A Lotus Grows in the Mud

by Goldie Hawn

  “No. No thanks.” I think to myself, Not on your life! I’ve known people to get really sick eating from roadside stands.

  After an hour of waiting, they decide to swap my ailing car for another lovely Ambassador. Lucky me.

  When we continue, the bumps seem to be worse than ever. I speak to my driver: “Excuse me? Excuse me?”

  He turns around and smiles.

  The road becomes increasingly more rural, dirty and bumpy, with ever more potholes. If I thought I had no shocks on my first car, this second car is unbelievable. My gallbladder and my liver have now changed places again.

  By now, we’re really out in the boonies.

  “Excuse me? Excuse me? How far is it now? I’m really getting hungry.”

  The driver turns and smiles again. “Yes,” he replies.

  Oh my God, he doesn’t speak English! Not a good feeling when you’re in the middle of nowhere. I’m horrified. It’s pitch-black, and I feel like I’m traveling down a narrow, bumpy road to nowhere.

  We just keep on going, on and on into the darkness. I watch the other cars whiz past us. We’re going much slower than the rest of them.

  “Excuse me?” I ask my driver, hopelessly trying to talk with my hands. “Can you go faster, please? Faster?”

  Soon afterward, and to my enormous relief, he pulls the car over to the side of the road.

  “Are we here?” I ask hopefully, looking around. But he simply gets out, pulls a mat from the trunk, kneels on it by a roadside mosque and begins to pray to Mecca. I feel like joining him at this point. Maybe it will help.

  Back on the road, we carry on driving for at least another two hours. I’m still starving, even after I polish off what is left of my peanut butter and crackers. There isn’t a drop of water left. There is no sign of our convoy, and I have no idea where I am or where I’m going. I look at my watch; this journey has taken seven hours so far, with no end in sight.

  I keep thinking that just around the next corner we’ll see a sign pointing to Kipling Camp, or at least find the rest of the group waiting for us by the side of the road. I secretly wish another one of their cars had broken down.

  Tapping the driver’s shoulder, I tell him I have to use the bathroom. With much sign language, I eventually make him understand.

  Unfurling my stiff limbs awkwardly, I squat down in the moonless night. All I can hear around me are the sounds of the jungle. A few paces behind me, I hear a twig crack. Oh my God, a tiger could creep up and bite me on the ass! Please let me live to tell this story! I pull up my pants quickly and race back to my car posthaste.

  Back on the road, traveling at what seems a snail’s pace, my driver is looking around furiously.

  My blood sugar is low, my body is exhausted from traveling and I’m losing my sense of fun and adventure. “My God, what if he is lost and doesn’t know where we are?” I ask myself aloud. At that very moment, my driver stops the car, looks right and left in panic and does a U-turn. I knew it, he is lost.

  “Are we lost?” I ask, trying to stay in control. Is that what we are? He is not answering me. We are lost in the middle of frigging India? The cat in me is rising.

  Finally spotting lights in the distance, I throw myself over the front seat to attract his attention. Pointing, I say, “Lights! Lights! There! Go down there!” This looks right to me, and, even if it isn’t, at least there are people there.

  We turn down a long road and drive noisily and dustily into a clearing in which a huge open fire burns wildly, illuminating the faces of our distinguished English crew. Ah, there they are. I see them all gathered around the flames, happily eating platefuls of curry and rice, drinking beer, talking and having fun. Unfortunately, my blood is now boiling.

  Mark Shand, my elephant guru, who is a part of our team, opens my door to greet me. A tall man with a shock of blond hair, he stands there with a broad grin and dancing eyes.

  “Welcome to Kipling Camp,” he says in his impeccable English accent. “Where have you been?” He is way too happy for me at that moment. I jump out of that car disheveled, dirty and steaming mad.

  “Where have I been? Where have I been? I have been with a driver who doesn’t speak English, and who stops to pray every fifteen minutes. I’ve been in a car that has shaken my bones to powder. I’ve been lost in the middle of the jungle with no food or water. Where’s the director?”

  “Oh. He’s by the fire.”

  I stomp over as everyone stares up at me in silence. “Could I speak with you a second, Andrew?”

