‘The elephant’s eyes glowed red. Fire burned inside them. Flames and smoke shot out from his trunk. He was a monster – as big as a house, like one of the gods. His tusks were huge, like . . .’
Das, sitting behind a desk positioned in front of the farmer, was tiring of the yokel’s lengthy and highly coloured story. Impatiently he raised a hand to silence the excited farmer.
‘Just tell us what happened.’
Monimoy fidgeted in his threadbare dhoti.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he stammered, ‘I was just coming to that . . .’
He swallowed hard, trying to calm himself, and then continued: ‘The elephant charged at the hut, using his head like a battering ram. Time and again, he smashed into the walls. The timber creaked, snapped and gave way. He smashed at the door with his tusks, breaking it into little pieces. The elephant tugged at the supports with his trunk. Soon the roof caved in!’
Monimoy leaned forward in his chair, nursing his forehead in a manner that suggested he was suffering from a hangover.
‘Inside, Shom’s family screamed for help,’ he continued. ‘I could hear the terrified cries of his daughters. “Help us, help us, ” they pleaded. “The elephant is attacking us!”’
Monimoy had watched from the lane, drunk and helpless. Rather than going to the rescue, he remained frozen to the spot.
‘I couldn’t move,’ he stammered, shaking his head from side to side regretfully. ‘I couldn’t do anything.’
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. Within seconds, the hut was engulfed in flames. 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. Sadly, Shom was not so fast on his feet.
‘Shom was drunk. He stumbled out of the hut clutching a machete. I could see the terror on his face. He called out for someone to save him. This got the elephant’s attention and he came after Shom.’
With shaking hands, Monimoy paused to pick up a mug of milky tea that stood on the desk before him.
‘Shom tripped and fell on the ground. The elephant grabbed hold of him with his trunk. Shom struck out with his machete. The elephant knocked it from his hand.’
As he talked, Monimoy began to sweat openly. He shut his eyes tight as if the memory of what happened next was too much to bear.
‘Shom was screaming and screaming. I can hear him now! He struggled to get free. The elephant held on to him and swung him around and then smashed him against a tree again and again.’
The elephant toyed with the local farmer, like a cat playing with a mouse, before dropping him on the ground. Remarkably, Shom was still conscious. He groaned in agony as blood seeped from his mouth and nose.
The triumphant beast stood over him, raised his trunk and trumpeted angrily. Then he prepared to finish off his victim.
‘What happened next?’ prompted Das impatiently.
Monimoy swallowed again.
‘As I watched,’ he said, ‘the elephant knelt down and drove his right tusk straight through Shom’s chest!’
Das grimaced. I shifted uneasily in my chair. Monimoy looked off into space, as if in a trance.
‘For a moment, Shom writhed around. After that, he was still.’
The rogue elephant raised his tusk with the farmer still pinned to its end like a bug on the end of a needle.
‘Then the elephant tossed him to one side and disappeared into the darkness, the blood dripping from his tusk.’
Two days earlier, on the morning of Shom’s death, I had been reading the newspapers in my office at the New Delhi bureau of the Associated Press when the following article caught my eye:
Rampaging Rogue Faces Execution
Guwahati: The government of Assam today issued proclamation orders for the destruction of one wild rogue elephant, described as Tusker male, who is responsible for 38 deaths of humans in the Sonitpur district of Upper Assam.
The state Forest Department has therefore invited all hunters to come forward and bid for the contract worth 50,000 rupees.
The favoured candidate is one Dinesh Choudhury of Guwahati. In reply today to a question about whether he would accept the assignment, he said:‘It is a very dangerous thing. It will take some time before the elephant can be brought to task. We will have to travel on tamed elephants into the jungle areas and flush him out.’
The deadline for candidate application is tomorrow at 5:30 p.m.
Tearing the article from the paper, I reread it carefully. It sounded like one of the most promising stories I had come across for months. Who would have imagined, in this day and age, that the Indian authorities were hiring professional hunters to slaughter Asian elephants, which are more usually regarded as an endangered species? Surely, with modern tranquillizers, an elephant could be captured and placed in a zoo or, at the very least, driven into a game reserve? No doubt, I mused, corruption lay at the heart of the matter. If I had the chance to travel to Guwahati, the capital of the state of Assam, I sensed that I might be able to expose what sounded like an underhand business.
There was just one problem. The elephant was on the rampage in North-East India, an obscure part of the country rife with insurgency. The region was periodically off-limits to foreigners. In the past, I had been barred from going there. I decided to call Assam’s representative in Delhi who made it clear that the regulations had been relaxed.
‘I cannot guarantee your safety or offer any protection,’ he said, ‘but you are free to travel anywhere in the state, except military areas.’
That was good enough for me. I called my editor in London, sold him the story and explained that I might be away for as much as a fortnight. After that I booked myself on the next Indian Airlines flight to Guwahati.
Now, sitting in Das’s office, I considered Monimoy’s fantastic tale. It seemed implausible. Elephants do not breathe smoke and fire, they are not gods, and they certainly do not go around in the middle of the night knocking down people’s homes and singling out particular human beings for premeditated murder. Elephants are kindly, intelligent, generally good-tempered creatures, like Babar or Dumbo. Monimoy, who had by his own admission been drinking at the time of the attack, was clearly prone to wild exaggeration. But could he also be lying?
My suspicions aroused, I questioned him carefully about his motives for travelling all the way from Sonitpur, a full day’s bus ride, just to tell his story to the Forest Department.
‘I have come on behalf of my village’, he told me, ‘to petition the government to shoot the elephant.’
He explained that his family, along with dozens of others, lived in constant fear. For weeks, the elephant had terrified their district, killing thirty-eight people.
‘He is possessed! An evil god! He kills anyone who says bad things about him. That’s why he murdered Shom. Only the day before, Shom said he hoped the elephant would be killed,’ continued Monimoy. ‘So, you see, by coming here and pleading with you to shoot the elephant, I am putting myself at great personal risk. When I return to my village, the elephant will surely come for me!’
His superstitious beliefs aside, Monimoy’s motives seemed plausible and straightforward. Nevertheless, I had spent enough time in India to know that nothing in the subcontinent is ever clear-cut. There had to be more. Perhaps Monimoy, a shifty character if ever I’d seen one, had murdered Shom and blamed it on the elephant. Or maybe Monimoy was a poacher and had provoked the animal who, in turn, had killed his partner, and now the farmer was attempting some