WE HAD ASCERTAINED that the Sonepur Mela lasted two weeks, and that the peak day – Kartik Purnima (the day of the full moon) – fell on the 23rd November. Elephants could not be bought or sold before that auspicious date. To be on the safe side, we planned to arrive at the Mela around the 17th November, which would allow us sixty-four days to complete the journey. With the aid of some very out-of-date maps, we established a route. By my calculations (which were by no means accurate) the journey would be some seven hundred and fifty miles long, roughly the distance between John O’Groats and Land’s End, or from New York to Chicago, or Sydney to Adelaide.
‘Four miles an hour is a good pace for an elephant, but long-legged ones will swing along at five,’ Sanderson wrote. Tara had the most beautiful long legs. Even if we were to be on the move for only four hours a day, starting early to avoid the heat, it seemed to me that we had plenty of time.
I could scarcely believe it. We were ready to begin our journey on the most auspicious day of the year. Some friends had arranged a special puja for our good fortune. Early on the morning of the 14th September, the day before we were due to depart, Aditya and I went to the zoo to watch Tara being made ready for the puja by some students from the art school in Bhubaneshwar.
Decoration of elephants is usually carried out by mahouts – specialists in the art, using chalk and coloured paste – who are familiar with the dangers, the vagaries and the fidgetiness of this large animal. They can work with assurance, secured by their knowledge. Understandably, the students were nervous. An elephant is a different proposition to the stillness of a canvas. They were also working in watercolours, and moved warily round her, applying dabs of colour with their paintbrushes. Tara now nervous as well, and perhaps annoyed by the tickling sensation of bristles on her skin, shook her head violently and flayed out with her trunk and tail, sending students, pots and paintbrushes flying.
Bhim and another mahout immediately took charge, forcing her to sit. They grabbed her trunk and her tail and held them tightly. Apart from her huge flapping ears Tara now remained steady enough for the students to work. With wonderful imagination, a trait seemingly inbred amongst artisans of Orissa, Tara was transformed into a bride. The insides of her ears were decorated with painted earrings of yellow diamonds and rubies, her forehead became a fringe of lacy pearls, her trunk a fretwork of flowers, lotuses, frangipani blossoms and blood red hibiscus, and around her legs appeared anklets of silver and gold. She emerged resplendent, a princess fit for the mightiest of kings.
When the truck arrived to transport Tara to Konarak, it was backed up against the side of a wide stone terrace about four feet high which fronted the zoo’s museum, a long low building, from the roof of which bougainvillaea spilled. It was a venue, I thought, more picturesque than practical. The interior of the truck was littered enticingly with every kind of elephant delicacy – succulent stalks of sugar cane, thick sheaves of bamboo leaves and three or four large bundles of bananas. Bhim astride a closely hobbled, radiant Tara clanked up the steps on to the terrace. They approached the truck and then stopped. From where she stood she explored the back of the truck with her trunk. She crept all the way around it, testing and checking everything. She then leant forward, managing to reach the nearest of the delicacies which she popped into her mouth. Bhim urged her forward. She remained stationary. Two or three other zoo mahouts, armed with sticks, crept up behind her and began to beat the back of her legs, while another climbed into the truck and tried to interest her in the food. With a squeal of rage, she shot into reverse, scattering the mahouts and a group of enthusiastic onlookers in her path. She then halted and, regaining her composure, methodically consumed the contents of a flower bed which lined the other end of the terrace. Inevitably, a large crowd had congregated. They had not expected this added attraction on their day out at the zoo.
After three hours the experts (and there were a great many of them by then) decided that this was the wrong approach. I began to doubt their expertise and wondered if they had ever attempted such a manoeuvre before. The arrival of one of the other zoo elephants, a big docile female, who was in theory going to show Tara the way, proved it. She too refused to enter the truck. An impasse had been reached. There was only one solution. Tara, accompanied by Bhim and Gokul, would have to walk to Konarak, a distance of some thirty miles.
As I squeezed into the jeep, my backside wedged uncomfortably on a sack containing tins of corned beef and my head squashed at right angles against one of the metal roof struts, I agreed wholeheartedly with Louis Rousselet, who said of his travels in central India and in the presidencies of Bombay and Bengal that ‘It is neither a slight responsibility nor a trifling matter to have to keep and maintain an elephant for a month or two.’ I couldn’t believe the amount of paraphernalia that had collected. Did an elephant journey really need all this equipment and all these people? But it seems I had got off lightly, for he goes on to tell us that ‘a mahout usually takes his wife and children with him on the journey’.
It had been agreed that Tara and Bhim would meet us that evening at the government inspection bungalow, close to the great Temple of Konarak. By midnight there was no sign of them. A search party was sent out and returned without success. By 7.30 the following morning there was still no sign of Tara. The pandit who was to perform the puja deemed the early morning as the propitious moment for devotions. I had washed, had not taken food and was therefore clean.
