To the Elephant Graveyard

by Hall, Tarquin

  “She is the most beautiful pearl of our continent!” he boasted, pushing the Ambassador into fourth gear around a tight bend.

  He slapped me hard on the thigh and guffawed, grunting and breathing through his nose and mouth simultaneously, a feat that would have been remarkable had it not been so revolting.

  “You should see her dance! Her legs go all the way up! And as for her breasts – they are big! As big as mangoes!”

  He sighed and for a moment his mind seemed to drift. Then he nudged me hard in the arm.

  “Who is your favourite chick?” he asked conspiratorially.

  “I don’t have one, and I’m trying to sleep,” I replied grumpily.

  However, Rudra would not take no for an answer and prodded me again. I knew that I had to name a name, otherwise he would never leave me alone.

  “Madhuri Dixit,” I said, not daring to mention that it had once been my pleasure to interview this beautiful lady in Bombay.

  “Madhuri! Yes, you are right. She is good!” He spat another mouthful of betel-nut juice out of the window and grinned mischievously, displaying his stained gums. Some of his saliva flew back in through the window, splattering his forehead. He wiped it away with his shirtsleeve, drew a deep breath and, with his smile broadening into a maniacal grin, added with finality: “Madhuri Dixit is very good – very good for BAD purposes!”

  ♦

  While the Brahmaputra valley still lay under a cloak of darkness, the first rays of sunshine fell on the range of mountains to the north. Their snow-capped summits hovered above the viscous, milky haze, illuminated like so many shining cloud cities. Over the next hour, the morning light crept closer and the landscape below began to reveal itself, the sunlight dissolving the mist that swirled around us. Soon, I could make out dozens of paddy-fields stretching towards the horizon. Huts made of earthen walls, bamboo frames and straw roofs stood on little islands surrounded by floodwater. Farmers knee-deep in mud urged on their black water buffalo as they pulled wooden ploughs through the rich, sodden soil.

  Near a roadside shrine that housed an effigy of the goddess Durga, women with lovely almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones harvested rice by hand. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were wearing saris, I might have mistaken them for Vietnamese or Cambodians. Children on their way to school played with fighting kites. Their strings were coated with finely ground glass, the object of the game being to rub against your opponent’s line in the hope of severing it. Fierce dog-fights were in progress, half a dozen red, yellow and green paper birds ducking and diving, attacking and retreating against a backdrop of pristine blue sky.

  Ever since my arrival in India two years earlier, I had longed to visit this part of the country. Geographically, it is alluring, a misplaced piece of jigsaw puzzle. Assam is lodged between five nations: China, Bhutan and Tibet to the north, Bangladesh to the south and Myanmar, or Burma, to the east. And culturally, it is totally different from anything in the rest of the subcontinent. A land of diverse tribes, its peoples have more in common with those of South-East Asia and the Far East than with their Aryan or Dravidian cousins. The state is connected to the rest of the country by a slim corridor known as the Chicken’s Neck; a legacy of colonial diplomacy, it runs between Bhutan and Bangladesh.

  Despite its staggering beauty and rich folklore, India’s North-East is a part of the world avoided by even the most intrepid backpackers. As such there was little in my guidebook about Assam: it has been off-limits to tourists for many years. However it did say that the word Assam is derived from the Sanskrit assama, meaning ‘peerless’ or ‘unequalled’. It was so named by Thai or Shan invaders called the Ahoms who conquered the valley in the thirteenth century and loved it so much that they never left. I was beginning to appreciate why. Wherever I looked, the landscape was lush and green. Rickety wooden bridges spanned streams and brooks whose surfaces were covered with sweet-smelling water-lily blossoms. Peepul trees, their branches straining under flocks of white birds that suddenly lifted into the air at the sound of our approach, lined the road. In the distance, hills bristling with jungle rose up above the fields, mist crawling across the foliage and pouring down into the valley like smoke brimming off a witch’s cauldron.

