To the Elephant Graveyard by Tarquin Hall

Author:Tarquin Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: India
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1999-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Had the sacrifice been worth it, I asked.

“Oh, don’t know about sacrifice,” he replied, trying to make light of it. “Did what we had to do, really. But of course it was worth it. Like I always say: every generation has its battles, like.”

Stew rose from his armchair, draining his glass. Behind him, Flo, his wife of more than thirty-five years, was ready by the door with their bags.

“Better be off then,” said Stew. “We’re going to Kohima. See the war graves and memorials and all that. Show the Missus where I gave the Japs what for.”

He winked at me, put his arm round his wife and turned for the door.

♦

The squad’s tents were pitched about a mile inside Kaziranga. It was here that the twenty or so mahouts employed by the Forest Department to look after the park’s resident kunkis lived with their animals. The place was a sea of mud, a flat open area littered with piles of fodder, the ground pitted with elephant footprints of all sizes.

Wherever I looked, there were elephants – baby makhnas with fuzzy tufts of hair and delicate eyelashes, proud mothers with protective trunks, gigantic Ganeshas with enormous tusks, and a couple of old-timers with worn ears, greying hides and an air of wisdom.

Down in the river, a stone’s throw from the squad’s new camp, a playful female was having her tummy washed as she squirted water at a group of admiring children. On the far bank, a mahout was teaching a young male with pink freckles how to stand on his hind legs, while a young mother tramped towards us, her two calves clutching her tail with their trunks as they trotted behind.

In the middle of the camp stood Raja and Jasmine, happily munching on some banana trees, their chains attached to two posts driven into the ground. The squad’s apprentices were chatting with their counterparts amongst the Kaziranga team, boasting of their adventures with rogues and wild herds.

We found Churchill, Badger and the others helping to tend a female elephant who had been attacked by a wild tusker. The wounded animal had deep gouges across her back where her assailant’s tusks had done their work. The night before, she had been left in the jungle in the hope that a passing wild male would impregnate her. A suitor had appeared and made the usual elephantine advances. But the kunki had played hard to get and had infuriated the male, who was less than delicate during their subsequent coupling.

A wizened old mahout called Baba was preparing a herbal mixture for the wounded elephant in a pot over a charcoal fire. His back was hunched and where his right eye should have been was a patch of scaly skin. The hairs on his head had been dyed with henna, but the tufts that sprouted from his ears were grey. Unlike the other mahouts, he wore no shoes, revealing hideously deformed toes, six on one foot, four on the other. Nevertheless, he clearly commanded the respect of all the other mahouts.

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