IN HINDI THE word ‘bandobast’ means ‘arrangement’, and it was to bandobast that the next two weeks were devoted. On the 15th September the great festival of Ganesh was to be celebrated. We could not hope for a more appropriate and auspicious day on which to begin our journey.
Rajpath had spent five days with Bhim and Tara at the zoo handing over the reins of command. It was remarkable how quickly she adapted to her new master. Although the language of mahouts is universal – all originally derived from the ancient Sanskrit – local intonations are different. Rajpath’s was strong and sharp. Bhim’s was more sing-song and gentle. This encouraged me, for I had imagined an English accent causing terrible confusion. She was really a very clever elephant, though Rajpath told me before he left that she had one weakness: deep water. Always, he advised, shackle the front legs before her bathtime. Hardly a weakness, I thought. All elephants love water, even I knew that, and I forgot about it.
Her daily intake began with a morning snack consisting of thirty kilos of rice, wrapped in paddy, sprinkled with a few roots of turmeric (for digestion) and fed to her in bundles, like giant birds’ nests, by Bhim. She then disappeared behind a mountain of fresh fodder, namely bamboo, the branches of Bud and Peepul trees of which she ate only the bark, and if she was lucky, some pieces of sugar cane. Having slowly worked her way through this she would reappear in the late afternoon when her larder would be restocked for the night. In addition she picked up tit-bits from the busloads of visitors to the zoo, and from my daily visits, when I would bring the icing on the cake – gur. Gur is unrefined molasses, and to elephants it is like foie-gras to a gastronome. They love it. The moment I arrived Tara would drop anything that she was eating, shoot out her trunk, flap her ears and stamp her feet like an impatient child. I became the candyman, and I admit the greater part of her affection at the beginning was due to this treat.
One difficulty remained. How were we to satisfy the appetite of such an enormous beast once the journey had begun? I had no idea where to find a chaarkatiya or food-gatherer.
‘Not problem, Raja-sahib,’ Bhim announced. ‘My friend Gokul help us.’ He introduced me to a shy young man with a mischievous face whom Aditya interrogated closely. Gokul’s squeaky voice gained confidence with each statement, punctuated by laughter from Aditya. At last Aditya turned to me.
‘Well?’
‘He’s our man. He’s eminently qualified for the job. He has been a singer, an acrobat, a dancer, and most recently a tree feller. He now has a new ambition. He wants to be a mahout. Just like you.’
The legendary G. P. Sanderson, who was in charge of elephant catching operations in Mysore and Bengal in the late nineteenth century, reckoned a ton to be a good load for an elephant on continuous march. In his classic work, Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India, he also recommended that ‘in hilly country seven hundredweights is as much as he should carry.’ Now Sanderson was describing a male elephant and probably a large one at that. Tara was a female and in reality quite small, though admittedly at the moment she was doing her best to change her image. Her pack gear alone was substantial. It consisted of a soft quilted pad, about one inch thick, that extended from her withers to her rump and halfway down her sides. On top of this came the gudda or saddle, made of stout sacking stuffed tight with straw, six feet long, four and a half feet broad, eighteen inches deep, and weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds. It had a longitudinal opening which to some extent relieved the pressure on the spine, one of the most vulnerable parts of the elephant. ‘Sore back,’ Sanderson continues, ‘often disables elephants for months, sometimes for years and may even result fatally.’ On top of the gudda came the howdah, which can be an elaborate and ornate affair, but in our case simply resembled a heavy, four-legged rectangular table turned upside down with a cushion to sit on and rails at each end to prevent us falling off. The whole contraption was strapped on by means of one length of thick rope which went round her head and girth and up under her tail. To prevent chafing, it passed through a crupper, which was made not of leather but of metal, in the shape of a piece of bent pipe. ‘Smoothness, not softness,’ Sanderson insists, ‘is the prime requisite in a crupper.’
Our personal gear, all the paraphernalia of a long expedition, tents, sleeping bags, cameras, cooking equipment, food, lamps, axes, kerosene, water, torches, and so on – hung from both sides of the howdah, so that the weight was distributed evenly and would rest on the upper part of her ribs, and not on her spine. This was all exclusive of her food, chains and shackles and, most importantly, the four of us. It became obvious, as I had been advised in Delhi, that we would need back up. With a vehicle to carry the bulk of our load, we could travel relatively unencumbered across the country, and then be supplied every few days at predetermined points of rendezvous. It sounded simple enough in theory, but whether it would work in practice remained to be seen.
Finding ‘back up’ was considerably easier than finding an elephant, and a jeep and trailer were kindly lent to us by friends for the duration of our journey. With the jeep came a driver, and without the driver we could not have the jeep, but there was, as Aditya and I agreed, something about Khusto that spelled trouble, though at that moment neither one of us could put our fingers on it. For a start, communication with him was a problem due to large well-chewed wads of ‘paan’ that were permanently wedged into his mouth, giving him the appearance of a squirrel with mumps. He was also more of a modist than a mechanic. The only spare part that he deemed necessary to take with him for this long and arduous journey was an extra rearview mirror, and he spent much of his time teasing his bouffant hair with the bright red comb he kept wedged in the back pocket of a tight pair of khaki trousers. Indrajit, on whose sagacity and faithfulness we had now come to rely heavily, also voiced his doubts about Khusto. To our great relief he insisted that he himself would come along as co-driver.
Although I knew he would decline, I asked Mr Tripathy to accompany us also. There were tears in his eyes. He clasped my hands, and I was as deeply affected as he was. ‘I am too old for such things, sir. With my reward, I have decided to start a new business.’
I was intrigued. ‘What kind of business?’
‘I will become a miner,’ he announced with marvellous inconsequence. ‘I will find gold and diamonds. With my riches I will buy elephants.’
‘But that was your last business.’ I was now confused.
His wise old eyes filled with laughter. ‘No, sir, o-r-i-g-i-n-a-l elephants. When you return to Orissa I will be selling them to you.’