  We left Highway 37 and turned north, crossing the Brahmaputra on a high, mile-long bridge guarded by a legion of Indian soldiers armed with machine guns. The river, far below, was at least three times as wide as it had been at Guwahati. A dozen canoes bobbing on the surface of the water looked like miniature toys. Upstream, the Brahmaputra bulged northwards, the far bank lost in a haze of mist and bright sunshine, while downstream, thousands of water hyacinths lay beached on glistening sandbanks.

  Just after six o’clock, a yawn from the back seat told me that the hunter was waking up. At last, I could talk to someone about something other than Bollywood bimbos.

  “Good morning,” I said, trying to decide whether to call him by his first or last name. I settled on the latter. After all, he was old enough to be my father, and in India people still set store on courtesy.

  Mr Choudhury stretched and glanced out of the window, quickly recognizing the area.

  “I used to come here as a boy to watch wild elephants,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “In those days, this was all jungle for miles and miles, as far as your eye could see. There were hardly any people. Now, there are millions of them.”

  His voice had a bitter edge to it and he seemed sombre. Rolling down the window, he relaxed a little, breathing in the fresh air, relishing the smell of damp moss and pine.

  “See over there,” he continued, pointing to a wide depression in the ground where sugarcane grew in abundance. “That area used to be a lake. Entire herds of hundreds of elephants would come down from the hills and eat the aquatic weed. It’s their favourite delicacy. I used to sit up in a tree and watch them down below me, all trumpeting, playing and splashing about in the water. It was wonderful.”

  There was a glint in his eye as he reminisced. I sensed that he was in a talkative mood and I wanted to hear more.

  Had he been much involved with elephants?

  “Oh yes. I grew up surrounded by them,” he told me as we continued along back roads. “We used them as transport. My father owned a huge estate, thousands of acres, and he always collected rent from our tenants on the back of Chamundi Prasad, his favourite tusker.”

  In those days, elephants were the ultimate status symbol, as prestigious as the BMWs and Mercedes of today. No special occasion was complete without them. When Mr Choudhury’s elder brother married, he arrived at the ceremony riding on an elephant in a silver lotus-flower howdah, or seat, and leading twenty other beasts, each decked out with bejewelled awnings and ornate headpieces decorated with gold braid and peacock feathers. Whenever a boy was born in the family, the child would be paraded around the estate on the back of a tusker. During religious festivals, the caparisoned animals were always the star attraction.

  The Choudhurys employed more than a dozen mahouts, specialists who double as handler and rider, together with fifteen or so apprentices and several phandis, or professional catchers. It was the phandis’ job to capture and train wild elephants. Every year, with a great deal of fanfare and pageantry, these men would head off into the jungle and on to the plains to hunt down promising calves. Using an age-old technique unique to Assam called mela-shikar, they would lasso the animals in much the same way as American cowboys catch cattle. The captured elephants were either kept for the stable or, once trained, were sold at the annual elephant mela, or fair, at Sonpur on the banks of the Gandak River in Bihar, to this day the largest elephant market in the world.

  “All the mahouts and phandis lived in an encampment not far from the estate where I grew up,” continued Mr Choudhury. “It was an incredibly busy place. Wherever you looked, elephants were being trained and taught to do tricks. It was like having my own private circus all to myself. From a young age, all I could think about was elephants.”

  But Mr
Choudhury’s father did not approve of his son’s fascination and affinity with the animals and sent him away to school in Shillong, the old British capital of Assam, a three-hour drive from Guwahati.

  “He wanted me to become an engineer and planned to send me to England to study at Rolls-Royce,” he said. “I used to sneak back from school and spend time with the mahouts without my father’s knowledge.”

  Over the years, these men taught him all the tricks of the trade as well as some of their most closely guarded secrets. Eventually, however, thanks to land reforms introduced by India’s socialist governments, the Choudhurys were forced to sell their estate. With it went the elephants and the men who had been the hunter’s mentors.

  “Throughout my life, I have continued to be involved with these animals, often working with them,” said Mr Choudhury. “My first love is my family and my second is elephants.”

  “How could you love elephants and still hunt them?” I blurted out, immediately regretting having showed my feelings.

