To the Elephant Graveyard

by Hall, Tarquin

  “Now we are knowing our religion well, except the old men are a bit slow,” he said, laughing. “They are taking their lead from us.”

  Glancing over Gurudutt’s shoulder, I noticed that Mr Choudhury and the others were paying for their food at the cash register and making for the door. But before I left, I asked the Sikhs whether they knew anything about elephant graveyards.

  They shook their heads.

  “We do not know anything about elephants,” Gurudutt said. “But I know one man who may be able to help you. He lives in a village not far from here. You should visit him. He will be able to tell you about many things.”

  The Sikh jotted down the man’s name and address. Thanking him for his time, I followed the elephant squad out into the sunshine. Back on top of Raja, I recalled a conversation about Sikhs that I had had with a friend in Delhi.

  “Sikhs are like potatoes,” he had commented one evening over a beer, “you will find them growing everywhere! Once my uncle was in the Himalayas. He went high, high, high up. Really high, you know. There was nobody around, not even a goat. Only snow and the wind and the mountains and all. Finally he came to a remote cave. And in that cave do you know who was sitting there?”

  “Who?”

  “A Sikh! Even there in the mountains my uncle found one. I’m telling you, these Sikhs are everywhere only.”

  I made a mental note to tell my friend of my meeting with Gurudutt and his friends. No doubt, he would be amused to know that there were Sikhs to be found even here on India’s North-East Frontier.

  ♦

  It was late afternoon by the time we reached the Nowgong district. Here, by the roadside, the kunkis were fed and watered, while essential items such as tents and cooking equipment were loaded on to the animals’ backs. Leaving the rest of our gear in the Land Rover – which Rudra was to drive to the nearest Forest Department outpost where he would await further instructions – we set off on foot. Only Churchill and Chander rode on the elephants.

  We had gone just a couple of hundred yards when a car came screeching to a halt on the road behind us and Vipal jumped out, bouncing down the embankment like a coiled spring.

  “Hey, Boss! Vait up!” he shouted.

  He came running through the fields, waving to me enthusiastically. Apparently, the effects of the Old Monk had worn off.

  “Hi, Vipal,” I said, doing my best to look pleased to see him. “It’s good you were able to find us. But what about the strike? It’s dangerous to be outside today.”

  “No problem,” he gasped, trying to catch his breath and speak at the same time. “I am driving at the maximum speed. You must be coming with me.”

  “I can’t. We’re going after the elephant. Mr Choudhury is planning to shoot him tomorrow.”

  Impatiently, the Bengali took me aside and began to whisper conspiratorially.

  “But I have arranged the total teengs.”

  “What teengs – I mean things?” I asked.

  “The meeting with the Bodo liberation peoples.”

  “I’m sorry, Vipal, but I won’t be able to make it. I have to stay with the elephant squad.”

  His face fell, his eyes drooping like those of an unloved hound.

  “You do the interview. I’m sure it will be very good. We’ll meet in a couple of days.”

  The Bengali shuffled his feet from side to side and looked down at the ground dolefully. I began to weaken.

  “Look, once this is over, we’ll do a journey together. I want to visit Majuli, the largest river island in the world. Perhaps we could go together.”

  His face brightened up.

  “Okay, Boss,” he said. “We will have maximum fun.”

  The squad began to move off. Mr Choudhury reminded me that there was not a moment to lose.

  “I’ll meet you back at the Wild Grass Hotel in a day or so,” I said. “We can make our plans then.”

  “Great, Boss!” cried the Bengali. “You are my best, best friend in the whole world. I am really loving you.”

  He gave me a hug, his short arms not quite managing to embrace my frame. And then I turned and jogged after the others, trying hard to quell pangs of guilt.

  ♦

  The countryside was deserted. Islands of trees, which Churchill said were sacred groves that nobody dared chop down for fear of enraging the gods, were the only infringements upon the otherwise flat landscape. Narrow paths threaded their way between paddy-fields. On any other day there would have been farmers at work, but as we headed south-west towards the rain forest that loomed in the distance there was not a person in sight.

