Travels on my Elephant

by Mark Shand

  In the afternoon I tried to push Tara along at a faster pace. She kept crossing the road from side to side, as if selecting a special path. At first I thought it was due to her hangover but, after scolding her a few times, I realised this was not the case. At intervals, her trunk would swing up and deposit a pile of small rocks on to the top of her head. Then I spotted the reason for the obstinacy, which she was deftly showing me. The path was littered with small, sharp stones, and her slow, cautious movements were simply to avoid injuring the sensitive soles of her feet. This little show of sagacity gave me more pleasure, perhaps, than anything I had experienced with her so far. She had taught me so much.

  We camped beside a dirty nullah, amongst a grove of date palms near a village called Kotapisi. Due to lack of firewood, I commanded Tara to uproot a thick palm stump which proved more obstinate than I had expected. She bent it backwards and forwards using one of her front feet, then loosened it more by using her full weight, pushing with her ‘bushum’. Working steadily, she eventually ripped the stump out of the ground with a great tug of her trunk.

  In the middle of the night Tara escaped. Following a trail of flattened grass, from dragging the uprooted date palm that she had been chained to, we found her in the middle of a lush paddy field. It was as if a combine harvester had been at work. Half the field was neatly cropped. We did not blame her. It was becoming difficult to satisfy her appetite, and unless we paid exorbitant prices, the owners of trees were reluctant to let Gokul cut fodder. We sat up all night, taking turns to watch her, leaving early to avoid an ugly scene. A final descent through dense jungle, from which we could hear the roar of traffic, led us to the Grand Trunk Road which links Calcutta and Delhi.

  Delighted by the smooth surface of the tarmac, Tara swung along at a grand pace, unaffected by the diesel fumes from passing trucks that choked us and made our eyes water. It was a great shock. Suddenly the stillness of the forest, the clear bubbling rivers, the dazzling bird life and the colour and joviality of the tribals became a distant memory.

  We stopped at a tea-house for breakfast. As the trucks pulled in and out, a few drivers threw coins at Tara’s feet, which she picked up and placed on her head. We needed the money badly. It was Sunday and the banks were closed. The jeep had not as yet turned up. We were going to have to work the road. Bhim was indignant. Mummy was not a beggar now, he exclaimed angrily. She was a princess, and he refused to have anything to do with our venality, not that we had collected much by the end of the day.

  ‘Generous bunch, the Biharis,’ I remarked to Aditya as I glared at another passing truck, like a hitch-hiker glaring at a motorist who has failed to give him a lift.

  ‘It’s not so much that,’ Aditya explained, ‘it’s because they don’t want to stop. There are so many ambushes on this particular stretch that even the truck drivers are frightened. You wait until tonight. You’ll find it difficult to sleep when the trucks join into one long convoy to cut down the risk.’

  It was dark by the time we met up with the jeep. Suitable camp-sites were now impossible to locate. We ended up in somebody’s back garden, just off the highway. Aditya was right – the constant rumble of passing trucks, the hiss of air brakes and the crunch of badly changed gears continued all night. To pass the time, we placed bets on Tara’s height. Using the old method, we had to guess how many times a piece of string would wind around her foot (which was approximately twenty-four inches) to equal her height, taken at the highest point of her back. Khusto and Indrajit said twenty, Gokul, twelve. Aditya and myself, convinced we were correct, knowing Tara stood at seven and a half feet, from the sale document, stated five. Bhim, with a quiet chuckle, guessed two, a decision met with howls of derision. Extraordinarily he was correct. Twice around Tara’s foot made her eight foot, just a few inches off her actual height. Going by Khusto and Indrajit’s judgement, she should have been sixty feet tall.

  The next day we continued along the Grand Trunk Road, the flowing artery of India that for many years has been the conveyor of life and legend.

  ‘Prostitutes,’ Aditya exclaimed excitedly, pointing to a colourful encampment of painted ladies sitting by the roadside, their eyes thick with kohl, smoking hookahs and chattering like mynah birds. ‘Probably on their way to the Sonepur Mela.’

  Seeing Tara, they cooed, whistled and called to us suggestively to join them for breakfast. They stroked my arms and legs, playfully pulling at my hair and smelling me. They wrinkled up their noses in distaste and started giggling.

