bones and we swung along at a grand pace, forgetting about the rain. Bhim, looking like a cheerful, drowned water rat, sang a strange hooting melody that was muffled by the hood of the raincoat I had lent him. Tara now considered anything moving – whether a truck, a bus, a car or a cyclist – as meals on wheels and wandered, waving her trunk, into the path of these oncoming vehicles. Gokul hung on to Tara’s tail giggling squeakily, performing an odd little jig. Aditya and I discussed blisters. I struggled to keep up with him as he demonstrated what he called ‘the loping gait’ of a Maratha foot soldier.
Through the driving rain we could just make out the blurred outline of the Dhauli hills. On top of a prominent hillock, blinding white against a black sky, stood the Vishwa Shanti Stupa, the domed Peace Pagoda the Buddhists built in this century with Japanese collaboration, to commemorate the conversion to Buddhism of the great Indian Emperor Ashoka.
We took a short cut across some open fields to the River Daya, a river which was said ‘to have run red with blood’ during the horrifying slaughter of the battle of Kalinga, a massacre so enormous that Ashoka flung away his bloodstained sword and embraced the path of peace. It was on these very fields that the great battle had been fought. Under the black rainclouds, it was a bleak and eerie place. The wind moaned soulfully, pushing into us and making us shiver, less from cold than from something else, perhaps from the spirits of the one hundred thousand souls that had been slaughtered here. Tara sensed it too. She moved forward reluctantly, her trunk in the air, sensing, probing. Finally she came to a halt. Bhim tried to urge her and she let out a loud reverberating roar which I could only imagine was of terror. With her ears extended fully forward, she backed hurriedly away, then turned and fled.
‘Mummy no like here,’ Bhim yelled over his shoulder, struggling to gain control.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I muttered to Aditya.
‘God knows how many elephants perished on this spot,’ Aditya replied, shivering. ‘This is an elephants’ graveyard. After two and a half thousand years how is it possible Tara still senses that?’
Somehow I believed it possible, just as I believed the legend about the Emperor’s conversion to Buddhism.
On these fields he had stood with a bloodied sword, gloating over the carnage around him. The skies opened and the Buddha appeared in a shaft of pure white light, holding in his arms a dead child. ‘Give life back to this child,’ the Buddha had pleaded. ‘How can I perform such a miracle?’ Ashoka had asked. ‘You have taken so many lives,’ the Buddha had replied. ‘Cannot a man as noble and great as you give back just one life?’
We headed for the road that led to the Stupa where Khusto and the jeep were to meet us. There was no sign of Khusto. We waited an hour in the gathering dusk. Tara was fidgety and nervous, and her foot horribly swollen. We had to find shelter for the night and decided to head for the monastery, where the monks would certainly welcome us. We reached a wide, covered veranda with a large, shady tree conveniently near by.
‘Perfect,’ I said, jingling a brass bell attached to an iron grille. A faint smell of incense emitted from inside. There was silence. I rang again.
‘Who is there?’ called a nervous voice as a young Indian pressed his face up against the other side of the grille.
‘Could I speak to the monks?’ I asked politely.
‘They are Japanese,’ he replied.
‘Well, that’s very nice,’ I said, ‘but can I speak to them?’
‘Gone away, in Calcutta.’
‘Perhaps you could help us then. We need shelter for the night. We are all very cold, very wet and my elephant is sick.’
‘You cannot stay here,’ he stated firmly.
‘Are you a Buddhist?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Buddha Shuranam Gachami’ (may the peace of the Buddha be with you), I greeted him.
‘You cannot stay here,’ he insisted.
‘But we are weary travellers. We are not asking for much, just a roof over our heads and a tree to tether the elephant.’
‘You are a foreigner.’
‘Yes, but so what,’ I shouted, starting to get angry. ‘Buddhism is universal.’
‘You cannot stay here. Please. It is a bad place. There are no lights and murders take place.’
Aditya shrugged. We limped off into the rain and several hours later found a deserted schoolhouse in the dark. After applying a hot poultice to Tara’s leg, fashioned out of sanitary towels which had mysteriously appeared from Bhim’s pocket, we collapsed in exhaustion, oblivious of our damp misery.
Early the next morning, as we were entering Bhubaneshwar, Khusto caught up with us. Through a paan-filled mouth, which did not conceal the smell of rum, he mumbled that he had had a puncture and got lost. Aditya and I decided that Indrajit could deal with Khusto. Tara’s leg was our main concern and we pushed on to Nandankanan, which was on our route northwards, to consult the zoo vet. Bhim did not seem at all happy about our decision. Pouring scorn on the modern methods of medicine, he stated that it was he who always cured the sick elephants at the zoo. I was adamant; I could not bear to see her in such pain any longer.
