Whatever the case, I found it very hard to believe that an elephant would deliberately hurt anyone, except perhaps in self-defence.
When Monimoy eventually left, I asked Das what he thought of the farmer’s extraordinary story. The information officer shrugged his shoulders.
‘You’re right. Elephants are generally very gentle creatures. Usually, they won’t kill a living thing, although you do get the odd rotten apple.’
‘Yes, but this farmer made the elephant sound like a crazed monster,’ I said. ‘It was sheer nonsense – all that stuff about him creeping through the village and picking out a single house to attack. That’s unheard of. No animal behaves like that.’
Das tipped back in his chair.
‘You have a romantic view of elephants,’ he remarked. ‘Genuine rogues are rare, but we do get them from time to time. There’s no more dangerous or cunning an animal.’
That’s what you would say, I thought to myself. Your department is the one that has issued the warrant for the rogue’s destruction. But why, I asked him, didn’t they capture the animal instead?
‘The average Asian male elephant weighs seven tonnes, stands nine feet high, can run at twenty-five miles an hour and possesses a trunk that could pull your head right off your shoulders,’ Das explained. ‘You can’t put such a rogue elephant in a cage, you can’t tie him to a post, you can’t pacify him or reason with him, and he can’t be trained. He has to be killed or he will kill. It’s as simple as that.’
He drew hard on his cigarette and continued:‘An elephant must kill at least twelve people before a destruction order is given. When that happens, we have to choose a hunter. Not just anyone is invited to come forward. He must own a .458 velocity rifle, be a trained marksman and, preferably, have experience of shooting elephants.’
Das went on to explain that a warrant is issued with a description of the elephant’s height, approximate weight, colouring and any distinguishing features.
‘The warrant has a time limit,’ he added. ‘It’s usually fourteen days. If the elephant in question is not eliminated within that period, then all bets are off.’
‘It sounds like a Mafioso hit,’ I joked as I jotted down the details in my notebook.
‘If you like,’ said Das, unamused.
Just then, the old-fashioned bakelite telephone on the desk gave a loud, shrill ring. Das picked up the receiver.
The person on the other end talked rapidly, the line distorting his voice.
‘Yes, I understand,’ said Das.
The line squawked and then squawked again.
‘Right. I will. Five minutes.’
Das remained calm and aloof. He replaced the receiver, stroking his right cheek like a poker player considering his hand.
‘I have just been given the name of the hunter who has been assigned to the task.’
‘Who is it?’ I asked excitedly.
‘He is Dinesh Choudhury, a Guwahati man and a trained marksman, the best there is.’
Dinesh Choudhury: the name I had seen in the newspaper article. I asked Das how I might get in touch with him. He wrote down the address on a piece of paper and slid it over to me. Then he stood up and showed me to the door.
‘Don’t be misled by the environmentalists. This elephant is a man-killer,’ he said, squeezing my hand and looking me straight in the eye. ‘You should be careful. Things are not always what they seem. Rogue tuskers don’t distinguish between locals and white men. He hates us all equally.’
I asked him whether it was true that the victims’ families had gone on hunger-strike, as I had heard that morning.
‘That’s another thing,’ he cautioned. ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. Our Indian journalists are all consummate liars.’
Outside in the street, I hailed a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw and handed the piece of paper to its Bengali driver.
‘Paan Ba-zaar?’ he asked, reading the address and seeking confirmation of my destination.
‘Yes, please. Paan Bazaar,’ I repeated.
‘Okay, Sahib!’
He revved up his lawnmower-like engine and, with a jolt and a shotgun blast from the exhaust, we lurched off down the road, his dashboard shrine flashing with multicoloured disco lights. He slipped an audio cassette into his player and grating Bengali film music blared from the speakers. The yowling soon attracted the attention of a street dog who ran alongside the doorless vehicle, yapping frantically and snapping at our wheels. Despite our increasing speed, the dog managed to keep up with us for nearly fifty yards before receiving a well-aimed kick from the driver. As the whimpering hound fell far behind, the driver turned in his seat, cocked his head at me and smiled triumphantly.
Soon we took a right turn down a back road pitted with potholes as deep as bomb craters. Crouched in a foetal position in a vehicle obviously designed for dwarfs, I bumped up and down on the rock-hard seat. The vehicle reached its top speed and the driver zoomed over a sleeping policeman, causing the auto-rickshaw to do a rear-end wheely and slamming my head against the steel support bar in the roof. Next we took a sharp turn left and I only just prevented myself from being dumped on the road by throwing my arms around the neck of the driver who, temporarily blinded by my embrace, nearly drove into the back of a water buffalo.
Rather than becoming enraged, I felt strangely exhilarated. For weeks, I had been shackled to my desk in New Delhi, covering the latest developments in the arcane world of Indian politics. Now, with my mobile phone and pager locked away in a filing cabinet, I smiled to myself. Whatever the outcome, this was sure to be an adventure.
As the driver continued his manic passage towards Paan Bazaar I reflected on my interview with Das.
Why had he made the elephant sound so dangerous and menacing? I wondered. Surely that was all bluster, just to reinforce the story and to make the price they had put on the rogue’s head sound legitimate. Das was up to no good. He had to be.
Given this, I wondered how best to approach Mr Choudhury. He was bound to be unreceptive, so perhaps cash would help my appeal. Or the prospect of fame and publicity. Failing that, I might try playing on his vanity. Had I not come at vast expense all the way from Delhi to interview him? That always worked. Even the most publicity-shy people like that kind of attention.
Suddenly turning into one of the city’s main thoroughfares we were swept along in a whirlwind of Indian traffic. Bullock carts and sacred cows meandered across lanes of pollutionbelching cars. Vespas buzzed past. Drivers overtook, undertook, did U-turns in the middle of moving traffic, reversed down one-way streets the wrong way, and honked their horns incessantly. Overloaded trucks accelerated and then slammed on their brakes. Motor-scooters slalomed. Battered buses cut across lanes at breakneck speed. It was as if every vehicle was being piloted by a circus clown.
I watched as a mother and her child tried to cross the street, the two terrified figures clinging to one another like passengers on the sinking Titanic. They took a step into a gap in the traffic and immediately a bus cut off their line of retreat. Gingerly they took another few steps forward as a Maruti hatchback ground to a halt inches away from them, the driver cursing. I could see a truck bearing down on them from the other direction and held my breath, certain they would be run over. But at the last second, to my astonishment, the driver swerved to the right, pushing two bicycle rickshaws off the road, as the mother and child ran safely to the other side.
Wherever I had travelled in the subcontinent – from the southernmost tip of Tamil Nadu to the hill stations crouched in the foothills of the Himalayas – it had been impossible to escape this chaos. Even here on the North-East Frontier, a part of the world that has remained isolated for centuries, traffic madness had spread like a virus.
Guwahati,