To the Elephant Graveyard

by Hall, Tarquin

  “There it is,” he said, indicating to the south. “There is the elephant graveyard.”

  With wobbly legs, I managed to rise to my feet and walked unsteadily over to where the phandi stood.

  Far below, the Brahmaputra, like a thread of mercury, snaked its way through the lush valley. From this vantage-point, I could see how little of the rain forest remained. Most of the landscape was covered in a patchwork of tea gardens and paddy-fields. Black tarmac roads and steel railway lines cut across the land. Cities and towns, with their cars and power stations and oil refineries, all belching smoke into the air, stood like blemishes on the site of what had once been uninterrupted forest and ancient elephant migratory routes.

  Just a few miles from where we stood, on the site of a new housing development, bulldozers carved into the side of a hill, gouging out great chunks of red earth with brush and saplings still clinging to them. Trees fell to whining chain-saws, while nearby, fires burned away the undergrowth, leaving a black scab upon the landscape. But, as hard as I looked, I could find no sign of a graveyard.

  “Do you see it?” the phandi asked me. “It is there, right in front of you.”

  Again, I gazed out over the valley, searching for a lake or pool, like the one described by the monk; or a hill littered with bones and tusks, as described by Baba. Still I could see nothing.

  “Where is it?” I asked the phandi.

  He looked at me with a half smile on his face.

  “Until recently,” he said, “this valley was home to thousands and thousands of elephants. Now, there are only a few hundred left. The rest have all died or been killed. Their bones and tusks lie strewn across the land.”

  He paused, looking to see if I understood his meaning. But by now, I was completely confused.

  The phandi pointed again at the valley.

  “This, my friend, is the elephant graveyard.”

  ♦

  Mr Choudhury, the phandi and I sat down on the edge of the hill, watching the sunset.

  Though I knew my quest was at an end, I did not feel disappointed. The phandi’s words had made a strong impression on me, and suddenly finding the fabled graveyard seemed like a foolish exercise.

  “Your time would be better spent writing about the plight of the elephants,” said Mr Choudhury. “Make no mistake, they are facing extinction. But here in Assam, no one is doing anything to save them.”

  There was an urgency in Mr Choudhury’s words that I had not heard before.

  “Our government does not care. They have done nothing to help save the elephants,” he said. “We desperately need international support to set up sanctuaries. Otherwise, the elephants will simply die out.”

  The phandi, too, was desperate to prevent such a tragedy and launched into a rousing appeal for help.

  “Many times, I have travelled from village to village, imploring people not to cut down the jungle. I tell them about the elephants and about our heritage. But they do not listen,” said Geala. “We Hindus are hypocrites. Every day, we pray to animals and Mother India, and even to Ganesha. Yet at the same time, we are destroying the very earth that we hold so sacred.”

  With dusk creeping over the valley, the glow of electric lights became more visible in the gloom below. Car headlamps bobbed along the roads, while in the villages, figures crouched around smoky evening fires.

  “Our priests say that this is Kalyug, the Age of Kali, a time of decline and degeneration,” continued the phandi, rehghting his pipe. “But that has become an excuse to do nothing. The fact is, people are selfish and lazy.”

  It was clear that Mr Choudhury and the phandi expected me, as a foreigner, to mobilize the outside world into action. But as a journalist, the most I could promise was to write about my experiences.

  “That is all we are asking,” said Mr Choudhury, as we stood up and headed down the hill in the receding light. “Publish what you have seen and maybe people will take notice. Who knows, perhaps the elephants will yet be saved. Great things have small beginnings, is it not so?”

  ♦

  I spent the next three weeks on India’s North-East Frontier, travelling the length and breadth of Assam and visiting Majuli – without the company of Vipal Ganguly, although how I managed to avoid him is a tale for another time.

  Unfortunately, I was unable to make the pilgrimage to Kohima, where Charles had fought against the Japanese, because the Indian government refused me a travel permit to Nagaland, a restricted state for foreign journalists. Instead, I journeyed to Churchill’s native Cherapunjee, the so-called Scotland of the East, which until recently boasted the highest rainfall in the world; and to Shillong, the old British hill station, with its quaint bungalows and narrow, winding streets.

  Soon, I was back in Guwahati, making preparations for my return to Delhi. On the morning of my departure, Mr Choudhury insisted on taking me to the airport in the Land Rover. Along the way, he asked Rudra to stop and pointed out some elephant tracks in the muddy fields on the side of the road.

  “During harvest time, they come down from those hills and raid the fields,” he said, pointing to a distant range topped with rain forest. “Next time you visit, I will bring you here. I have a pair of night-scope goggles and this is the perfect place to watch the elephants.”

  We piled back into the Land Rover and sped on to the airport. In the car park, the hunter and Rudra helped put my bags on a trolley.

  “Send me good British magazine,” said Rudra, winking at me. “I like looking at girl with lovely mangoes.”

  I agreed to send him what I could.