  At regular intervals, Mr Choudhury used his walkie-talkie to check on the progress of the guards tracking the rogue in Kaziranga. According to the latest report, the tusker was still heading east at a slow but steady pace.

  “As long as we do not dilly-dally, we will be in a position to stop him early tomorrow morning. If we fail, he will go on another killing spree. By lunchtime, it must all be over,” he said.

  The elephant, Mr Choudhury reminded me, had been given ample opportunity to reform. This time, there would be no reprieve. I felt his words were as much for his own reassurance as mine.

  “There is something I did not tell you last night,” he continued, as we marched behind Raja and Jasmine. “I looked up the rogue’s records in the Forest Department. What I read convinced me, once and for all, that this elephant must be destroyed.”

  “What did you find out?” I asked.

  “A few years ago, in Arunachal Pradesh, another hunter was assigned to shoot him. It took him several days to track down the elephant. On the fourth night, he camped inside a forest, not far from where the animal had been spotted. But the rogue struck first. He went into the hunter’s camp, pulled down his tent and then trampled him to death.”

  Mr Choudhury was clearly troubled by this story and, for the first time, I detected a hint of anxiety in his voice.

  “Tonight, we will post a guard just in case the elephant gets any ideas,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to be taken by surprise.”

  “How do you scare away a rogue elephant?” I asked. “Are they afraid of mice?”

  Mr Choudhury laughed.

  “No. That’s one of those old wives tales,” he said. “They’re frightened of horses and fire – and hunters like me. So tonight it might be a good idea to light a few campfires around the tents. It is better to be on the safe side, is it not so?”

  ♦

  By the time we reached the edge of the rain forest, dusk was falling. A general calm had settled over the countryside as the day’s heat began to dissipate and the first bats flitted across the burnished sky. Hidden insects whirred in the undergrowth, accompanied by crying jungle mynahs and moorhens hurrying back to their nests before nightfall.

  Inside the forest, it was dark. We picked our way through the brambly undergrowth. Gnarled tree trunks towered above us, the twisted knots in their bark forming demonic faces. Creepers brushed against our backs as if they were alive, while branches creaked in the breeze blowing in from the fields.

  Badger and Mole turned on their torches, the beams reflecting in the eyes of a dozen jackals who lurked in the bushes and thickets. Wings flapped invisibly above us. A wildcat screeched. Something to my right hissed its disapproval of our presence. Then, from up in the trees, came the haunting hoot of an owl.

  “One hoot good sign, no?” commented Churchill, as we headed, deeper into the forest.

  The owl called out again.

  “Oh dear, that is two hoot,” said the mahout. “That is not good sign.”

  “So does two hoots mean we’ll have bad luck?” I asked, glancing around nervously in the gloom.

  “Means the owl’s horny, if you ask me,” interrupted Mole.

  The bird hooted a third time.

  “That’s three. What do you make of that?” I asked.

  “It means the owl doesn’t know what the bloody ‘ell ‘e’s talking about,” joked Badger. “I say we
shoot the bastard.”

  Soon, we came across a path that led to a clearing complete with a brook. Mr Choudhury decided to camp for the night.

  “Let us be early to bed and early to rise,” he said. “We will set off again at dawn.”

  Exhausted after the long day’s march, we unloaded Raja and Jasmine, who drank their fill from the stream. We lit fires to ward off unwanted visitors, fed the elephants, erected our tents, and then prepared our evening meal. Bhindi, or okra, were fried with onions, spices and lashings of ghee, while handfuls of coarse, locally grown rice were boiled in a large sooty pot. Dessert consisted of juicy tangerines grown in Churchill’s native Cherapunjee hills – “the most delicious in the world, no?”

  As we finished eating, there was a sudden rustling in the bushes on the far edge of the clearing. It was followed by the sound of a branch snapping. Someone – or something – was moving through the undergrowth less than a hundred yards from the camp.