  ‘It’s your fair skin, Mark,’ Aditya explained, laughing. ‘They find … how do I put it’ – trying to be polite – ‘you well, different. As a firinghee, they’re saying you must be rich. So they’re discussing prices. But because you are riding an elephant they are prepared to give you a discount.’

  Bhim stood beside Tara, with a lascivious expression on his face, whispering to her quietly. Quite suddenly, her trunk shot out, grabbed the hem of the nearest sari and pulled sharply upwards. The girl gave a shriek of alarm and struggled to regain her modesty.

  ‘Teach Mummy new trick,’ he said happily, ‘for Mela. Undress women.’

  Aditya reprimanded him severely, but Tara was now enjoying her game. Like a dirty old man with wandering hands, she moved towards another victim and explored her bottom with the tip of her trunk. I stopped her immediately. Although I had heard stories of amorous elephants, this was going too far. Not only was she of the same sex, her actions were both unchivalrous and coarse, quite unlike the elephants that Edward Topsell described in The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes. ‘At the sight of a beautiful woman,’ he wrote, ‘they leave off all rage and grow meeke and gentle.’ He then describes how an elephant in Egypt was once passionately in love with the same woman as the poet Aristophanes. The elephant annoyed the poet by putting apples into the girl’s bosom and dallying with her breasts. Another elephant loved a Syrian girl ‘with whose aspect he was suddenly taken and in admiration of her face, stroked the same with his trunke’. Apparently the girl reciprocated his affections and made him ‘amorous devices with Beads and Coral and Silver and such things as are grateful to these brute beastes’. When the girl died the elephant was overcome with grief and expired romantically at her side.

  At Doohi, a dirty crossroad town, we turned off the Grand Trunk Road heading northwards for Bodh Gaya, Gaya, Nalanda and Rajgir, the great centres of Buddhism. The countryside was monotonous; little irrigated fields criss-crossed by narrow footpaths and rough roads leading to endless shabby villages. Few trees lined the road, and most were protected by barbed wire. When Bhim took Tara to drink in scummy pools, he would bend down and whisper in her ear. ‘Walk careful, Mummy. Water dark. Maybe hurt feet.’

  At each village, young boys set off fireworks and exploded crackers, prematurely celebrating Diwali, the festival of lights, which takes place on the darkest night of the year, when Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, is worshipped. As it is the beginning of the New Year, Diwali is particularly auspicious for traders and businessmen. People flock to the shops and markets to stock up with new merchandise. A man with a brand new bicycle, a machine totally foreign to him, hopped past us with his right foot on the left pedal. Another man, more expert, his bicycle loaded with planks of new wood, hammers and nails, was on his way to his brother’s home west of Patna, where, he told us, a huge earthquake had caused terrible destruction and death a month ago.

  ‘Was your brother’s house destroyed?’ I asked him.

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Just turning round. Now better view.’

  As we entered the outskirts of Bodh Gaya we were joined by a tall, fleshy, loquacious German girl. She exuded good health and strode along behind Tara with her enormous rucksack as if it were a handbag. I became more and more irritated by tales of her travels through India; of how she hated the filthy food, of the lack of good accommodation and particularly of ‘ze dirty Indian men’ who were always trying to molest her. They must have been very brave, I th
ought, staring in awe at the size of her red, meaty hands.

  ‘Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw,’ she suddenly guffawed loudly, pointing at Tara’s rolling bottom. ‘Eet looks zo zilly. Ya, like ze wears ze pantaloons.’

  I had had enough of this Valkeryian chatterbox. Nobody insulted Tara. I saw red.

  ‘Listen Fraulein,’ I hissed, ‘it might interest you to know that according to the Sanskrit scriptures women were supposed to emulate the walk of the elephant, because it was so sensual, and,’ I added, pointing to her large, wobbling posterior encased in a pair of tight shorts, ‘you could learn something from that.’

  She stopped dead and went crimson in the face. For a moment I thought one of those great meaty hands would come crashing down on my head.

  ‘Vell,’ she spluttered. ‘I have never been zo insulted in my life. You … you, focking Englishman,’ and, with a swing of her pigtails, she stomped off.

