RAJGIR, OR RAJAGRIHA as it was known in the sixth century, was the ancient capital of Magadha, the nucleus of the first great empire in India. The fortified wall, which we had seen the night before, was the boundary of the city, almost thirty miles in circumference. Here the Buddha himself had passed many years living in different localities. His favourite place was the Vulture’s Peak, a high rocky outcrop on which he spent most of his time in contemplation. Sacred to Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Muslims alike, Rajgir was crowded with pilgrims who had come here to worship and to bathe in its famous hot springs. It was also full of scavenging dogs and little horses pulling tourists around in gaudily decorated traps.
It is difficult to explain why elephants should display such uneasiness towards dogs and horses, considering that neither is capable of inflicting on them the slightest injury. Tara was no exception. On seeing a dog, she stopped dead, rapped her trunk on the ground and squealed in terror. According to The Wild Elephant by Sir J. Emmerson Tennant, Bt. – a man who was regarded by other more reliable elephant experts as prone to exaggeration:
One instance has certainly been attested to me by an eye witness in which the trunk of an elephant was seized in the teeth by a Scotch Terrier, and such was the alarm of the huge creature that it came at once to its knees. The dog repeated the attack and on every renewal of it the elephant retreated in terror, holding its trunk above its head and kicking out at the terrier with its forefeet. It would have turned to flight but for the interference of its keeper.
Horses threw Tara into an even bigger panic. At the mere sight of their droppings, she shied violently. The moment she heard the metallic ring of their hoofs, she bolted. If Bhim had not controlled her quickly with the ankush we would have arrived at Sonepur in no time. Afterwards she stood shaking, bending her front legs in rapid succession, the effect of which was like sitting in the epicentre of an earthquake.
‘Horse eat Mummy when baby,’ Bhim announced with the utmost pragmatism. ‘No like!’
The belief, however, that an elephant is frightened of a mouse must be an old wives’ tale, for Tara had come into contact with both rats and mice on the road and had shown no alarm. The legendary J. H. Williams, probably the greatest authority on elephants, wrote in his book Elephant Bill: ‘the idea makes an obvious appeal to the human love of paradox. But if it is true I can see no reason for it. It certainly cannot be because the elephant is afraid of the mouse getting into his trunk, since, with one snort, he could eject it like a cork from a popgun.’
For the next three days we marched north – and marched is the right word – like a small army across a desperate, barren and poor rural wasteland which eventually would lead us to the Ganges. It was fortunate that we were travelling with an elephant – admittedly a benign one, but at least her size gave our pathetic party some semblance of authority. I envied the great King of Bliss who had marched at the head of a huge army of a thousand war elephants. Still, considering the difference in military might, I felt he would have been proud of us forming a tight phalanx around Tara, armed with an odd axe, ankush and spear, and Aditya’s large, metal tripod that we pretended was a machine gun.
Jeering crowds greeted us at most villages, taunting us with insults. I was riding Tara through one of these villages, followed by the inevitable mocking crowd, which I had found it best to ignore. A rock whistled through the air, hitting me on my back. Another followed, and then a fusillade broke out, striking Tara on her back legs and backside. I whirled her around and charged them in a shuffling clumsy way. To my satisfaction they fled into the safety of their village. In moments the culprits, a group of teenagers, returned. Egged on by their leader, a young man with a pock-marked face and wall eye, another rock came whizzing past, dangerously close to my head.
‘Right, that’s enough!’ Aditya yelled. ‘Let’s deal with the bastards.’
Leaving Tara with Bhim, Don and I joined forces with Aditya, who was dishing out some heavy Maratha treatment to the ringleader. We grabbed another young man, but slippery as an eel, he wriggled free and escaped.
In India an incident of any kind invariably draws a crowd quickly. We were soon surrounded by a group of village elders carrying long sticks. Although we prepared ourselves for the oncoming fracas, we were surprised to discover that they had simply come to apologise. Following old traditions, they revered the elephant, but the younger generation, they told us, had no respect. Politely, they asked Aditya to release the culprit. They would deal with him in their own way.
By the time we caught up with the jeep at a village called Kachra (or appropriately ‘rubbish’ in Hindi) it was already getting dark. An angry Indrajit and Khusto were keeping another large crowd at bay while arguing violently with a man who they had accused of throwing a stone, splintering part of the jeep’s windscreen. Deciding that this place was unhealthy, we moved on and camped on a raised rocky road, shadowed by a solitary Peepul tree, and were quickly hemmed in on either side by unfriendly villagers, muttering amongst themselves, eyeing our paraphernalia greedily.
