To the Elephant Graveyard

by Hall, Tarquin

  Unfortunately, Assam’s first stab at a theme restaurant did not serve genuine Swedish food – not that I am a particular fan of pickled herring and schnapps. But anything would have been better than the slop the cook was serving, which consisted of greasy samosas fried in rancid oil, barbecued fish heads and various sickly looking yellow substances which he ladled out on to moulded plastic plates rather like the ones used in prisons. Each ladleful hit its assigned compartment with such force that the food splattered in all directions, covering the cook’s already food-encrusted T-shirt with fresh splotches.

  The ‘restaurant’ was furnished with a row of trestle tables and wooden benches. Four shifty-looking men were huddled together in one corner, talking in low whispers as if they were plotting a murder. The village idiot crouched next to the cash register, chortling harmlessly to himself.

  Mr Choudhury was sitting with Churchill in the middle of the room, talking into his walkie-talkie and drawing red lines and blue arrows across a Survey of India map. Red indicated possible routes the rogue might have taken, blue showed where the forest officer had dispatched his guards. Mole, Badger and the others were off helping with the search.

  I sat down and the waiter brought me a plate of dhal and naan. Usually, I would never have eaten in such a place. Experience had taught me that South Asia’s roadside food comes with extra helpings of bacteria. Ever since a bout of amoebic dysentery in Afghanistan, I had been careful. On this occasion, however, I was famished and succumbed.

  Almost instantly, I knew I would regret the decision, though not that I would regret it quite so quickly. The effect of the ABBA Restaurant’s house speciality on my insides was almost immediate. Within minutes of swallowing the last disgusting spoonful, my stomach began to churn like a washing-machine on full spin. A giant gas bubble grew inside me, threatening to burst out of both ends at once. My face went cold and clammy, and soon I found myself bent double out in the street.

  It was in the middle of a particularly violent retch that Mr Choudhury and Churchill ran out of the restaurant.

  “It’s the hathi,” shouted the hunter, as I stood over a ditch. “He’s been spotted a few miles from here.”

  I had just enough time to grab a bottle of water from the restaurant, say a hurried goodbye to Shankar, and climb into the Land Rover, my stomach still reeling. Rudra shifted gears and the car jerked forward. We took off along the road leading south out of the adivasi village. He shifted gears again and thrust his container of betel nut under my nose.

  “Eat. Very good,” he said, spitting red juice out of the window. “Make you into man like me!”

  6

  Shoot to Kill

  “If a man decides to indulge in this dangerous sport [elephant hunting], he should also be prepared to accept all the dangers that go with it as part of the game, otherwise he is no sportsman.”

  Patrick Hanley, Tiger Trails in Assam

  A thick fog had descended across the valley. Visibility was down to zero, the Land Rover’s headlights rendered useless by the bank of swirling mist that was closing in all around us. Even the powerful searchlights mounted on the bonnet were no match for its sheer density.

  Looking out of the window, it was easy to imagine that we were flying through cloud cover at ten thousand feet. The landscape seemed to have been erased and a wall of whiteness left in its place. If the gods were on the side of the rogue elephant, then this was a last-ditch attempt to help him escape the ·458 bullet that lay waiting, even now, in the barrel of the hunter’s Magnum rifle. For the tusker was close at hand, perhaps only a few hundred yards up ahead – and we were gaining on him.

  During the night, I had slept on the back seat, too exhausted to keep my eyes open any longer. Fortunately, I had missed little of interest. Churchill, Mr Choudhury, Rudra and Badger had spent hours driving from village to village, chasing alleged elephant sightings, all of them bogus.

  Then, shortly before the fog had set in, they had come across a distraught mullah. While he was in the middle of his ablutions at a water tank, the animal had launched an unprovoked attack and had chased him up his minaret.

  Later on, a few miles down a back lane, Churchill spotted a night-shift worker clinging to the top of a tree like a koala bear. He too had been chased by an angry tusker that had taken a dislike to the man’s bicycle and had smashed it to pieces.