  I was still seething with anger as I rode into Bodh Gaya. The peace of the Buddha had not yet settled upon me, as I was confronted by a mass of Japanese tourists carrying white parasols, shuffling like anxious sheep in the wake of a shouting guide. A group of shaven-headed western Buddhists with sunburnt necks and arms, who wore their saffron robes self-consciously, were haggling with some enchanting Tibetan girls selling tourist knick-knacks from roadside stalls. As I came up quietly behind them, Tara reached out her trunk, tapping one of the devotees on his backside. He whirled around and uttered a strangled scream.

  ‘Mon Dieu! Un éléphant …!’ and hurrying to get out of the way, caught the hem of his robe in one of his heavy, leather sandals. The robe unfurled quickly, exposing a tight pair of ‘jockey’ briefs, emblazoned with ‘La Tour Eiffel’. ‘Merde …!’

  I smiled reprovingly at him from my lofty perch. Clasping my hands together and bowing my turbaned head, I said ‘Bonjour and Hari Krishna,’ while Tara moved serenely onwards.

  As we moved through Bodh Gaya towards the hotel where I had arranged to meet Don McCullin, I saw a familiar figure approaching. He was elbowing his way through a mass of pedestrians, his head down, swinging it from side to side, suspiciously clutching his stomach as if in pain. But I knew better. He was zealously guarding his moneybelt.

  ‘Watchya, cock,’ I said. His head jerked up like a turtle. A pair of eyes rounded in disbelief under big, bushy eyebrows.

  ‘Gordon Bennett,’ he growled, shading his face against the sun. ‘Shand! Is that you? Who the hell do you think you are – Jesus Christ? I’ve seen some strange things in my life, but this takes the biscuit.’

  ‘Don,’ I said dismounting, ‘this is Aditya Patankar.’ They shook hands.

  ‘Congratulations, Aditya,’ Don said. ‘If you have managed to survive with this lunatic, you must be as mad as he is.’

  Bhim and Gokul saluted smartly. Tara, her manners impeccable, raised her trunk and trumpeted loudly in greeting.

  ‘Hop on board,’ I said. ‘I’ll send the boys back in the jeep to fetch your gear.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, mate,’ Don said as he eyed Tara suspiciously, ‘I’d rather walk for a while.’

  To avoid the congestion in the town of Gaya, we followed the course of the River Phalgu, sacred to the Hindus, and believed to be an embodiment of Vishnu himself. Once it was said to have flowed with milk. We made camp on the far side, in a grove of mango trees, looking across to the old town of Gaya, a façade of ancient, greyish ghats splashed with colour as devotees came to bathe under the shadow of the great Vishnupad Temple. Far to our right, the sound of traffic crossing a narrow iron bridge rolled across the river flats like distant summer thunder.

  Leaving Don to sleep, Aditya and I took the jeep into Gaya to stock up on rum. We bought lights and fireworks to celebrate our Diwali, and paid a visit to the police station where it had been arranged for my visa to be renewed. Beneath us on the river banks as we crossed the bridge, a multi-coloured carpet stretched as far as the eye could see. Bathers had laid out their clothes there to dry in the sun. Beyond, just visible as a black glistening speck, Tara was taking her bath in the shallows.

  At any time Gaya is a busy, thriving metropolis: now, only a few days before Diwali, its streets were almost impassable. Like the great Maratha chief, Baji Rao, who in the mid-eighteenth century had sacked and plundered the city with an army of fifty thousand horses, Aditya drove with aggression and total disregard. Scattering pedestrians, ignoring police signals and blowing the horn imperiously, he hurled the jeep around the labyrinth of crooked alleys, shut in by high old masonry houses, many of them still loop-holed for defence against the marauding hordes. Streets were lined with shops, outside which merchants were wheeling and dealing; cotton weavers, grain dealers, grocers, carpenters, tailors, shoe-makers, blacksmiths, brass workers, silver and gold merchants, all shouting and gesticulating to the endless ribbon of passersby.

  To be honest, I had been concerned about Don’s arrival. Although I had travelled with him on many occasions, it is always difficult when a newcomer joins an expedition and fills one’s head with news of home. I had become so immersed in this pilgrimage, so much part of India, that I wondered if I would resent an intrusion from another world. I need not have worried. By the time we reached camp Don, with his ability to fit in anywhere, had already become a cog in the machine, as if he had travelled with us from the beginning. Curious and fascinated by his slightly eccentric character, the boys took to him immediately and unable to handle the word ‘McCullin’ called him affectionately Meester Macleen. We dined well, courtesy of Meester Macleen and British Airways on tins of pâté, washed down with half bottles of Château-Latour.