  “Believe me, there is nothing that saddens me more in the whole world,” he replied. “It breaks my heart, truly it does. But sometimes it just has to be done. Sometimes I have to play executioner. Perhaps, as our journey continues, you will begin to understand more of my dilemma. It is all very painful.”

  Something in his voice seemed to smack of insincerity. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I was sure he was hiding something.

  “Why do you do it then, if it’s so painful?” I asked.

  “I am the only one in Assam who is qualified. I’m a trained marksman and an elephant expert,” he replied. “Besides, when you have a rabid dog, you cannot allow it to run loose. It has to be killed. Is it not so?”

  I could tell that he was growing more and more uneasy with the conversation, so I let the subject drop. But our chat left me as confused as ever about Mr Choudhury’s intentions and motives.

  ♦

  The Forest Department headquarters, our destination, lay near the border with the mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh, Indian territory claimed by the Chinese. The compound was built on a low-lying hill that, during the monsoon, sat above the Brahmaputra floodwaters. Seven wooden bungalows with teak decks stood in a semicircle facing an enclosure several hundred yards across. Hundreds of tree-trunks, confiscated from timber smugglers, were stacked against a fence, each one spray-painted with a series of numbers and letters. Many had obviously been there for some time, no doubt held as evidence in ongoing prosecutions, and they were beginning to rot.

  In the centre of the compound stood an ancient banyan tree, its trunk at least twenty feet in diameter, its base a mass of tangled roots that jutted out of the soil like flying buttresses. Characteristically, its branches had grown shoots that dangled down to the ground. Some had burrowed into the earth and developed into saplings.

  “DO NOT TIE YOUR ELEPHANTS HERE!” read a sign attached to the veranda of the main office. A pile of buffalo skulls lay by the front door, while above these, hanging incongruously from a nail, was a pair of bright pink underpants.

  While we unloaded our bags and equipment, the forest officers and guards emerged, still half-awake, from their bungalows. A dishevelled bunch, they greeted Mr Choudhury, whom they addressed as Shikari or Hunter, with fond smiles and hugs, as if he were some long-lost brother.

  “I call these men the Dirty Dozen,” joked the hunter while I shook hands with them all. “That’s because they tell the dirtiest jokes.”

  The senior officer was called Mole because as a child he used to squint through his glasses, which were as thick as the bottoms of milk bottles.

  Mole was the most successful young officer in the department, having put a record number of timber smugglers behind bars and confiscated thousands of illegally felled trees in the process. Not surprisingly, as a result he had made many enemies, chiefly among the powerful timber-smuggling syndicate who were rumoured to enjoy the patronage of a number of local politicians. Mole was a man with a price on his head.

  “The bounty stands at 25,000 rupees,” he joked. “That’s all my life is worth! Half as much as an elephant!”

  Mole was uncouth, cocky and unpredictable. He also had the annoying habit of calling me ‘man’ every time he spoke to me – “Hey, man”, “Good to see you, man”, “How are you, man?” – something he had picked up in the United States while studying environmental protection. But he was streetwise and knew how things worked in Assam.

  “The local police are in on everything, man,” he told me once. “So if I arrest someone, I keep him in custody until the court hearing so he can’t escape. Then I make sure the judge gives me a conviction.”

  When he wasn’t arresting teak smugglers, Mole had to deal with the local wild elephant herds. As he explained over breakfast in the mess, there was very little rain forest left for the animals to live in.

  “The elephants have lost their home and their traditional migratory routes, man. They’re disoriented and angry.”

  I asked him why the jungles and forests hadn’t been protected.

  “Corruption, man! The system is corrupt to the core. Mostly it’s the Bangladeshis who have cut down all the trees. Hundreds of thousands of them have settled here. And guess who’s allowed them in?”

  I didn’t have a clue.

  “Our politicians, man! Our Assamese politicians!”

  “Why would your leaders allow all these Bangladeshis to settle on your land?” I asked, confused.

  “Vote banks!” cried the angry young man. He made it sound as if that was explanation enough.

  “Vote banks? How do you mean?”

  Mole smiled at my naivety.