  “Take this now,” he said, handing me several chunks of betel nut wrapped in a grimy cloth which he’d used to wipe the windscreen. “When you eat this, think of me!”

  Rudra stayed by the car while Mr Choudhury helped me wheel the trolley over to the departure terminal. At the door, a security guard checked my ticket but barred Mr Choudhury from entering. It was here that we said goodbye and I thanked him for all he had done.

  “By the way, I was called by the Forest Department this morning,” said the hunter, shaking my hand. “They have asked me to travel to Upper Assam. Apparently, there is another rogue on the loose. They want me to appraise the situation.”

  “Will you go?” I asked.

  “Yes, I must,” he replied. “He has killed many people. A warrant has been issued for his destruction.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say. The two of us stood looking at one another while passengers pushed past, cramming through the narrow entrance to the terminal.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” said Mr Choudhury. “It will be an interesting time.”

  I felt tempted, but I couldn’t justify delaying my return to Delhi.

  “I don’t think I want to see another elephant die,” I said.

  “Neither do I,” sighed the hunter.

  The final check-in announcement for my flight sounded over the loudspeakers. I held out my hand and Mr Choudhury shook it warmly. Promising to visit Assam again, I said one last goodbye and watched as the hunter turned and headed back to the Land Rover.

  Insert

  1. The Brahmaputra is revered by the Assamese as a life-giver. But it is also a life-taker. Every year, it floods the valley, sweeping away homes, livestock and wild animals, and drowning dozens of people.

  2. Sunset over the Karbi Anglong hills on the edge of the Kaziranga National Park, home to the largest population of one-horned rhinos in the world.

  3. On the trail of the rogue elephant: Dinesh Choudhury (centre) on the back of Jasmine. The hunter started riding elephants when he was a young boy, and was considered by the mahouts to be a skilful and knowledgeable elephant man.

  4. Churchill, mahout and head of the elephant squad. His tribe, the Khasis, are thought to have originated in Vietnam.

  5. Collecting fodder in Kaziranga National Park. This mahout ordered his elephant, a makhna or tuskless male, to salute me with his trunk simply by calling out a co
mmand. The same elephant had also been taught to stand on his head and to play a drum.

  6. Chander, Churchill’s assistant. A dedicated mahout, he was inseparable from his kunki. “Being a mahout is like being married,” he joked. “But elephants are easier to manage than women.”

  7. Mahouts wash their elephants at least once a day – a time the kunkis relish – in order to remove parasites and prevent infection. Some elephants take care of themselves and have been seen working out the bits of dirt from between their toes with sticks.

  8. This farmer lost a year’s supply of rice when wild elephants pulled down part of his home, tore open his gunny sacks and helped themselves to the contents. “Wherever we hide our food, the elephants find it,” he said. “They know our thoughts.”

  9. Mr Choudhury measuring one of the rogue’s footprints. By doubling the impression’s circumference, he was able to calculate the elephant’s height.

  10. A forest guard. Several were assigned to the elephant squad as protection against Assamese insurgency groups who regularly kidnap civilians and hold them to ransom.

  11. Kaziranga’s guards stand over the bodies of three poachers who have been shot dead inside the sanctuary.

  12. At the elephant’s grave: the pit took nearly two days to dig. When the elephant was finally pushed into it, his back protruded, leaving a mound to mark his last resting-place.

  Author’s Note

  During research for this book, I learned that there is no such place as an elephant graveyard – at least in the sense that elephants do not migrate to a single, secret location in order to die. Still, the legend is not so far-fetched.

  According to the experts, elephants, like most animals, need to be close to water when they sense death approaching, and during their last days they remain by a favourite river or lake within their own ‘range’ or territory. Eventually, when they finally keel over, their bodies simply fall into the water, sink down into marshy ground or are washed away entirely. This may explain why so few carcasses are discovered in the wild.

  It stands to reason, therefore, that over tens of thousands of years, countless generations of elephants, whether African or Asian, have laid down their bones and tusks in the same locations. Over time, rivers have shifted course and swamps and lakes have dried up, revealing the bones and tusks. Who could be blamed for stumbling across one of these sites, littered with ivory and the remains of thousands of elephants, and mistaking it for an elephant graveyard?

  Today, in India, Elephas maximus is under greater threat than ever. Despite the fact that its African cousin receives most of the world’s attention and aid, the plight of the Asian elephant is far worse. Already, its population has dwindled to just ten per cent of the African species, placing it perilously close to extinction. Most official figures put the wild elephant population in India at between 20,000 and 25,000, and in many parts of the country, the animals have disappeared altogether. In recent years, poaching has increased at an alarming rate. Poachers use any and all means available to slaughter their quarry. Elephants have been killed using pits lined with sharp stakes, electrocuted by cables powered by overhead pylons or simply shot. Meanwhile, the elephants’ habitat continues to be chopped down, leaving the herds isolated in ever-shrinking islands of forest. Who knows how much time is left for the elephants of India?

  EOF