‘I don’t like this situation,’ Aditya said warily. ‘We’ll keep all the stuff in the jeep and just sit it out.’
He told Indrajit to bring out the tripod. With great showmanship, Indrajit assembled the ‘machine gun’ and squatting behind it, traversed the ‘barrel’ (one of the telescopic legs) across the crowd. They moved, fractionally. Our ploy did not seem to be working. Tara was not helping matters either. She should have been trumpeting fiercely and rattling her chains. Instead she stood quietly greeting each villager with an affectionate exploration of her trunk.
Suddenly, the crowd parted. Two tall men, bearing obvious authority, strode through.
‘The local landlord, the zamindar,’ Aditya whispered.
‘Can I be being of assistance?’ the elder of the two men boomed fiercely.
Aditya replied, ‘It’s these people. We have already had a few bad experiences and we are a little nervous.’
The man turned to the crowd. ‘Chale jao! Chale jao!’ he shouted imperiously, dispersing the people with a dismissive wave. ‘My name Sri Ram Chandra Prasad,’ he said, introducing himself, ‘and this my son Ram Singhar. I am Thakur of Dehra. My village over there.’ He pointed to a few twinkling lights in the distance. ‘You are guests in my country. I bring food tonight.’
True to his word, late that evening a posse of villagers, led by the admirable Thakur, made their way across the fields with fresh bread, vegetables and water. Before leaving he extended an invitation to us to breakfast with him the next morning at his village. He would prepare green pigeon in yoghurt, a speciality of his house.
I caught a glimpse of Don’s face. It was as white as a sheet. He had never been an adventurous eater.
We rode to Dehra, an oasis of white-washed houses surrounded by a grove of date trees. The Thakur proudly showed us his cattle, after which we climbed the stairs of his large house, where a fine breakfast had been laid out; fresh naan, sour yoghurt and tea scented with ginger. Fortunately for Don, there was no pigeon. I thanked our host for his help, adding that I was overwhelmed by his kindness. He explained to me that hospitality was a tradition in his family, learnt from a good Muslim who had lived for many years in the village until partition came in 1947. ‘Always make guests welcome,’ the Muslim had advised. ‘Even if you can only spare a cup of water, it will not make you any poorer.’
Our route from there was trouble free. Word, it seemed, had gone out. We stopped at a police station to watch the Test Match on television. The police had been informed that ‘three angry men, eight foot tall, were travelling with a mad elephant’.
On the 13th of November we arrived at a main road. To the west, some fifteen miles away, lay Patna. In front of us, the holiest river in India, the mighty Ganges, lay glistening dully as the sun played on its vast caramel-coloured surface. We had travelled from the sea to the source. We may not have ‘struck terror into the hearts of the people of Magadha’, like the King of Bliss, but with the same pride we watched Tara drinking thirstily from the Ganges, as the King of Bliss had once watched his army of elephants and horses being watered.
It had been organised that in Patna we would stay in a magnificent mansion overlooking the river, a private museum that included among the exhibits Akbar’s sword and Napoleon’s bed. Lured by the majesty of the Ganges, Don hired a little sailing dhow and arranged to meet us later at the mansion.
As we approached the outskirts of old Patna, the narrow streets lined with tea-stalls, paan shops and endless bicycle repair outfits became congested. While Bhim and Gokul stopped to buy paan, I rode Tara on ahead, Aditya lolling behind in the howdah. Hearing an approaching horse cart, her huge body began to vibrate violently. Before I could do anything about it, she took off like a racehorse.
Over a short distance an elephant can achieve a high speed, and the sensation I was experiencing was aptly described by C. F. Holder in his book Ivory King: ‘I have felt on the one or two occasions which I have been on a bolting elephant as a man must feel if bestriding a runaway locomotive and holding the funnel with the crook of his walking stick to hold it in.’ Except in this case I did not have ‘the crook of the walking stick’, the ankush having fallen off.
‘Stop her!’ Aditya bellowed from behind, as we flashed past terrified pedestrians, who were scattering as all our pots, pans and kerosene lamps flew like missiles in all directions. ‘I’m going to fall …’ I heard a sort of thud behind me. Catching a quick glance back as I clung to the sides of the howdah, I saw Aditya rising shakily to his feet from an entanglement of tents and hammocks.
‘Tara, Tara,’ I yelled. ‘Stop! Oh, bugger! What’s the bloody word? Dit! Dat!’ Finally I remembered it and screamed out the command. ‘Dhuth!’ Too late, I saw a bus approaching us. To avoid a headlong collision Tara suddenly swerved, snapping the posts of an empty tea-stall. We came to an abrupt halt amongst a cascading river of cups and tea-urns. Facing us, his dark face a mottled purple, was the enraged owner.