For two hours I sat cross-legged in a sandy hollow outside the inspection bungalow which overlooked the Bay of Bengal. Facing me was a small, pink clay idol of Ganesh. Being a foreigner, I could not help feeling self-conscious and somewhat of a fool. Sand flies shot up my shorts and stung me on the backside. I was desperately worried about Tara. As the pandit muttered the last incantation in a cloud of incense, and I showered the little pink effigy with yet another handful of nuts, flowers and coins, news reached us that Tara had been located fifteen miles from Konarak. The Indians have a proverb, ‘Listen to the elephant, rain is coming.’ At that moment it started to rain.
In the driving rain, we piled into the jeep, pandit and all, to meet them. The old mahout was mortified that he had failed to reach Konarak punctually, but Tara had suddenly become lame in her front right leg and this had delayed them. The accommodating pandit performed a second puja, beside a little pond at the side of the road. This turned out to be a merry affair. As Tara’s decoration had been washed off by the rain, Bhim anointed her forehead in a bright red powder, with the sign of the god Shiva, the Destroyer. The pandit blessed us all by dotting our foreheads with ‘tikkas’ and Tara was garlanded with marigolds and frangipani, which she happily consumed. At one point he blessed her by circling her head with sticks of incense. Thinking it was more food, she shot her trunk through the clouds of scented smoke. The poor pandit, already wary of this large, benevolent elephant, took a step back and fell into the pond.
It was now auspicious and appropriate for me to ride her, if only for a few yards. With Bhim tugging from on top of Tara and with the help of Aditya, Indrajit and Khusto, and a crowd of amazed local villagers pushing from below, I was hoisted on to her. In my panic I managed to climb aboard the wrong way round and found myself facing Bhim. I carefully turned round, and we set off to great cheers. It was the first time I had ever been on an elephant. I looked down the long drop, and as Tara gained momentum I knew I was going to fall off. Perhaps because I was sitting in the wrong position, her shoulder blades pumped up and down against my backside like pistons, and I felt myself going. Then I felt cold steel against my lower back and Bhim restored my dignity by hooking the curved point of the ‘ankush’ into my underpants.
In a way I had already started my journey. I felt elated, blessed and unbelievably smug. Leaning down, I kissed her on her large soft ear and whispered that I loved her. My confidence grew as we lumbered down that road. I turned and doffed my panama hat in what I thought was a most cavalier fashion, yelling at Aditya who was walking beside me, ‘How do I look, my friend?’
‘Ridiculous,’ he said.
If the standard of our camp that night was any portent of the next two months, it looked like we would be in trouble. It was my fault, for the choice of the site in sandy ground amongst a forest of casuarina trees overlooking the sea was mine. I selected this scenic spot for two reasons. The first was that it was very close to Konarak, where the next morning we would officially start the great trek. The second was that I had developed a romantic idea of this journey. It was to be a journey of imagination, from the sea to the source, from the blue waters of the Bay of Bengal to the mighty Ganga at the ancient seat of the Emperor Ashoka’s empire, Pataliputra. If only instead I had remembered my boy scout training. Tent pegs do not hold in sandy ground. I should have listened to Bhim, for chaining Tara to a slim, shallow-rooted casuarina tree was about as effective as tying her with a piece of string to a daisy.
It turned into a night of bedlam, not helped by copious amounts of rum which I had liberally distributed to celebrate our first camp. Khusto passed out. Bhim and Gokul could hardly stand. It was left to Aditya and me to try and control Tara. Three times she escaped, and in the process flattened an area the size of a football field. Dotted intermittently along the edge of the road were signs saying in big red letters: GOVERNMENT OF ORISSA FORESTRY DEPARTMENT. KEEP OUT. NEW PLANTATION. Eventually, under the threat of a ban on alcohol for one week, Bhim miraculously sobered up. With another of those shaky salutes, and after several attempts to climb aboard Tara, he announced that he was in full control and that he and Gokul would chain her to a sturdy tree about a mile down the road.
Aditya and I curled up inside a collapsed tent and fell asleep. One hour later we were woken by the sound of rattling chains and wild singing. Peering blearily out of the tent, I was amazed to see approaching us at top speed through the gloom, Bhim riding Tara, followed by a staggering Gokul. Mummy (Tara) had been a bad girl, Bhim informed us, and made a fool out of him. He had given her a good talking to and now Mummy knew who was the boss. Also Mummy had told him that she was lonely at the tree and wanted to spend the night near Daddy (Aditya) and Raja-sahib (me). So, with an incoherent mahout, a drunken chaarkatiya and a comatose driver, we spent our first night with Tara chained to the rear bumper of the jeep.