To the Elephant Graveyard. Tarquin Hall
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yet more sandalwood was smeared on my forehead, mantras were spoken in reverent tones and the milk from my coconut was poured over the yoni rock.
Eventually we emerged into the dusk. At the gate, I paid the priest for his services and he thanked me gratefully, promising that my life would be filled with good fortune. As I made my way to meet Mr Choudhury, I could only hope that the priest was right.
Back at the hotel, Rishi the concierge told me that Mr Banerjee, the mysterious gentleman from the Ministry of Sports, had been and gone. It looked as if I was in the clear. But just to be on the safe side, as I waited in the foyer, I was careful to position myself in the shadow of a large potted plant where I kept my face partially hidden behind the collar of my coat.
Much to my relief, Mr Choudhury was on time. Shortly after eight, he strode through the hotel doors and spotted me in my hiding place.
‘Everything’s in order,’ he said confidently, as we made our way outside. ‘We leave immediately.’
Mr Choudhury had arrived with two vehicles: his battered 1953 Land Rover which had a long wheel base, a khaki green canvas roof, a winch at the front and extra jerry cans of petrol mounted on the back; and a white Hindustan Ambassador, India’s answer to the Volkswagen Beetle. Modelled on the 1950s Morris Oxford and built like a tank, it is the only indigenous car tough enough to survive India’s pot-holed national highways.
The hunter had brought along a small entourage that included two drivers and two guards on loan from the Forest Department who were armed with sub-machine guns for our protection against militants.
‘We’ll be driving all night. Let’s take turns sleeping on the back seat of the Ambassador,’ said Mr Choudhury as my bags were placed in the boot of the car. ‘Tarquin, you sleep first. I’ll go in the Land Rover and we’ll swap in a few hours.’
The driver opened the back door of the car. I was about to get inside when I heard my name – or rather its Indian version – being called out hysterically.
‘Mr Halls! Mr Halls!’
A man in a purple tracksuit was running towards the car.
‘I am Banerjee,’ he panted as he came to a stop.
I had guessed as much already. I turned to face him.
‘Yes, Mr Banerjee? I’m in a bit of a rush. What can I do for you?’
He stood in front of me, his head bowed, his hands pushed together to form the traditional Hindu namaste, or greeting.
‘Most terribly sorry for disturbing,’ he apologized, wobbling his head and shuffling his feet. ‘Are you really Mr Halls?’
I nodded my head nervously, expecting the worst.
‘Well, I am most avid fan of British soccer. Please to be giving your autograph.’
He thrust a notepad and pen towards me, his brown eyes pleading to make his wish come true. My mind was reeling. Not for the first time in India I was completely baffled by the events taking place around me. Numbly, I reached for the biro and, steadying the pad, signed my name, making sure that it was illegible.
‘Thanking you, thanking you very much, Mr Halls,’ said Mr Banerjee, backing away from me. He bounced on his heels with excitement, his head bowed to the ground. I thought I noticed tears in his eyes.
‘This is the greatest day of my life, Mr Halls! Thanking you! Thanking you!’
Mr Choudhury was standing next to his Land Rover, his eyebrows raised in astonishment. I caught his gaze and, as I did so, he tilted his head to one side.
‘Who was that?’ he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Oh, just one of my fans,’ I replied.
Across Guwahati, the electricity had been cut off, throwing the city into darkness. Residents stood about in the streets like spectators watching an eclipse. While they waited expectantly for the power to be turned back on, children played in the moonlight and elderly people huddled around fires burning inside empty oil drums. Along the main road, lanterns hung outside shop fronts. On the pavements, the proprietors of the larger stores revved up their petrol generators, deafening passers-by.
Even the city’s traffic lights had failed and the police were trying to direct the rush-hour traffic with torches. Vegetable stands were doing business by candlelight, dozens of flames twinkling in the gloom. Outside a cinema showing an Indian version of Mrs Doubtfire entitled Aunty Number One, angry customers, furious that the film had been interrupted, were demanding their money back. Down the road, a street-poster vendor who sold pin-ups of busty Bombay film actresses alongside garish paintings of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Jesus Christ and the usual Hindu deities, was doing a roaring trade by the light of his car headlights.
As we inched our way through the traffic, I caught glimpses of advertisements for everything from Tipsy Beer to East Wood Cigarettes. ‘MOUNTAIN SPRING WATER. THE SWEAT TASTE’, announced one poster. Next to it, a billboard promoted a certain brand of local soap as being the best ‘FOR THOSE PRIVATE MOMENTS’.
Towards the edge of the city, we passed the Boogie Woogie Dance School where anyone with two hundred and fifty rupees to spare could learn to ‘get down like Michael Jackson’. Next to it stood the Double Digest Restaurant. A mile on, I spotted the Good Luck Driving School which promised graduates a ‘chance of survival’.
We passed out of the city limits and into the surrounding hills. A sign on the side of the road, erected by Assam’s Department of Transport, warned:‘YOU ARE NOW ENTERING AN ACCIDENT PRONE ZONE.’The large number of chewed-up cars and squashed truck cabs that lay abandoned on the side of the road – perhaps left there as a warning to others – were proof that Highway 37 was indeed hazardous, if not a death-trap. More of Assam’s dogs lay about on the tarmac in various stages of decomposition.
According to my driver Rudra, who described them as ‘bad mens’, it was generally the truck-drivers who were responsible for the inordinate number of accidents and deaths. Most of them were said to be on drugs, which they took to help them stay awake on long journeys. Only that morning, there had been a head-on collision. ‘Both mens become like jams,’ said Rudra.
Highway 37 wound its way through the hills and down into the Brahmaputra valley. Knowing that in India there is an accident every minute and a death on the roads every eight minutes, I sat back in my seat, making sure that I was unable to see the road ahead. If something was going to kill me, I preferred not to have to see it coming.
I had been looking forward to talking to Mr Choudhury and getting to know him better on the journey, and I was disappointed that I wasn’t sitting next to him. Tired, I attempted to put such thoughts out of my head. Instead, I reached into my backpack and took out a collection of short stories and essays by George Orwell. I turned on the light and flicked through until I found his acclaimed piece, ‘Shooting an Elephant’. With the car bouncing over pot-holes, keeping my eyes on the words wasn’t easy. The story is set in Moulmein in Lower Burma where Orwell worked as a police officer. As a colonial, he was despised by the local population. One day while he was on duty, a trained elephant went beserk. Rather than lose face amongst the natives, Orwell decided to shoot it. But all he had available was a small-bore rifle, a weapon wholly inadequate for such a task. Despite this the first shot found its mark.
He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed like a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise. For as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he