‘Er … I’m frightfully sorry, sir,’ I gasped, wiping tea from my chest and arms, trying at the same time to stop Tara, who was now helping herself liberally to a selection of cakes that lay on the ground. ‘You see my …’
‘You! you!’ the man stuttered furiously. ‘Everything gone, ruined, I take you to court. I am getting big damages.’
At that moment, Aditya turned up limping slightly, followed by Bhim and Gokul carrying a load of our possessions which they had recovered from the roadside.
‘Now, sir,’ Aditya said. ‘There’s no need for that. I am sure we can come to some financial agreement.’ After the man had cooled down, they assessed the damage, compensation was paid and dignity restored.
‘Why in the hell doesn’t she behave like this with me?’ I exclaimed to Aditya in exasperation as we sat on the re-packed howdah behind Bhim, watching him thread Tara expertly through the traffic. Quite suddenly the most ludicrous image floated into my mind and I began to shake with laughter.
‘What’s so bloody funny?’ Aditya demanded angrily. ‘You bloody nearly killed me …!’
‘Forgive me, I’m not laughing at you, but I’ve just had this vision of us appearing in court with Tara.’
In his book Elephants Richard Carrington records that during the last century in Cleveland, Ohio, a famous trick elephant had been the star turn in a circus show. There was some argument about the elephant’s maximum speed and his trainer had bet that Pikanniny could achieve three miles an hour. The matter was then put to the test. Pikanniny completed the first mile in only eight minutes. At this moment, the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals intervened, accusing the trainer of using his ankush too much and drawing blood. When the case came up in court, the trainer subpoenaed Pikanniny for his defence. The elephant arrived at the appointed time but the court had not been built to accommodate so large a witness and he was unable to squeeze up the narrow staircase. Obligingly the magistrate agreed to take the case in the entrance hall. There Pikanniny duly took the stand. When the prosecutor asked him if he had been hurt, the elephant shook his head from side to side, and when asked if he was generally well treated, he nodded and made squeaks of assent. Whether the course of justice was altered by Pikanniny’s testimony is unlikely, especially as the trainer seemed to be connected with the performance. Still, as the elephant was found to be in good health and quite unharmed, the trainer was discharged. Pikanniny was congratulated by everybody and, like a star witness, received every kind of delicacy for his loyal support.
Late in the afternoon, we reached our destination, the entrance to Quila House, built on the foundations of the fort that Sher Shah had constructed in 1541. The high, imposing iron gates were closed and remained closed, even after we explained to the old, argumentative and highly suspicious chowkidar that we were expected. But Tara had spotted a luscious grove of bamboo on the far side. She lowered her head, pushing against the gates until they sprang open, sending the indignant chowkidar flying, and trotted triumphantly through. As we rode under an impressive portico, flanked by romantic Italian stone statues and a pair of blue and white Chinese water jars standing in niches, a small, well-groomed, prosperous-looking man, wearing a smart suit, in the top pocket of which was a row of gold Cartier pens, came running out to meet us.
‘Welcome to Quila House,’ he said excitedly. ‘I’ve been expecting you. I’m Bal Manohar Jalan, but my friends call me Bala.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘But I must apologise for our discourteous arrival. My elephant is usually extremely well mannered, but she does on occasions show a certain impatience.’
‘I should be the one to apologise,’ he said, dismissing with a wave of a plump gold-ringed hand the angry chowkidar who had chased us up the drive. ‘We do have to be careful whom we admit. As you know, Quila House is a private museum. Please choose a suitable place for your elephant.’
I nervously surveyed an immaculate sweeping lawn. In the centre was a stone fountain, surrounded by neat rosebeds, in which an army of gardeners were busily working. Beyond, more men laboured in a well cultivated vegetable plot.
‘She really is a very large and greedy animal,’ I said, remembering Seraikella. ‘It’s quite extraordinary the … er, damage that she can do.’
‘It does not matter,’ he said expansively. ‘Plants and flowers and trees will grow again, and it is not often we have an elephant as a guest.’
Eventually Bhim found a suitable tree, covered in a bower of bougainvillaea. ‘Mummy here. But flowers soon go,’ he whispered nervously, looking around, overcome by the grandeur of the setting.
The jeep arrived, having collected Don from the river. Our baggage was unloaded and we followed Bala across the lawn, down some steps and through a covered walkway of flowering jasmine. In front of us stood an exquisite marble pavilion, surrounded by balconies carved like lace, by its side a large tank choked with white water-lilies.
‘I hope you will be comfortable here,’ Bala announced anxiously, throwing open a pair of glass doors.
One could have been entering the home of an affluent Chinese gentleman in the nineteenth century. In the bedrooms, ornate opium beds, draped in mosquito nets, were strategically placed so that one could lie and gaze out at the Ganges. Polished rosewood and teak tables and chairs, elegant in their simplicity, filled the ante-rooms. Silk wallpaper printed with oriental court scenes lined the walls, and the doors were studded with blue and white Ming plaques.
‘As you can see,’ Bala laughed, noticing the expressions of astonishment on our faces, ‘my grandfather was fond of Chinese works of art. But this is nothing. Later I will show you the main house and the collection. You will find that he really was a compulsive buyer. Come, let us have tea.’
On the main terrace overlooking the river, we reclined on charpoys covered in crisp, white linen as attendants served us tea from a silver service. We helped ourselves to cigarettes from heavy, green malachite boxes. Behind us, glowing pink and white in the setting sun, stood Quila House, a large, handsome two-storey mansion, built in the art deco style with a long, flat roof, its side elevation a series of tall bowed windows.
Sher Shah’s fort was destroyed by a huge earthquake in 1934. Bala’s grandfather, Dewan (Prime Minister) Bahadhur R. K. Jalan, built Quila House in this magnificent situation after acquiring the site from the Nawab of Gaya. It was by a quirk of chance that he had managed to purchase the land. He was travelling in the same compartment as the Nawab in a train going to Patna, when they struck up a conversation. It turned out that the Nawab was on his way to dispose of this property. At the station, the Nawab’s carriage failed to show, so Bala’s grandfather offered him a lift. When he delivered the Nawab to his destination he fell in love with the fort and made a deal to buy it there and then.
The next morning, after bathing Tara in the Ganges, we were shown round Quila House by Bala. I could not have imagined the scale and variety of the collection that spilled from one room to another in this wonderfully eccentric private museum. Bala told us that according to the last inventory over twenty thousand items had been listed. His grandfather had started his quest at the beginning of the century, buying in Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Calcutta, and moving on to the auction houses and art dealers in London and Paris during his visit to attend the Coronation of King George V.
Ancient Sanskrit scriptures lay in cabinets surrounded by the skins of cobras that had been killed in the house. Behind a pair of eighteenth-century Indian lacquer doors, which opened silently on oiled hinges, was displayed a complete George III Crown Derby dinner service, designed in its familiar bold pattern (as the King was short-sighted). We threaded our way through suites of Louis XV and Louis XVI furniture and towering display cabinets chock-a-block with nineteenth-century export Chinese porcelain. Smaller ones contained mutton fat and Imperial jade objects that glistened in the glow of the lights. Vast green celadon serving plates lay stacked up like common china in a soup kitchen. Propped up on an elegant Anglo-Indian table, was a set of Sèvres porcelain which had belonged to Marie Antoinette, hand-painted in an exquisite design of entwining roses and stamped with her cipher.
We sat on Napoleon’s tiny four-poster mahogany bed, draped in heavy velvet curtains, and made cuts through the air with Akbar’s curved sword, inlaid with gold and silver. Opening a strong safe, Bala pulled out the prize of the collection, a set of thirty-two solid silver Indian thalis, which belonged to Birbal, one of Akbar’s nine ‘jewels’ or philosophers who advised him at his court. India’s first Prime Minister, Nehru, was so overpowered with their magnificence that when he came to dine at Quila House he refused to eat off them. Somebody diplomatically whispered in Nehru’s ear that other important statesmen and even royalty had done so, and the embarrassing moment passed.
Bala handed me the old visitors’ books to leaf through. Viceregal guests, Wavell, Linlithgow, Dufferin and Ava; luminaries such as Mary Pickford and Aly Khan. The Maharajas of Dharbanga, Patiala, Jodhpur; Mrs Gandhi and the King of Nepal, whose brother is lucky enough to have the most romantic signature in the world – simply ‘Himalaya’ – all had passed through. In 1938 a British general had visited the house, his remarks typically brusque – ‘Good show, bad taste.’
We were extremely fortunate to have arrived in Patna at this time, for the Chaat Festival of Bihar was about to take place. People gather from afar on the banks of the Ganges and, at the exact moment of the setting sun, immerse themselves in the holy waters, spreading their offerings on its smooth surface. The same ritual is repeated the following morning at sunrise. The belief is that the sun is harmful and its effects immediate, causing skin cancer, leprosy and other diseases. By making this puja, the sun’s terrible wrath is appeased. For a state that has the worst reputation in India for violence and lawlessness, it is interesting to note that during the two days of the Chaat the crime rate drops so dramatically that the local newspapers have to work hard to fill their pages.