  Startled, we froze, our eyes fixed on the trees as we watched for any movement and listened for further sounds. Very slowly, Mr Choudhury reached for his Magnum rifle, slipping the weapon out of its case. The forest guards cautiously picked up their machine guns and pulled back the loading mechanisms. Another branch snapped. Badger switched on his torch, directing the beam to the edge of the clearing. I caught a brief glimpse of a figure darting behind a tree.

  Mr Choudhury and Mole whispered to one another. Then the forest officer called out in Assamese. There was no reply. The guards, now lying flat in the grass, trained their machine guns on the trees, squinting through the sights. The forest officer called out again in a loud, authoritative voice.

  This time a man answered. Mole stood up and announced himself. There was a pause. Voices whispered in the woods. Then came another brief exchange. Mole relaxed his shoulders. Mr Choudhury sighed and lowered his weapon. The guards followed suit.

  “There’s nothing to fear, man,” Mole reassured me. “It’s just a couple of ULFA guys.”

  “ULFA!” I gasped, my heart still racing. “I thought you said they were dangerous!”

  “I know these two, man. We went to school together. They don’t want their faces seen, so they won’t step out into the open. I’m going to go and say hello. Come over if you like.”

  Mr Choudhury was against the idea. He said it was dangerous to fraternize with the militants and warned me not to go.

  “Who knows what it can lead to?” he pointed out. “These men are trouble, is it not so?”

  However, Mole assured him that there was no harm in a quick chat.

  “I told you, I know them. They won’t harm us.”

  “What if you’re wrong? It might be a trap.”

  “I tell you, there’s nothing to fear. Come on.”

  He started across the clearing. Armed with my torch, I followed him, promising the hunter that I would return within a few minutes.

  We found the two ULFA men crouched behind a tree, sharing a cigarette. They wore baseball caps, the sun visors pulled down over their noses so that I could only make out their mouths and chins. They were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and could have blended in anywhere. However, the pistols that protruded from the back of their waistbands left me in no doubt as to the nature of their business.

  “We are always on the move. We never sleep in the same bed twice,” said the older of the two, Mole translating his words. “It is dangerous for us to spend too long in one place.”

  The two men, who I guessed were in their early twenties, had been living rough for three years. They had trained in ULFA camps in Bhutan and now organized terrorist attacks on ‘legitimate targets’ in Assam, travelling mostly at night.

  “We have one main objective. That is to rid Assam of the millions of Bangladeshis and adivasis on our land. We want Assam for the Assamese.”

  The two men spoke bitterly of India’s politicians who, they claimed, exploited the North-East. The region produced half the country’s oil and a large proportion of the world’s tea.

  “But what does the government give back? Nothing! We have no roads or schools. We do not even have drinking water.”

  During my short time in Assam, I had heard a similar refrain from dozens of people. Clearly, there was no love lost between the Assamese and New Delhi’s politicians. What’s more, few people I spoke to living in the Brahmaputra valley considered themselves to be Indian.

  “When I go to Delhi,” a senior newspaper editor told me gloomily, two weeks later in Guwahati, “it is as foreign to me as Rome. Because I look oriental, everyone thinks I am a Japanese tourist and tries to rip me off. I am unable to communicate with anyone except in English, and no one knows anything about my homeland.”

  The editor told me that a combination of corruption, neglect and a stagnant economy have created resentment and unemployment, all of which has helped swell the ranks of the various insurgency groups. Each new day sees fresh outbreaks of violence and killings.

  “The only way to get New Delhi to take notice is to use the gun,” said the older ULFA man. “Violence is the only thing they understand.”

  ULFA, I knew, stood accused of thousands of murders and kidnappings, and of running an extortion racket that milked the state of millions of rupees every year. I asked the two militants how they could condone such actions.

  Muttering something unintelligible, they chose not to answer my question. Instead, they stood up, exchanged a few hasty words with Mole and then slipped away into the forest. Apparently, the interview was over.