6
In the Tracks of the King of Bliss
ON OUR WAY into Bhubaneshwar, we passed many young people beating drums, singing and carrying papier-mâché images – some gigantic, some tiny and, oddly, all pink in colour, for immersion in the river. It was Ganesh Chaturti, the last of the days dedicated to Ganesh, and their songs called upon the elephant-headed god to come back early next year. But the melancholic farewells were already alternating with excited hymns anticipating the god’s return and it seemed to me that their continuity was like India itself, where the end of any event is always pre-empted by the birth of the next. The crow
ds turned, and it was as if they had found a new festival. To see an elephant on the day of Ganesh Chaturti was auspicious. A brass band, featuring trombone and trumpet players and a child dwarfed by a huge drum, joined us and we marched triumphantly into Bhubaneshwar like a circus parade.
At one time over seven thousand temples dominated the skyline of Bhubaneshwar, appropriate for a city that is called the ‘Abode of the Gods’. It had started to rain as we approached the temple of Lord Lingaraj (the Lord of the Universe), the largest and most impressive of the temples in Bhubaneshwar, its vaulting spire soaring to a height of one hundred and sixty feet. The priests, seeing a foreigner, uncoiled themselves like pythons from wet stone entrances and slid menacingly towards me to extract money. But the sight of an elephant, or rather the sight of a ‘firinghee’ with an elephant, caused a clash of conscience; they didn’t know whether to give to the elephant or to take from me. Being businessmen, they did neither.
At a busy roundabout a smiling policeman wearing a smart white solar topee hat and a cape saluted, blew furiously on his whistle and stopped the traffic to let us pass.
‘Why be walking, sir?’ shouted a rickshaw driver. ‘I will be taking you anywhere for half price.’
‘Patna? In Bihar?’ I shouted back.
‘Not being a problem, sir. Please be seated.’
‘But it is at least seven hundred miles away.’
‘Then I would surely die. Good morning,’ and he pedalled away, his thin legs pumping furiously.
Indrajit and Khusto drove up in the jeep. We were now back to full strength. We instructed the two drivers to go ahead to Nandankanan to inform the vet of Tara’s predicament. To rest her leg, we stopped at the Hati Gumpha cave (elephant cave) in the Udayagiri hills. Two stone elephants stand guard at the entrance. Inside, engraved on huge stone slabs, is the record of the reign of King Kharavela, the greatest monarch of Orissa, ruler of the mighty Kalinga Empire. Known as the ‘King of Bliss, His Majesty the Mighty Conqueror, Sri Kharavela, the Possessor of Invincible Armies’, it was he who pursued the Greek king, Demetrius, out of India. He came to the throne when he was fifteen years old and, in the twelfth year of his reign, led his vast army of elephants, cavalry and chariots towards north-west India, striking ‘terror into the people of Magadha while making his horses and elephants drink from the Ganges’.
I liked the sound of this gentleman; perhaps it was just the name or perhaps it was that I, mounted on an elephant, was now firmly in the tracks of the King of Bliss. Like his royal elephant, Tara would drink from the waters of the Ganges.
As if to seal this bond, Tara’s trunk suddenly snaked out and circled around the stone trunk of a guardian elephant. In elephant language this is the ultimate gesture of friendship.
At Nandankanan the vet made a perfunctory examination of Tara’s leg and prescribed a week’s course of strong antibiotics.
‘How do I give an elephant pills?’ I asked. ‘In her food?’
‘No, no, no,’ he replied. ‘This is a most serious infection. The course must be administered intramuscularly.’
‘You mean injections?’ I was terrified. ‘I’ve got to give her injections! Oh, my God! I hate needles at the best of times. How on earth do I give an elephant a jab?’
‘It is easy. Come,’ he said. ‘We will give her the first one now.’
I wished I had the confidence shown by J. H. Williams in his book Elephant Bill:
One cut out all the fuss and just walked up boldly to the animal, gave it a good smack with the left hand and exclaimed, ‘Hello, old chap.’ With the right one thrust the needle through the hide and squirted in the vaccine. Then one gave it another smack and turned away, exclaiming, ‘Come on,’ to the next elephant. Elephants will bear a great deal of pain patiently and appear to understand that it is being inflicted for their own good, but they will only put up with it when the operator is full of confidence himself and feels he is making a good job of it, for an elephant can sense the absence of self confidence quicker than any other animal in the world.
‘Can’t you give her the first one?’ I implored the vet, as I held a needle the size of a rocket-launcher in my shaking hand.
‘No,’ he replied firmly, ‘you must learn immediately. Remember, plunge it in right up to the hilt. Once firmly in place, you can attach the plunger.’
‘Which cheek?’ I asked, nervously, standing behind Tara’s enormous bottom. At that moment she turned her head and gave me a curious look.
‘Either one. Whichever you feel most comfortable with,’ he said airily.