  “They bring them over the border, teach them a few words of Assamese, give them ration-cards and assign them some land, usually a bit of forest,” he explained. “When it comes to voting time, they show their ration-cards at the booth and they’re eligible to vote. Each one marks a cross in the box of the politician who’s patronized them. It’s that easy, man.”

  “Ingenious,” I commented, scribbling it all down in my notebook and eager for more details. But our conversation was suddenly cut short by one of Mole’s deputies who came running into the mess.

  “The rogue…the rogue. He killed again…he killed again last night. In the middle…of the night,” he stuttered. “A m…m…man. He was dragged from his house. He was dragged and then trampled to death. Horribly trampled.”

  Mr Choudhury, who was sitting next to me at the mess table, put down his mug.

  “Where did it happen?” he asked slowly.

  “Near Hathi Khal. Just a few miles from here.”

  “I know the place,” said the hunter, standing up. He put on his Guwahati Rifle Association hat and made for the door.

  “Let’s go.”

  Self-consciously, I followed everyone outside into the compound, hoping to be invited along. I felt like a dog anxious for a walk.

  Mr Choudhury looked my way.

  “Tarquin. Okay, yes, I suppose you can come for this.”

  Eagerly grabbing my camera-bag, I jumped into the back of the Land Rover together with Mr Choudhury, Mole and two armed guards. We took a left out of the compound, Rudra at the wheel. He floored the accelerator, shooting along the dirt track at top speed. I bounced up and down on the seat like an india-rubber ball.

  “I am Mister Grand Pree! Yes?” yelled Rudra. “Just like Tom Crooooz!”

  ♦

  Our destination was an isolated hamlet surrounded by lush paddy and sugarcane fields. Along sandy lanes shaded by coconut trees stood rows of mock-Tudor cottages, a design introduced during the British Raj and still popular in Assam today. The white walls of each house were criss-crossed with black beams. Several homes had thatched or tiled roofs capped with chimneys. One or two even boasted porches over which crêpe myrtle vines bloomed with brilliant scarlet flowers.

  We parked the Land Rover in the middle of the village, leaving Rudra to keep an eye on it. A crowd had g
athered near the scene of the disaster. We approached on foot and several of the villagers spotted us, whispering amongst themselves “Firang, firang. Foreigner, foreigner.”

  Word of my arrival spread quickly and, one by one, with a nudge here and a wink there, the villagers turned to stare in amazement and curiosity.

  The crowd parted and we made our way through a gate into a garden with a pathway leading up to a pretty cottage. It was a lovely place, the air filled with the perfume of jasmine bushes. Bottlebrush trees with red bushy flowers and weeping branches stood on either side of the path. White roses grew in carefully tended flowerbeds. Ostensibly, everything was peaceful.

  We made our way around the cottage and into the back yard and suddenly I stopped short. On the ground just a few feet away, lying under a dirty, stained tartan blanket, was the crumpled, mangled body of the dead man.

  Only a single foot jutted out from beneath the undignified shroud, the veins black against the deathly, bluish-grey skin. The ankle was twisted gratuitously, as were some of the toes. In places, slivers of bone jutted out from beneath the surface.

  Nearby, the victim’s grieving widow was slumped amidst rows of trampled cabbages, her expression empty, her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks stained with tears. She grabbed at her hair and moaned. The rest of the immediate family stood, traumatized, in tightly knit groups. One by one, we filed past them, offering our condolences and explaining our purpose for being there. Then, with the family’s permission, Mr Choudhury, Mole and I approached the body.

  The hunter kneeled down, peeling back the top half of the blanket. The forest officer stood back while I peered with trepidation over Mr Choudhury’s shoulder. What I saw was to haunt my dreams for months to come.

  The man had been reduced to little more than a pulp, barely recognizable as a human being, his face frozen in a contorted, agonized expression which told of an unbearable death. I had seen dead bodies before in various war zones, but nothing as grotesque as this. Feelings of nausea overwhelmed me and my immediate instinct was to look away. But curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I braced myself to take a closer look at the bruised, blood-encrusted body, grimacing at the sight of the head, crushed as if by a steamroller.