  “I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t got you into any trouble,” I said, as we walked back to the camp.

  “Don’t worry about it, man,” chuckled Mole, giving me a light slap on the back. “Look, I’ve known these guys all my life. We were childhood friends. If we didn’t share that history, I’d turn them in, man. They’re not solving anything. In fact, I can’t work out who I dislike more, the Indian army, the politicians or ULFA. They’re all as bad as each other.”

  “But don’t you sympathize with their cause?”

  “No way, man. We’re a part of India whether we like it or not. Don’t believe a word ULFA has to say. Like I told you before, they’re just in it for the cash.”

  ♦

  We returned to the camp. Mole and the elephant squad turned in, leaving Mr Choudhury on guard by the campfire. Rather than going straight off to sleep, I sat down across from him. The hunter was sharpening a piece of wood with the blade of his Leatherman.

  “Have you ever killed anything?” he asked me, looking up.

  His question took me by surprise and I had to think hard. Only one incident came to mind. I had been driving through Kent when a rabbit ran under my car.

  “I had to put it out of its misery using a tyre iron,” I said.

  “So you have never had to kill something to eat?”

  “No, never. It’s always been done for me.”

  Mr Choudhury smiled. He had been taught how to kill animals from an early age. It was second nature to him.

  “Killing for the pot brings you closer to nature,” he said. “But elephants are different. An elephant’s life is like that of a human being. It should not be taken.”

  He looked up at the sky. Clouds drifted past the sickle moon. A cold front was moving in from the north and the wind was beginning to buffet the tops of the trees. The hunter pulled a blanket around him and stoked the fire with a length of bamboo.

  “I remember the first time I had to shoot an elephant,” he said. “He was a makhna, a tuskless male. He had killed half a dozen people, but I could see that he was in musth. I decided to spare him, knowing that after some time, he would return to the forest. But just to be sure I kept an eye on him.

  “Then, one morning, as I was watching him from a distance, the sun broke through the clouds behind me. My shadow fell on him and he turned and charged. I had no time to get out of the way. Instinctively, I raised my rifle and fired. He was dead in an instant.”

  The hunte
r looked down at the fire. For a moment, he seemed almost overcome with sadness and I felt tempted to walk over and offer reassurance. But Mr Choudhury was someone who kept people at a distance, and I knew any sympathy on my part would make him feel uncomfortable. So I sat quietly, saying nothing.

  Eventually, he looked up again.

  “It’s getting late. You had better get some sleep. You must be up by four.”

  It was obvious that he wanted to be left alone.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  The hunter shook his head.

  “I won’t be able to sleep tonight,” he replied.

  11

  The Rogue’s Last Stand

  “Most men who have shot elephants come afterwards to regret having done so.”

  J.H. Williams, Elephant Bill

  Mr Choudhury unzipped his leather rifle-case and carefully eased the ·458 Winchester Magnum from between its folds, laying the powerful weapon across his lap. In the light cast by a hurricane lamp, he inspected it, his hawkish eyes examining the hair trigger and the black metal barrel before settling on the finely polished butt.

  Like a mother cradling a young child, he gently turned the rifle over on to its side and ran his hand over this, his most prized possession. Noticing a blemish in the varnish near the join with the magazine clip, he wet the end of his index finger with some spittle and rubbed it into the walnut.

  For a minute or two, as he sat on a log outside his tent, the hunter stared blankly at his weapon, seemingly unaware of the elephant squad, who were busy preparing the kunkis for our imminent departure. Closing his eyes, he slouched forwards and sighed deeply, his shoulders rising and falling awkwardly, as if they were rusty and in need of lubrication.

  Watching him from the other side of the camp, I began to wonder if, perhaps, Mr Choudhury had lost the strength and determination to carry on with the dangerous task that lay ahead of him. But somehow, in the coming minutes, he was able to rally himself and, sitting up straight and stretching his back, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and peered down through the sights.