by Mark Shand
Short of Joshipur we stopped at a roadside tea-house. A dazzling array of trucks was parked outside. A small wiry man with slanting eyes, his face a deep ruddy colour, engaged me in conversation. He was Nepalese and a co-driver on one of the trucks.
‘Take me with you to England,’ he pleaded. ‘I will be your bodyguard. I am excellent at fighting.’ He pulled up his shirt exposing a livid lumpy scar that ran from his navel to his right nipple. ‘I killed the man who gave me this,’ he said proudly. ‘These people,’ he continued contemptuously, gesturing at some tough-looking characters who were sitting drinking tea, ‘are weak. Nobody can match a Gurkha.’
‘I don’t need a bodyguard,’ I replied. ‘You see I have an elephant.’
‘Ah, in that case you are in good company. It is not my lucky day.’
As we entered Joshipur, a motorcyclist wearing a uniform, goggles and a leather aviator’s cap, slowed down, gave us a curious look and then drove on. He then stopped, turned round and passed us again. He repeated this manoeuvre several times, as if unsure of something. Finally he shouted, ‘Are you Haathi from Konarak?’
‘No!’ Aditya yelled back. ‘We are the Haathi from Calcutta. The Haathi from Konarak be arriving later.’
‘More Haathis arriving?’ he said puzzled.
‘Yes,’ Aditya said airily. ‘Tomorrow one from Delhi and then another from Bombay.’
‘Oh, goodness me, this is most confusing,’ and the man raced off.
‘Bloody officials,’ Aditya laughed, ‘that’s fixed him.’
Joshipur is where one actually enters the park, but it is from Baripada, the capital of the state of Mayurbhanj, some forty miles away, that the permissions are granted. Through the window in the office I noticed a powerful radio.
‘Would it be possible to send a message to Baripada?’ I asked politely of a young bespectacled forest officer.
‘It is not working,’ he snapped nervously. ‘Park closed. No one allowed in.’
‘But your brochure’, I argued, ‘informs one that the park opens on the 1st October. It is now the 5th.’ There was no answer. Two mystified Australians, who had come all the way from Delhi, were still waiting after four days to see the game park.
‘We are wasting our time, Mark,’ Aditya said. ‘Indrajit should drive us to Baripada and we will find the man in charge. Maybe we can contact the Maharaja for whom you have a letter. He might be able to help. In the meantime, Bhim, Gokul and Khusto can stay with Tara.’
When we reached Baripada we discovered that the Maharaja was ‘out of station’ and the forest officer had disappeared, ‘gone to the market’, we were told. Through local information we found out the reason. There was a man-eating tiger abroad and it had just killed somebody in the south of the park. No one was allowed in. Desperate that we should cross this great game park, whose beauty had been extolled to me from the beginning of my journey through Orissa, I telephoned the authorities in Bhubaneshwar. I pleaded and pushed. The park was enormous, I argued. Over three thousand square kilometres. It was unlikely that I would bump into the tiger. Finally, we were granted full permission to go anywhere in the park, but only by jeep, not with the elephant. Reluctantly I agreed. It was better than nothing but I felt sad that I wouldn’t be able to share this wilderness with Tara.
We waited three hours for the forest officer, a tall man with a limp handshake, who seemed anxious to be rid of us, issuing a letter immediately and nervously avoiding any reference to the man-eater. On the way back to Joshipur we stopped to stretch our legs at a roadside tribal shrine. Effigies of cows and horses and two black granite elephants stood garlanded by night jasmine. An old pandit came out of the shrine and blessed us. In the darkness Aditya and I looked at one another.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
We opened the letter and studied it under the jeep’s headlights. It was addressed to the officer in charge at Joshipur.
I talked with CWLW at ten p.m. today and he confirmed our earlier decision re the pet elephant will not be allowed inside Simlipal. They may keep the elephant at Joshipur. Accompany these persons in park jeep to Chahala and Barehipani but avoid Jenabil because of the man-eating problem. But do not tell them this. The roads are not OK. Tell that.
‘But the people who collect honey from those sheer rock faces are deeper in the park. We’ll miss seeing them,’ I said. We had been told about them in Bhubaneshwar. Their methods of collecting honey were spectacular and unique to the Simlipals.