The terrace of Quila House, sitting high above the river, was the perfect vantage point from which to watch the ceremony. But Bala suggested that we should hire a boat for the evening and float slowly down the river past the ghats which line the banks of old Patna. As we drove to where we would board the boat, the streets were thronged with processions of people carrying offerings. The city was clean and the tarmac glistened from the water trucks that had preceded us. Above, a canopy of tinsel and fairy-lights formed a glittering tunnel. Brass bands of old men in red and khaki uniforms marched proudly, blowing curled highly polished silver horns. At moments, traffic would come to a grinding stop, enabling devotees to cross the road repeatedly prostrating themselves in their laborious pilgrimage to the river.
We boarded a large motor launch and slowly began to edge down river. A continuous stream of colour, like the flowing molten lava of an exploding volcano, ran thickly downwards as the masses descended the steps of the ghats carrying flowers, grain, little candlelit terracotta pots and garlands. On reaching the water’s edge lit by the last rays of the setting sun, they made their puja, immersing themselves and spreading their offerings on the dancing waves. Their faces serene, there was no rush, no pushing or shoving, just a completeness, a sense of contentment and peace.
Looking up at the crumbling oriental façades of former palaces and opium factories and the massive wall and buttresses of the old fort, entangled with overhanging trees, the stains of history were indelibly painted on the worn surface of this city, one of the most ancient capitals in the world. It was founded in 600 bc when King Ajatasatru built a fort which later became the capital of Magadha. It was there that the might of the Mundas compelled Alexander and his legions to retreat back home. In 304 bc in the reign of the great Emperor Chandra Gupta Maurya after his defeat of the Nunda Empire, it came into its full glory. By then he commanded a vast empire stretching from Kabul in the north to Mysore in the south, from Saurashtra in the west to parts of Bengal in the east. The Greek ambassador Megathesnes described the scene:
The public appearances of the Emperor Chandra Gupta were occasions of pageantry and grandeur. The Emperor was carried in a golden litter adorned with strings of pearls hanging on all sides. His linen robe was embroidered in gold and purple and before him marched attendants, carrying silver incense pans. The Emperor was followed by armed men and his immediate bodyguard was comprised of armed women. He rode in a chariot drawn by elephants. The King had a guard of twenty-four elephants and when he went forth to do justice, the first elephant was trained to make obeisance. In the King’s pay, there was a standing army of six hundred thousand foot soldiers, thirty thousand cavalry and nine thousand elephants.
Later, the great Emperor Akbar lived in what is now Quila House, from where he conducted his battle against the Afghan rule of North Bihar. Akbar was acknowledged as the greatest elephant rider of all time. In the Ain-I-Akbari, the record of Akbar’s reign, is written:
His Majesty, the royal rider of the plain of auspiciousness, mounts every kind of elephant from the first to the last class, making them notwithstanding their almost supernatural strength, obedient to his command. His Majesty will put his foot on the tusks and mount them, even when they are in the rutting season (musth) and astonishes experienced people.
Early the next morning, feeling a little like the Emperor Akbar, I rode Tara down from Quila House through a continuous procession of delighted devotees. We passed a line of sodium lamps which glowed eerily through the mists rolling off the Ganges, like a gas-lit street in Victorian England. As the sun rose over the horizon, we stood looking down upon a crowd of three hundred thousand people, spread out like some endless richly brocaded carpet which undulated softly as the saris and dhotis of the bathing devotees danced on the surface of the water. Leaving Tara with Gokul, Indrajit and I waded far out into the river through a sea of floating flowers. Indrajit performed a small puja for Sri Ram Naik, the resin collector who had been killed by the tiger in the Simplipals. Wrapping rose petals into his blood-stained lunghi we attached his sandals and watched the little bundle float gently away, taken by the eddies, to mix with the other offerings of the festival.
The following dawn we returned to the river. In a few hours we would enter the Sonepur Mela. We worked hard on Tara until she shone like obsidian. Bhim anointed her forehead vivid crimson with the sign of Shiva. After oiling her head and toenails, we loaded her up and bade farewell to Khusto, who was driving home to Orissa. The jeep was now due back.
Indrajit was staying on for the Mela as our driver, since Bala had kindly lent us a small minibus to ferry provisions back and forth, and for use if there was any emergency. Don would accompany Indrajit in the minibus. Aditya and I climbed on to Tara, flanked by Bhim and Gokul in their smartest dark-green khaki outfits. I lifted my hand upwards and forwards, like some American cavalry officer at the head of his troop, shouting ‘Challo’ and we trundled through the gates of Quila House towards Sonepur and the great elephant mela.