  This lovely, gentle man, who is so sweet and kind, dabs his mouth with a napkin and stands.

  “Andrew, it’s only by luck that I’m here. Next time, I’ll need a map, some food and water, and an English-speaking driver.”

  Andrew says, “I’m sorry. This is terrible. You must be hungry.”

  I’m now spitting fire.

  “I’m not hungry. I’m past the point of being hungry. I want my room, I want my bed, I want to go to sleep, and I want to forget about this day.”

  I don’t usually act this way, but to my shame, I become like Joanna, my character in Overboard, before she loses her memory.

  I’m in a snit and I march past the campfire, the crew and the delicious-smelling food. They all sit staring intently into the flames.

  The director leads me with a flashlight down a dark path to a small wooden cabin in a clearing. He pushes open the door to my little cottage and takes leave. I look around at my room suspiciously. I see two cots, one draped with a mosquito net. A door leads to a small bathroom off to the left. Sitting pretty in its own web, on the leg of my bed, is a large, poisonous-looking spider. My eyes narrow.

  “That’s it!”

  A spider! A spider in my room!

  I slam the door shut and run back out toward the campfire.

  I can hardly believe what comes out of my mouth, but, as I stand there, frightened and upset, I announce: “I need someone to go and clean my room. There are little poisonous animals around my bed and other little furry, four-legged crawly things in there, and I need them taken out of my room…because…this is not my habitat!”

  This is not my habitat? Am I serious? If anyone had started to laugh right then, I swear I think I might have broken down and laughed too, which would have been the best thing for all of us. I had become completely possessed. And I guess my mother would have said, “Goldie, you’re overtired and you need a nap.”

  Unfortunately, nobody laughs. Instead, the director and his crew take me very seriously. They hurry to my room and clean it all up, spray it with bug spray and tell me when it is safe to return.

  I walk back with as much dignity as I can muster. I check under the bed and in every crack until I’m satisfied that there are no potential roamers who will emerge when the lights go out. I get undressed and climb between the cotton sheets. Sleep. Please, just let me sleep.

  Just then there is a gentle knock on my door.

  “Come in,” I call.

  The door opens, and the director stands there, looking decidedly nervous, poor thing.

  “I’m so sorry, Goldie. I hope everything is all right now? Is there anything else I can do you for?”

  “Yes,” I reply, my sheet up around my neck. “Would you mind tucking me in with the mosquito net? I’m a little scared. I don’t want any insects sleeping with me tonight.”

  What a love. He does exactly as I ask, tucking the net tightly around me so that there isn’t even a chance for anything to crawl up inside my bed.

  “Okay, then,” he says, looking at me through the gauze curtain, “is there anything else you would like?”

  “Yes. I want you to sleep in the bed next to me.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “I don’t feel safe sleeping alone tonight. Would that be a problem?”

  Oh my God, the look on that man’s face! I can only imagine what he’s thinking.

  “I am sorry,” I continue, “that I am so nervous about the spiders and snakes and bugs.”


  Just then a loud thump on the roof makes me jump out of my skin.

  “What was that?” I sit up with a start, my eyes popping out of my head.

  His brow furrows, forcing his eyebrows to meet. “The monkeys, I should think. They live here too, you know.”

  Bless his heart, he goes to his room, gathers his belongings together, comes back and fixes his mosquito net, and then turns to me bug-eyed.

  “There are a few things I have to do. I have to sit with the crew for a bit and plan our shots for tomorrow, but then I’ll be in. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I reply, “and thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  Worn out by my exhausting day, I sink back into my tented haven and I’m gone. Lights out.

  When I wake the next morning, the bed next to mine is crumpled but empty. Did he ever come in and sleep next to me after all? Or did he just crumple the sheets to make me think he had? I’ll never know, but it is the beginning of a lovely friendship.

  Emerging from my cabin, blinking into the dappled sunlight, I find that I am in paradise. All the fear and anger and distress of the previous day melts away. Hundreds of birds crowd the treetops, squawking and twittering as a mist lifts itself through the branches. Monkeys chatter beneath them, dangling their young and eating fruit. The canopy of the jungle forms a lush green umbrella high above me, through which golden light streams in brilliant shafts.

  There is nobody around, but there is a fresh pot of coffee bubbling on the fire, and some folded chapatis warming on a plate. Pouring myself a cup and eating hungrily, I wander away from the fire, down a slope toward the sound of voices and splashing water.

  Kipling Camp in Kanha National Park is the home of Mark Shand’s famous elephant, Tara. Having bought her, emaciated, from some traveling sadhus, or beggars, he crossed India on her back, writing a book about their experiences. I read it on the plane over, having first met Mark at a dinner in London for the Asian Elephant Appeal. He had always planned to sell Tara when his journey came to an end, but, by then, he was in love and couldn’t bear to.

  Down at the waterhole, I find Mark shirtless and in shorts, sitting astride a recumbent Tara, scrubbing her wet skin with a pumice.

  “Good morning, Goldie!” Mark yells exuberantly. “Come and join us.”

  Embarrassed by my behavior the previous night, I step forward shyly and watch from the bank. I’ve never seen an elephant lying down before. Tara is six thousand pounds of flesh and bone, all of it just a few feet from where I’m standing. She is a wild beast, however domesticated, and I’m secretly terrified. She looks like a mass of gray boulders lying in the water, and just as heavy.

  “Come on,” Mark encourages, holding out the pumice. “Climb on up and help me bathe her.”

  “Yikes!” I say, backing away. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Come on, Goldie, it’s okay.” He laughs. “Come closer.”

  Tara’s trunk reaches out toward me, its sensitive tip probing and smelling my outstretched hand.

  “She’s just checking you out,” Mark says, “Don’t worry. I’m right here with you.”

  “Oh God, I don’t know. I mean, what if she gets up?”

  “She won’t. Now come on, get closer and you’ll see.”

  Removing my shoes and socks and wading into the water up to my knees, I find Tara’s eye and look deeply into it. She has beautiful long eyelashes, and she is almost in a trance as her eye slowly opens and closes as she enjoys her massage. I know she won’t hurt me.

  Swallowing my fear, I wade in deeper, and Mark lifts me up on top of her belly. Perched up on top of an elephant for the second time in my life, I once again feel the prickly skin that tore my tights during a Vanity Fair photo shoot. Taking the pumice from Mark, I begin to slowly rub it over her rough folds of skin, increasingly at one with this beast. Washing behind her enormous pink-speckled ears, I watch as she closes her eye in contented delight.

  The crew are on the bank filming us bathing Tara. We’re soaked to the skin, but we’re laughing and having the best time. Once she is washed, Tara pulls herself upright and steps majestically from the lake, dripping water. I back away, still in awe of her huge bulk.

  Mark and I climb up onto a rock and watch her as she eats her dinner.

  “Aren’t elephants dangerous?” I ask him.

  “Naturally, no. Naturally, they’re peace-loving herbivores. Indian mothers often leave their children in the care of their elephants, guarded between their huge legs.”

  “Like prehistoric babysitters?” I laugh.

  “Exactly. But, sadly, there is a new phenomenon happening, as elephants are pushed farther and farther from their habitat, and that is when they turn nasty. Four hundred people were killed by elephants in India last year. In northwest Bengal, a young elephant calf was hit and killed by a train. His mother waited by the tracks, and when the train came by the following day she deliberately derailed it.”

  Mark’s story doesn’t ease my mind the following morning when he breaks some news to me: “We’re going to get Tara ready for you to ride her today,” he yells from his position astride her ears as she strolls into camp.

  “Oh no!” I say, shaking my head vehemently. “I’m drawing the line at that. I’m not going to ride a wild elephant in the middle of the jungle. What if she suddenly takes off? I have a family. I have a career. I don’t want to die in India.”

  Mark laughs. “But, Goldie, this is going to be wonderful. You’ll be great, and I’ll be right up here with you. Tara’s a pussycat. She took me all the way across India, remember?”

  I go cold. This isn’t possible, I think. No one warned me of this. I can feel my hackles rising again. Don’t go there, Goldie, I tell myself. Be nice. To relax my nerves while they fit Tara with a howdah, a kind of saddle, I play a quick game of cricket with the English crew. Sitting in the peanut gallery, a family of monkeys watches us play. Hitting the ball right out of the park, I meet my fellow players’ indignant cries of “But, wait a minute, we invented the game!” with a shrug of my shoulders.

  “It’s just like baseball,” I tell them as the monkeys chatter their encouragement.

  Mark is one of the most charming and persuasive men I’ve ever met. With the cameras following my every move, he woos me into agreement.

  “Hey, guys, I don’t really think that I actually need to be up on the elephant,” I protest as I’m led reluctantly toward Tara for the shot. “I’ll do a lot of stuff. I mean, I washed the elephant, and that was good. I can feed the elephant. I can be by the elephant, but I’m not sure I really have to be up on top. I’m sorry, you know. I don’t think I can do this.”

  “You’ll be perfectly all right,” Mark calls down to me from her back, his eyes twinkling. “She’s my baby. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  At that point, a tin of Altoids mints drops from my pocket, and Tara grabs it with her trunk. Before I can stop her, she stuffs the Altoids in her mouth. Her mahout, or trainer, opens her mouth, reaches right inside her gullet with his arm and pulls out the completely flattened tin. I still have it as a memento.

  The mahout taps Tara’s legs and makes her go down on all haunches. Before I know it, I am climbing up her backside and into the howdah with Mark. My heart is pounding right through my T-shirt.

  “Mahl! Mahl!” Mark shouts, and Tara gets up as I cling on for dear life.

  “Oh my God!” I exclaim.

  It’s like going up in a Ferris wheel, up and up, tilting back and forth, side to side, precariously. Suddenly, I’m touching the bottoms of the treetops. So much for drawing the line.

  “See, now, that was fine, wasn’t it?”

  “I-I guess.”

  Mark positions me behind him, and makes me watch carefully to see exactly how he drives his elephant. Sliding down just behind her head, he gives commands with his bare feet tucked in behind her flapping ears. Then he makes her stop, and he turns to me.

  “Now kick off your socks and slide forward to where I am so that you’re sitt
ing right behind her ears,” he instructs. “I’ll move back to where you are.”

  “You want me to drive her?”

  “Of course.”

  “But my dogs don’t mind me,” I say, shaking my head. “Why would an elephant?”

  “Let’s give it a go.”

  “Oh my God, you tricked me!”

  Sliding forward gingerly, I now have my toes behind Tara’s lovely pink ears and am pressing them into her flesh.

  “Ooo-h, I don’t know. I don’t know, Mark, this doesn’t feel very safe.”

  “Just lean back and hold on tight. Right. Now use your feet to touch her ears, and tell her which way you want to go. That’s right. Now yell ‘Agit! Agit! Chi!’ and kick her left ear with your foot.”

  To my complete astonishment, Tara not only begins to move, she moves in the direction I want.

  “Oh my God, Mark! Oh my God! This is awesome! I am driving a frigging elephant! I am a mahout!”

  I’m in a state of bliss. I can hardly believe the swaying movement of the elephant, her enormous bones shifting left and right beneath me with such grace. I can see everything from my elevated position, the beauty of the jungle and the streams and the wildlife. Dear Tara is so gentle with me, so patient.

  We prepare to leave Kipling Camp early the following morning. All the people who cooked for us and took such good care of us gather around to say good-bye. As our convoy pulls out of the camp, dear Tara literally runs after us with her trunk in the air, trumpeting. She is saying farewell to Mark, clearly distressed to see him leave. It is so beautiful, like something out of a Disney movie.

  The owner of the reserve kindly lends us his brand-new Land Rover, which is just as well because we have to retrace our journey down that bumpiest of bumpy roads. But this time we float along in style, the most comfortable ride I’ve ever had in India.

  During the worst storm, at the beginning of the monsoon season, we fly to Bangalore, on our way to the next and most important stage of our documentary. We’re headed for the Kabini River Lodge, eighty kilometers outside Mysore, once the hunting grounds of the maharajahs. My new guide is Aditya, whom I love instantly, the handsome friend and former traveling companion of Mark’s. A photographer and adventurer, he takes very good care of me.