Indrajit came over and Aditya translated the contents of the letter. He was silent for a moment. ‘Perhaps we lose park jeep in jungle,’ he shrugged. ‘If lost must go where we can.’
The next morning Indrajit, Aditya and myself left the camp. Earlier I had asked Bhim if he would like to come, but he wanted to stay with Tara. ‘Mummy unhappy both Raja-sahib and Bhim go away three days,’ he said. ‘One day okay.’
The park jeep escorted us into the Simlipals. It was like entering another world; a world that had been untouched for centuries. The tracks were overgrown, lined by tall sal trees. The air was fresh after the monsoons. In sunny clearings peacocks stood motionless, fanning out their glorious feathers, and high above them mynah birds chattered noisily. At intervals we would catch the flash of gold and white and a spotted deer would turn to look at us before picking its feet daintily through the undergrowth. Everywhere was the evidence of elephants, old and fresh droppings littered the road. In the 1986 census four hundred and fifty elephants had been counted and as many as ninety tigers.
Through a bower of orchid-lined trees, we arrived at Chahala, an old shooting lodge of the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj, now converted into a tourist camp. It was gothic in design with vaulted ceilings and large open fireplaces. It had been painted a hideous violet and green. Surrounding it was a deep anti-elephant trench and beyond, strategically placed salt-licks for game. At five o’clock the next morning, as the mist still hung heavy in the air, we watched bison and barking deer approach the salt-licks, followed by a small herd of elephants, including two babies who held their mothers’ tails with tiny trunks. From the distance came the deep cough of a tiger. The animals moved away quickly, the little elephants squealing in alarm.
From a raised log cabin at Barehipani, the source of the Buldha-balanga River, we gazed across a wide gorge and watched a thirteen-hundred-foot waterfall thunder beneath us. In Hindi ‘barehi’ means thread and ‘pani’ water. In the dry season, only a thread of water falls like a single silver arrow. The old forest ranger complained bitterly about the elephants. Every week, he told us, they destroyed his garden. Most years the log cabin had to be rebuilt because wild elephants rubbed their sides against the thick wooden poles. I thought sadly of Tara. How she would have loved this paradise where elephants roamed free, untouched and undisturbed.
As there was no news of the man-eater, our guides thought it safe to take us to Nawana, the village of the honey collectors. We descended from the hills crossing wide grassy meadows, alive with wild flowers. On the outskirts of the village, we parked the jeeps and entered a small mud-walled courtyard. It was empty except for a young man with one leg. The villagers, he told us, were far away on the other side of the park taking honey from the tree bees. It was only during the winter that they collected from the rock bees. I was bitterly disappointed.
‘How is the honey collected?’ Aditya asked him in Hindi.
‘It is a dangerous business, sir. We lower ourselves on thick vines down the rock faces in which the bees make their nests in small caves. When we find a nest we light a torch and throw it in. The bees come swarming out and we collect the honey.’
‘Don’t you get stung?’
‘Sometimes, sir. But we smear our bodies with herbs and always chant our mantras before work. On a good day we can collect twenty-five kilos of honey.’
‘What happened to your leg?’ Aditya asked, I thought rather impolitely.
He smiled ruefully and r
ubbed the stump. ‘It is our wives, sir. They tie the vines on to trees at the top of the rock face. There they stand guard. Unfortunately,’ he added, ‘my wife liked another man. It was a long fall. I was lucky.’
I told the park rangers that I wanted to talk with the villagers when they returned from collecting honey. They agreed to let us stay at Nawana. They would return in a few hours to collect us.
‘You want to go Jenabil? Now chance,’ Indrajit said excitedly after they had left. ‘Maybe seeing tiger?’ Aditya and I looked at each other nervously.
‘Well, why not?’ I said to Aditya after some deliberation. ‘We’ve missed the rock bees and we’ve come all this way. Let’s go.’
The track was overgrown and from the absence of tyre marks nothing had passed this way for months. A tree blocked our way. Struggling to lift it we disturbed a herd of wild elephants feeding nearby, camouflaged by the solid green wall of the jungle. The ground shook as they crashed away, trumpeting wildly. At Jenabil the tourist lodge was empty. In the small village Indrajit found a man who knew where the tiger had killed. At first he was reluctant to take us, but with the promise of a healthy reward, he agreed. I told Indrajit to ask him whether we might catch a glimpse of the tiger. The man looked astounded and launched into an urgent tirade.
‘This is not a joke, sir,’ he replied angrily. ‘This is a big, male tiger. It was a man-eater that killed my friend, and it will kill again.’ Our bravado deserted us instantly. We fell silent. The man continued. ‘We are poor people, sir. We go into the forest to collect lac [resin produced by coccid insects from which incense is made] from the trees. Each day, before entering the forest, our pandit tells us which side of the road to go to avoid bagh. That day there were ten of us. The pandit told us to go to the right but my friend, Sri Ram Naik, decided he would go the other way. A few days earlier he had spotted a good healthy tree. He was a brave man and had, on several occasions, fended off bagh with his axe. It is an everyday occurrence. We and bagh must try and live together. He was big man, like you,’ he pointed at me. ‘He took his young son with him. His remains are still there. The police were too frightened to go in to collect them. We must be very careful, bagh is still around.’
We reached a place where an axe cut marked a tree standing by the road. ‘This is the place,’ he said quietly. ‘We go in here. Take sticks and make plenty of noise for bagh can be sitting two feet away and you will not see him.’
Aditya and I realised we were embarking on something both dangerous and stupid. We had no guns, only elephant bombs, which Indrajit cheerfully distributed to each of us. He seemed oblivious of the danger.
We stepped cautiously into the jungle, up to our waists in thick undergrowth. Large bamboo clumps, caressed by the wind, rustled urgently, warning us to take heed. We followed the guide in single file, Aditya and I firmly in the middle. Indrajit took up the rear. At intervals the guide would stop and check his route. Finding another cut in a tree, he moved on. We yelled. We shouted. We beat the bushes, feeling naked and defenceless. We reached a clearing. The bushes were flat, the surrounding trees raked with claw marks. Pointing at the dried muddy ground, the guide indicated large round indentations, the size of soup-plates – the tiger’s pug marks.
On a small outcrop of rock, a faded blood smear; then a rubber sandal, and another – they were an odd pair. Close by a torn and bloody lunghi lay rotting in the ground. Finally a skull, gleaming yellow in the pale sun.
‘It was here, sirs, that it happened,’ he told us. ‘My friend was looking up at this tree. Bagh struck silently from the back. From the other side of the road we could hear his screams. We rushed over, but he was already dead. The bagh had him by the throat. We tried to recover the body but bagh was too big and too angry. He came at us, and we ran.’ Our guide shivered as he looked up at the tree. ‘“O my Father I am dead.” Those were his last words. His son told us.’ He shivered again. ‘We must hurry out of this place, sirs. It is not safe.’
I turned the skull over disturbing a colony of ants, feeding on a flap of skin. There was nothing else. The man had been completely devoured. No bones; just the skull left as a warning. I wanted to take it but Aditya stopped me.
‘Leave it,’ he advised me. ‘It has become part of his jungle.’
We collected the remains of his things. Now a small pathetic bundle, once worn by a strong, brave man. They deserved better than to rot in the jungle; we would take what was left to the Ganges for immersion in the holy river.
Our guide took us to the dead man’s house. It was empty. His family had already left, paid a compensation of 2,000 rupees. A few broken cooking pots littered the floor. Stuck to a mud wall were coloured crayon drawings done by his children; of a field, of a cow and of a man looking up at a tree, behind him stood a yellow-striped cat with a big pink tongue and long whiskers.
If the welcome I received from Tara was an indication of her affection, I was a happy man. She positively vibrated with excitement, coiling and uncoiling her trunk like a giant watch-spring, straining against her chains and uttering sneezes of contentment. For a change she did not immediately open her mouth. She simply touched my face with the wet tip of her trunk and stood perfectly still, her eyes closed, resting against me gently. A feeling of pure pleasure swept over me and then one of equal panic as in just over a month I would have to say goodbye and would probably never see her again.
Bhim wanted us to visit his family in Baripada. As we left, Tara seemed almost resentful, hurling a branch petulantly into the air. Bhim’s mother and father lived in an old tiled house which stood defiantly, like an ancient spider, in an encroaching cobweb of modern buildings on the outskirts of the town. In a neat room dimly lit by oil lamps and a small cooking fire, a tall, elderly man sat erect in a rocking chair. When we entered, he came quickly to his feet belying his age, and saluted smartly. Unlike Bhim, his face was curiously unlined, almost boyish, and, apart from one rheumy eye that glittered milkily in the gloom, he seemed in the best of health. When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I noticed his wife squatting in the corner, fussing over some pots. After offering us tea, she returned to her place, but I could feel her accusing look boring into me. She mumbled something and Bhim laughed in embarrassment.
‘She worried Raja-sahib take only boy England. Never come home.’
Aditya took both her hands in his, and reassured her that this was not true. She seemed to relax a little but still continued to eye me with suspicion.
The old man was anxious to talk of the old days, and in a soft proud voice told us he had been the chief mahout of the late Maharaja and during his tenure had often been to the Sonepur Mela. There he had purchased elephants for 6,000 rupees each and had taken three months to ride them back. At one time there had been twenty elephants in the royal stables. They were so well trained that during tiger shoots they had moved so quietly not even a leaf was disturbed on the trees.
He touched the rocking chair proudly. It had been presented to him by the Maharaja when he retired. As Aditya and I were leaving, he took me aside. ‘Elephants are like human beings, Sahib,’ he whispered. ‘They like companionship. Don’t leave her for too long. Every evening before you sleep, talk to her. Tell her stories.’
To check again if the Maharaja had returned we drove to Belgania Palace. Formerly built to accommodate royal guests during the Durbar administration, it was now his home, as the original larger palace in the city had been turned into a college. Situated on a small hill with commanding views over Baripada, it was a big picturesque colonnaded building, like a grand Florentine villa, the colour of burnt sienna, approached by a sweeping drive lined with flame-of-the-forest trees and jacaranda. An ageing chowkidar received us. We settled ourselves comfortably to start with, in easy chairs on a broad loggia, and then more nervously as a large, scarred Dobermann came and joined us. ‘Brook you bloody dog. Get down,’ a voice boomed as Brook began to take particular interest in one of my legs. A large, balding, unshaven man, dressed in a stained ku
rta and a dhoti, appeared. He looked tired. Black rings circled his eyes.
‘Forgive me for keeping you waiting,’ he said, ‘but I was just finishing my puja.’ With a smile he held out his hand and enquired our names. ‘Patankar,’ he said suspiciously. ‘That’s a Maratha name, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ Aditya replied proudly. ‘I come from Gwalior.’
‘Hmm,’ he mused. ‘Interesting. An Englishman and a Maratha. A friend and a foe. Two hundred years ago we suffered badly under the Maratha yoke. In fact, we joined forces with the Marquis Wellesley to stop you entering Bengal from the south. One of my ancestors, Rani Sumitra Devi, the adoptive mother of the de facto ruler of Mayurbhanj, was honoured by the British Government in recognition of her meritorious services. You must’, he said pointedly to Aditya, with an amused twinkle in his eyes, ‘have had a very nostalgic journey through Orissa. Anyway, we are all friends now. Let us have tea. I will call my wife.’
It was the kind of tea that one longs for on journeys such as this; cucumber sandwiches, cream cakes and endless Benson and Hedges cigarettes (my usual brand which I had not smoked for two months). They were supplied kindly by his wife, a member of the Nepalese royal family, a beautifully coiffeured lady, smelling wonderfully of Worth perfume, wearing a pale, powder-blue sari and dashing diamanté-studded glasses. To begin with she was a little shy but when our conversation turned to shopping she became very animated, eagerly praising the merits of Harrods and other famous stores.
‘Where did you find your elephant?’ the Maharaja asked.
‘In a dreadful place called Daspalla,’ I replied.
He laughed. ‘Daspalla was famous for two things. The best elephants and the most stupid people.’
I told him of our journey through the Simlipals, which had once belonged to his family. On hearing of our exploits at Jenabil, his attitude was one of horror, telling us that our behaviour had been both foolish and irresponsible. However, he was grateful for the information and for what we had done.