  That incident had taken place only a few minutes earlier. Now, with dawn fast approaching, we inched our way through the chilling fog, Mr Choudhury sitting on the bonnet of the vehicle, keeping his eyes peeled for a glimpse of tusk or trunk.

  “He could be anywhere,” I whispered to Churchill as the mahout, Badger and I got out of the Land Rover and walked alongside the moving vehicle, searching for fresh tracks on the sandy lane. “He could be three feet ahead of us. He could even be behind us.”

  I began to feel scared again. At any moment, the rogue might come charging out of the fog, and I shuddered to think what he might do to me if I came within the clutches of his powerful trunk.

  “No worry, Tarwin,” said Churchill over the bonnet. “If elephant come, you run. He not finding. In fog difficult, no? He not see. Odds even now, yes?”

  A mile or so down the road, Badger noticed a break in the hedge and investigated. The elephant, it appeared, had smashed through into the fields beyond and was heading cross-country.

  “He’s not far ahead, maybe only a few minutes,” said Mr Choudhury, examining the footprints. “If we hurry, we’ll catch him.”

  The hunter took off his jacket and shoes and rolled up his jeans. Methodically, he wiped the mist from the lenses of his glasses with the tail of his shirt. Then he cracked his knuckles and took deep, heavy breaths.

  “You two stay here,” he said to Churchill and me. “We’ll handle this.”

  Before I could even open my mouth to protest, he and Badger slipped through the opening in the hedge and disappeared into the fog like two commandos off on some covert mission.

  I kicked at the earth, furious at being left behind.

  “Oh, damn this!” I shouted. “I haven’t come all this way to wait here.”

  I thought of Sydney Schanberg, the journalist in The Killing Fields who never allowed any obstacle to get in the way of a good story. Sydney would have gone after Mr Choudhury, I thought to myself. He wouldn’t have waited here, twiddling his thumbs.

  “Churchill, let’s go,” I said. “We could be standing here for hours. We’ll miss everything.”

  “Shikari, he said stay,” said the mahout firmly.

  This was no time for niceties.

  “Fine, do what you like. I’ll go alone,” I said. “I’m not missing this.”

  I made for the hedge, expecting Churchill to run after me.

  “Are you coming?” I called out.

  The mahout did not reply. Furious, I marched off into the fields. Mr Choudhury’s footprints were clearly defined in the mud. It would be easy to follow them. I didn’t need the mahout.

  But after only a few yards, it dawned on me that I might run into the elephant. I stopped. Standing there in the fog on my own, I cursed my luck. Then, sheepishly, I returned to the Land Rover. Churchill was sitting on the bonnet with Rudra, chewing paan.

  “Hello,” he said cheerily. “You going after hathi, no?”

  The driver joined in the joke, grinning like an infantile monkey. I sat down next to them, sulking.

  “I want to go. Please.”

  Churchill slid off the bonnet.

  “Please. Yes, magic word. Now you say ‘please’, we go. Come, we follow Shikari, no?”

  The mahout took off his shoes and rolled up his trousers, urging me to do the same. I was beginning to realize that Churchill liked breaking the rules and could be counted on to do so, provided one remembered to say please.

  “Now follow. And if hathi come, run for hell, no?” he advised, as we started off after the others.

  ♦

  We crossed the paddy-fields, our feet squelch
ing through gooey mud which clung to my soles and heels like sculptor’s clay. Following in the hunter’s tracks, now superimposed over those of the elephant, we slipped and slid and occasionally crawled, stopping only momentarily to catch our breath. To the east, the rising sun was a faint, white blur – as dull as I imagine it will be on Doomsday, in the hours before it implodes.

  As we crossed ditches, swamp and earthworks, the fog cleared momentarily, affording us a brief view of the terrain up ahead. For a split second, we caught sight of Mr Choudhury and Badger, two hundred yards away. But as quickly as the fog had parted, it closed again, like stage curtains coming down on a final act.

  Anxious not to distract Mr Choudhury, we stopped in a ditch and stayed low. By now, we were covered in mud.

  “Do you think the rogue is close?” I asked Churchill as we waited, catching our breath, the condensation mingling with the fog.

  “Very close. Look at footprint,” he replied.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Easy.”

  Churchill pointed out that water had not yet seeped into the elephant’s footprints. That meant they had been made recently.

  “Perhaps only a few minutes.”

  The rogue was only a few hundred yards away. He would be in sight, I reflected, if it hadn’t been for the fog.

  “Shikari shoot soon. Hathi die today.”

  We stood up again and suddenly the fog cleared. This time, we were given a longer view of the fields ahead. The elephant was less than a mile away. His pursuers were catching up with him, bounding through the fields like jack-rabbits.

  Then, for some inexplicable reason, Mr Choudhury and Badger stopped just two hundred yards behind the elephant. Churchill and I ducked down, afraid they would turn and see us.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked the mahout. “Why’s he stopped?”

  We peeked over the edge of the ditch. As if replying to my question, the hunter and the Gurkha started hollering at the top of their voices and clapping their hands together in an effort to attract the rogue’s attention. Yet despite their efforts, the elephant did not stop or turn around.

  Again they shouted, but to no effect. The rogue kept going, soon disappearing into what appeared to be a deep depression in the ground. Mr Choudhury and Mole broke into a run, chasing after him. In a few minutes they too vanished from sight. Then the fog closed in again, effectively blinding us.

  Desperate not to miss the finale, Churchill and I charged across the fields. But as we reached the spot where the elephant and the two men had vanished, we found ourselves standing on the edge of a high bank, looking out over the Brahmaputra River. The rogue’s tracks went down the bank and disappeared into the choppy waters.

  Mr Choudhury stood by the water’s edge, looking out over the swirling rapids with an expression of utter bemusement.

  “Where’s he gone?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.

  “He’s gone for a swim,” replied the hunter, who wasn’t the least bit surprised to see Churchill and me.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “Clever hathi,” said Churchill.

  We all stood on the bank, scanning the surface for a glimpse of the elephant, but found nothing. For two or three minutes not a word passed between us. Then, for the first time since I had met him, Mr Choudhury began to laugh. It was the laugh of a man who has been relieved of some great burden, deep and sustained. But it was not infectious.

  “Won’t he drown?” I asked.

  “No, hathi strong swimmer,” volunteered Churchill, as the hunter continued to chuckle to himself, sitting down on the bank, his rifle at his side. “He swim like dog, no?”

  “Yes, he can stay under water and use his trunk like a snorkel,” added Mr Choudhury. “Elephants often swim across the Brahmaputra. In fact, years ago, there used to be an annual elephant swimming race in Guwahati.”

  There were no boats near by to ferry us across the river in pursuit of the rogue. The nearest bridge was at Tezpur, three miles away, so for the time being we waited by the water’s edge to see if the elephant would appear on the other side.

  Downstream, a barge carrying an enormous turbine, no doubt destined for a power-station or factory, appeared through the mist, blowing its horn as it chugged against the current. Sails on fishing boats sliced through the fog like shark-fins. Further down the bank, a clutch of women were washing clothes by thrashing them against flat rocks just as their mothers and grandmothers had done – only without the aid of Nirma, a popular Indian detergent.

  I sat on a beached log, puzzling over what had prompted the elephant to head for the river. Had Mr Choudhury been right, after all? Was the tusker trying to escape? Did he realize the hunter was after him? Who was to say that elephants couldn’t read human minds?

  We waited for ten minutes before Churchill, who was watching the river through Mr Choudhury’s binoculars, let out an excited yelp.

  “Hathi, there he is! There, no? See!”

  On the far bank, half a mile downstream, the elephant staggered ashore. Ropes of water rolled down his back and sides as his feet negotiated the sandy bank. He walked up the beach and, without a backward glance, disappeared into dense undergrowth.

  Mr Choudhury turned and started back towards the Land Rover, smiling to himself. He was clearly impressed.

  “Now you really have seen something,” he said to me. “He is a truly amazing elephant, is it not so?”

  “Yes, but are you going to the other side? Are you still going after him?” I asked impatiently.

  He gave me his hand, helping me up the slippery bank.

  “Yes, of course we’re going there,” he replied, as we headed back across the brush. “But that is Kaziranga, a reserve. They will not allow us to shoot him inside. For the time being, the elephant is safe.”

  He chuckled to himself and looked up to heaven, as if praising providence.

  “The horse has talked,” he said.

  ♦

  Half a dozen guards stood chatting in the sunlight outside the ranger’s office on the edge of Kaziranga National Park. A scruffy bunch, their uniforms sewn with patches, their caps ragged and worn, they looked like convicts on the run. Few of them had shaved, their hair was unkempt and, judging by the dark bags under their eyes, they hadn’t had much sleep. Some wore only plastic sandals, others old shoes through which toenails poked. Buttons were missing and trousers were held up with lengths of twine. Even their weapons were old and outdated, mostly archaic Lee-Enfield ·303 rifles better suited to the days when British redcoats patrolled the Khyber Pass.

  Men of all ages, ranging from their early twenties to mid-fifties, they earned a mere twenty or thirty dollars a month, barely enough to keep their families fed. Often, they went without pay for months at a time, a consequence of Assam’s crippling corruption. Yet, these were the men I had read about in India’s national press, the guardians of the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinos. Dedicated individuals, they had vowed to die protecting the 1,200 magnificent animals in their care – even if the government was unwilling to provide them with adequate footwear.

  Their leader, a man named Amu, who had been making his early-morning rounds of the park, screeched to a halt in his jeep outside the office bungalow where we all stood waiting for him. He was a short man with a baby face, neither his demeanour nor his stature measuring up to his fierce reputation. Decorated by India’s President and honoured by the United Nations as a fearless champion of the environment, he had a simple approach to dealing with poachers: “If you kill one of my rhinos, I will kill three of you.”

  Amu had the determined bearing of a man with a mission, the resolution written clearly in his shining eyes and in the purposeful, upright manner in which he walked. As he greeted his troops, it was plain to see how genuinely they admired and respected him. After all, he, unlike his predecessors, had given them the satisfaction of saving an endangered species.

  “We are on a war footing,” he told Mr Choudhury
and me, as we followed him into his office. “We are the soldiers. The poachers are the enemy. The rhinos are the cause.”

  We sat down in front of his desk and Amu fished out his album of photographs, a gruesome testament to the war he has waged against the poachers. In black-and-white, Amu and his guards stood over the bodies of men caught attempting to snatch rhino horns. In one print, two Nagas lay on the ground, their heads twisted sharply to one side, their teeth bared in an expression of agony. A close-up showed another man splayed on the ground, a bullet-hole drilled through his forehead. In the past four years, the ranger and his men had shot dead more than twenty poachers. Eight guards had given their lives to the cause.

  “I have 1,200 rhinos in my care. My men and I will do anything to protect them,” said Amu. “The only way to deter poachers is to tell them: ‘Set foot in my park and you will have to face the consequences.’”

  The statistics showed that the policy was working. In the four years since he had taken over Kaziranga, the number of rhinos killed had fallen from hundreds to single figures.

  “The government gives us nothing,” continued Amu, who complained that ministers were forever bringing their families to see the park and the rhinos but did little to help improve the facilities. “They don’t care about the animals, only about making money. We, as citizens of Assam, have a responsibility to look after our heritage, even if they won’t do it for us.”

  Amu also ran educational programmes in the local villages to teach people to respect the environment and protect the animals. And with funding from international aid groups, he built wells and schools.

  “Help the people and they will help you,” said the ranger, who had developed a network of informers, many of them former poachers whom he had persuaded to change their ways. “Education is the key. The people must be taught to appreciate the environment.”

  His telephone rang. Amu picked up the receiver and grunted into the mouthpiece.

  I glanced around the room. The Assam Forest Department’s motto was emblazoned across the wall: “YOU CAN TAKE A MAN OUT OF THE JUNGLE, BUT YOU CANNOT TAKE THE JUNGLE OUT OF A MAN.” Next to it hung a framed certificate presented by the UN for ‘extraordinary dedication and service’. Behind us hung a wooden plaque with the names of Amu’s predecessors going back to 1926, the year Kaziranga was founded.