  I sat up with Tara until the early hours, waiting for that moment when she would rock slightly and then, in a slow, silent movement go down. Elephants are like horses; they get most of their sleep standing up and will lie down only when they are sure that all the world is at rest. Being immensely cautious animals they are at their most vulnerable when in a prone position. I sat in front of her, staring at her intently, wondering if in my presence she would make an exception. But she continued standing. It was not until Bhim appeared, like a ghost, and motioned me to move away that she finally sank down with a long exhalation of content. ‘Mummy shy,’ he explained in a whisper. ‘If not see you, she sleep.’

  Her repose did not last long; nor did anybody else’s. I was about to enter the tent when something stung me on my foot, burning me with such ferocity that for a moment I thought I had stumbled into the glowing embers of the fire. ‘I’m dying, I’m dying,’ I shouted wildly. ‘I’ve been stung.’

  Aditya’s head shot out. ‘It’s the big black scorpion. Bihar is famous for them,’ he stated authoritatively. ‘Don’t panic, I’ll get the anti-venom.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I moaned, panicking, ‘I’m done for.’

  I hopped from one foot to the other while Indrajit played the beam of the torch on the ground.

  ‘Ants!’ he shouted. ‘Quick, I burn.’

  Returning with a tin of kerosene, he sprayed it around liberally, lit a match and the offenders were executed in a puff of blue flame. Shamefacedly, I crawled into the tent, the pain quickly subsiding.

  ‘I have never been in such agony,’ I told Aditya, who was putting away a large, long needle with an expression of some regret.

  ‘They’re only fire ants,’ he laughed. ‘They must be attracted by your sweet English skin.’

  A sleepy growl came from Don’s tent. ‘You never change, Shand. Bloody hypochondriac.’

  The next night we celebrated our own Diwali beside a trickle of a river, under a dramatic backcloth of the Rajgir Hills, circumvented by an old, fortified wall on top of which glistening white in the moonlight stood a modern Buddhist stupa.

  The boys surrounded the camp with little clay pots, in each of which flickered a candle. Tara was garlanded and fed bags of ludoos. We gorged ourselves on a young goat which Bhim had prepared. Sweets were eaten, sparklers lit, and we toasted the New Year with quantities of rum, after
which a highly dangerous display of fireworks took place, engineered by Indrajit. We took refuge behind the jeep as rockets snaked at low level through the camp and mortars exploded deafeningly overhead. Long after Aditya, Don and I had retired, the festivities went on. They finally ended in a furious but good-natured contest between Khusto and Bhim to see who possessed the biggest penis. We heard them staggering around drunkenly as measurements were taken with a piece of string. According to Indrajit, it was won, unfairly, by Khusto. Being the kind of person who became excited at the sight of two beetles copulating, he managed to maintain a fleeting erection. It was a merry evening and the boys enjoyed themselves. They deserved it; we had come a long way together and soon it would all be over.

  16

  The Mighty Ganga

  RAJGIR, OR RAJAGRIHA as it was known in the sixth century, was the ancient capital of Magadha, the nucleus of the first great empire in India. The fortified wall, which we had seen the night before, was the boundary of the city, almost thirty miles in circumference. Here the Buddha himself had passed many years living in different localities. His favourite place was the Vulture’s Peak, a high rocky outcrop on which he spent most of his time in contemplation. Sacred to Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Muslims alike, Rajgir was crowded with pilgrims who had come here to worship and to bathe in its famous hot springs. It was also full of scavenging dogs and little horses pulling tourists around in gaudily decorated traps.

  It is difficult to explain why elephants should display such uneasiness towards dogs and horses, considering that neither is capable of inflicting on them the slightest injury. Tara was no exception. On seeing a dog, she stopped dead, rapped her trunk on the ground and squealed in terror. According to The Wild Elephant by Sir J. Emmerson Tennant, Bt. – a man who was regarded by other more reliable elephant experts as prone to exaggeration: