TO THE ELEPHANT GRAVEYARD

 Authour : Tarquin Hall

Publisher : John Murray (UK), Year 2000; Penguin Books (India), Year 2009; Pages 260 + 8 pages of b&w photographs.

 

Review by Indra Mani Lal

Excerpts :

( ) It took the elephant only a few minutes to flatten the flimsy structure. Amidst the confusion, a lantern was knocked over, setting fire to the dry straw roof. Two of Shom’s daughters escaped out of the back, running across the fields to the safety of a neighbour’s cottage, another daughter and her mother hid in a nearby ditch. Shom stumbled out of the hut clutching a machete. Shom tripped and fell on the ground. The elephant grabbed hold of him with his trunk.

( ) 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 the Assamese valley like smoke brimming off a witch’s cauldron.

( ) Using an age-old technique unique to Assam called mela-shikar, the phandis would lasso the elephant calves 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, at Sonpur on the banks of the Gandak river in Bihar, to this day the largest elephant market in the world.

( ) The elephants have lost their home and their traditional migratory routes, man. They’re disoriented and angry. Mostly it’s the Bangladeshis who have cut down all the trees. Hundreds of thousands of them have been settled here. 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. 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 patronised them. It’s that easy, man.

( ) At dusk, we led the kunkis to the edge of the compound near the main gate where they were provided with cakes of rough wheat or ragi, which was mixed with jiggery. Chains were attached to their legs, which in turn were secured to two trees. As the sun dipped down behind the hills, leaving subtle hues in the sky, Prat showed me how to brush down the elephants with a coarse broom.

( ) According to local intelligence, the hunter told us, the rogue had visited the same village every night for the past week, killing three men. The chances were therefore high that he would visit the same village again. But there was one serious complication. A wild herd had moved into the vicinity and they would first have to be driven back into the rain forest and hills to the north. Mr Coudhary, Rudra, Mole and the guards were to go ahead and set up look-out posts, while the elephant squad followed. It would take the kunki roughly two hours to cover the distance.

( ) We had been travelling for nearly two hours when Churchill called a halt next to a stream where the elephants drank. The apprentices set up a camping-stove and boiled a pot of water for tea, while I climbed down from Raja and nursed my sore legs. Bodo and Prat cut some banana trees with their machetes for the kunkis to eat. The others adjusted the ‘saddles’ and checked the pads of the animals’ feet for any cuts or sores.

( ) Soon, we spotted the herd. They were about a hundred and fifty yards away, huddled together in front of a wall of sugar-cane, dazzled and frightened, their trunks raised like periscopes as they tested the air for foreign scents. In their midst stood a tusker with magnificent incisors crossed over one another like out-of-shape scissors. His head was covered in a mass of bushy hair. Enraged, he paced up and down, picking up clods of earth with his trunk and tossing them over his shoulder.

( ) Disappointed, we prepared to climb down from the observation platform, when Choudhary let out a cry. Much to everyone’s amazement, he had spotted the rogue elephant. The binoculars went from hand to hand. The tusker had emerged from the jungle about a mile to the north and was moving at a leisurely pace in an easterly direction. He stopped by a stream to eat some aquatic weed, shoving the vegetation into his mouth with his trunk. ‘Judging by the length of the tusks,’ continued Mr Choudhary, ‘I would say he is about forty years old. See how they are worn down at the ends.’

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My Take : This is a True Story of the Hunt for a Man-Killing Elephant, in Assam. The author is a British writer and a journalist who had the opportunity to accompany the hunting squad. A gripping and fascinating tale, told with twists and humour.  Description of men and conditions etc gives the picture of India in the 1960’s; and seems to be written with western audience in mind.

Subject / Type – True  Adventure

Narrative  Style – Excellent

Readability – Excellent

Maintaining Readers Interest – Excellent

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