After marking a spot in my mind I shut my eyes and plunged in the needle like a dart. With a squeal of rage she shot to her feet and trundled away with a broken hypodermic needle wobbling precariously out of her backside.
‘That was very incorrect,’ the vet remarked needlessly. ‘It has to be a firm strong blow. Place the needle in straight. Now, we will try again.’
Tara was retrieved and made to sit. She gave me a look of pure venom. I repeated the process, this time with success, and even managed to pump the sticky fluid in efficiently.
‘Repeat every evening for the next six days. You will soon find that she will become used to it. In fact, she will be grateful.’
Of this I was not convinced, especially when Bhim, who had been watching with distaste, came up and whispered in my ear. ‘Raja-sahib,’ he said slyly, ‘Mummy in pain, Mummy know who give pain. Mummy cross with Raja-sahib. Better Daddy give injection. Raja-sahib hide. When injection over, give Mummy gur. Mummy then like Raja-sahib,’ he smiled, winking at me.
As we were about to leave, after adding to our equipment a large box of hypodermic needles, syringes and glass phials, the vet pointed to two raised and hardened circles of skin on each side of her backside. ‘You know what those are?’ he said. ‘Those are the marks made by the Lohatias, the men who in the olden days, when hunting wild elephants with lassoes, would hang on to the crupper ropes and spur their elephants on with a short club faced with iron spikes when extra acceleration was needed. This type of elephant capture was called Mela Shikar and the type of elephant used was known as a Koonki. They had to be very fast elephants.’
Looking at her now, as she stuffed her face with paddy, I wondered if she could catch a bus, let alone a wild elephant.
‘Mela Shikar is now of course banned,’ he continued, ‘but it took place in north-east India, mainly in Assam. So you now have an idea where she might come from.’
Miraculously, Tara’s leg already appeared to be improving. She could bend it more and we moved at a good pace over a wide, sandy, dry river basin in the shadow of an unfinished bridge. In the distance we could see the outline of Cuttack, the old capital of Orissa which, due to its unfortunate geographical position, wedged on a spit of land between two huge rivers, had been unable to expand. The capital was transferred to Bhubaneshwar in 1948. It was over one of these rivers that we now crossed.
Trucks and buses thundered perilously close. I had not adjusted to the fact that I was travelling with an elephant rather than a dog that might slip its lead, and I became foolishly anxious that Tara might disappear under the wheels of an oncoming vehicle. To my left, over a railway bridge, the Madras–Calcutta express train chugged imperiously. We were moving faster.
Cuttack was buzzing with an air of excitement, for the Russian circus was in town. Minibuses darted in and out of the traffic, their sides emblazoned with posters of svelte young ladies dressed in scanty sequinned outfits, balancing with arms outstretched on top of charging horses. Lions and tigers snarled from advertising hoardings and bicyclists with tannoys attached to the handlebars of their rusting machines excitedly described the entertainments of the Big Top. Pale-faced Russian artistes mingled with the crowd, and the circus strongman had managed to squeeze into a rickshaw’s tiny seat. On his knee sat a dwarf. Tara and I greeted them all cheerfully but were met with a suspicious silence.
In the main square, fenced off, stood a marble statue of a splendid turb
anned man with a beautifully refined face. Around his neck hung a garland of marigolds. He was the Maharaja of Paralakhemedi, a popular figure, responsible for making Orissa a state in its own right in 1936, separate from Bihar.
I was taken to meet the owner of Samaj, the oldest newspaper in Orissa. A venerable old man with exquisite manners presented Aditya and me with a wooden deity, and around our shoulders wrapped colourful appliqué-work blankets. He clasped my hand. ‘Traditions are dying fast. What you are doing is an inspiration to the youth of Orissa.’ Then he asked if I needed money. I was astonished by this genuine gesture of kindness.
On the outskirts of Cuttack we passed the ruins of the Barabati Fort. It was built in the thirteenth century and once consisted of nine courts, the first of which housed the elephants, the camels and the horses. All that remained was a crumbling stone entrance and a wide moat.
‘This place has seen some action,’ I remarked to Aditya. ‘The Moghuls didn’t behave too well, but it was your lot that really went to town.’
The invasions of Orissa had begun in AD 1205 with the purpose of securing the superior breed of elephants for which Orissa was famous. The most remarkable foray of all was made in 1360 by the Delhi Emperor Firoz Shah, who cut through the jungles of Orissa, crossed the Mahanadi river and occupied this fort, from which the King had fled. Here Firoz Shah spent some time hunting elephants, and when the terrified King sent envoys to negotiate for peace he replied, ironically, that he had only come to hunt and was amazed that the King had taken flight. The embarrassed Oriya King sent him twenty elephants and promised to do so annually as a tribute. Only then did the Emperor return to Delhi. Invaded and occupied by Mohammedans for five hundred years, the state of Orissa was plunged into further despair by the arrival of the Marathas.
