The Elephant Chaser's Daughter Read online

  “Raj’s first book amazes. At 20 years old, she writes a memoir of uncommon grace and wisdom…. A deft, intimate portrayal of a young woman’s growth through education.”

  Kirkus Reviews

  “Shilpa Anthony Raj is a powerful new voice for human dignity and opportunity…An important and deeply affecting book narrated in a moving and intimate style”

  Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

  “A visceral portrait of poverty…fascinating and essential reading…. Shilpa’s story speaks for millions of families in a way that is immediate, intimate and personal.”

  Vanessa Roth, Academy Award Winning Director

  “Shilpa is the future voice for the poor and deprived …. Uncovering the diamond in the rubble. Read her work.”

  Sri Viswanath, author of The Secret of Bhagavad Gita

  “The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter will prove to be a milestone in Indian literature…. The arrival of Shilpa on the writers’ dice with her splendid first-hand- narrative will surely stimulate a new movement among the socially awakened.”

  Literary News

  “Shilpa’s searing, penetrating honesty in the account of her life will change perspectives and impact every reader. It gives hope to the under-privileged and sensitizes the privileged.”

  Madhu Trehan, editor-in-chief, Newslaundry

  “In a great measure, her personal account has a universal appeal which evokes the emotions of readers. Shilpa's book will prove to be a landmark.”

  Alok Mishra, Poet & Author

  THE ELEPHANT CHASER’S DAUGHTER

  SHILPA RAJ

  @Copyright, Shilpa Raj and George Foundation Inc., New Jersey, 2017.

  All rights reserved.

  The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter

  Copyright @ Shilpa Raj and George Foundation Inc., New Jersey, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by means of electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purpose of review, without the written permission of George Foundation Inc.

  Printed in the United States

  Published by Worldview Books

  Dedicated to

  Kavya and Dad

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Note

  Chapter One: An Unexpected Departure

  Chapter Two: The Blue Jeep

  Chapter Three: A Permanent Parting

  Chapter Four: Father Figures

  Chapter Five: Learning About My Mother

  Chapter Six: The Difficult Days

  Chapter Seven: Rejection

  Chapter Eight: A Walk in the Woods

  Chapter Nine: The Elephant Chase

  Chapter Ten: Talk of Marriage

  Chapter Eleven: The Price of Betrayal

  Chapter Twelve: The Unexpected

  Chapter Thirteen: A Family Affair

  Chapter Fourteen: Reformation

  Chapter Fifteen: Playing Parent to Parents

  Chapter Sixteen: Passing Through Danger

  Chapter Seventeen: The Graduation

  Chapter Eighteen: An Ending

  Epilogue

  NOTE

  The Elephant Chaser’s Daughter is a true story of Shilpa Raj’s life, and all events presented are factual based on her recollection. Individuals portrayed in the book are real, but pseudonyms are used for most to protect their privacy.

  CHAPTER ONE: AN UNEXPECTED DEPARTURE

  It was so unlike him to weep. But there he was, the elephant chaser, all by himself, cowering in the shadow of the peepal tree. I called out to him, but he didn’t move.

  A chorus of grieving mothers and grim-faced neighbors stood next to my family, mourning the loss of the girl. The priest cleared his throat, preparing to read from the Bible; the family mid-wife asked God to bless the soul of the departed; my mother, whom I call Amma, pleaded for forgiveness.

  I looked up from lighting a cheap incense stick to watch the shovel gathering earth. The thunder of dirt hitting the rough coffin resounded like a death knell.

  Even today, I wake up to the sound of soil sliding down the spade, slapping the wooden box below. I gasp for breath, prepared to do anything to silence the thud.

  I watched the coffin disappear into the ground. As it slipped from view, I remembered our last conversation over the phone. ‘Akka, I want to come home. Put me back to school. Let’s start over,’ she had pleaded.

  I want to forget that desperate call.

  I am Shilpa, which means sculpture in Sanskrit. Amma says she named me after a popular Hindi movie actress. It had been more than three years since Kavya, my younger sister, had called me Akka, which means ‘elder sister’ in our mother tongue, Kannada. She stopped addressing me that way the day our mother bought me a gold chain for my birthday with her meager savings from her job as a housemaid. Kavya was furious. She saw it as yet another injustice she had been subjected to in an ever lengthening list, the biggest being that I was at boarding school receiving a life-changing education while she attended a dilapidated village school. Elders, even older siblings, are venerated in our culture so her calling me by my first name was a blatant sign of disrespect. She might as well have spat at my feet.

  Now, over the phone, she was so meek I should have guessed something was wrong. I hadn’t heard from her in nine months. I was angry. I didn’t want to give in. I told her flatly that I was fine and asked, ‘What do you want?’

  I suspected that calling me Akka was a ploy. It wouldn’t have been the first time Kavya had tricked me. Once her boyfriend Prashanth, a gang leader from the neighboring village, had called to say she was missing. I panicked, offering to do anything I could to help find her, only to discover later that she was sitting right next to him. My father, whom I call Appa, had warned me not to be deceived by her again. I had sensed sadness, more than anger, in his voice.

  ‘Please, Akka, let us forget everything that has happened,’ Kavya begged. ‘Please. I am sorry.’ Instead of her customary boldness, there was fear.

  I remained unmoved; we had so many old wounds. She had often defied everyone and everything. Grandmother always defended her—even when she stole money from Aunt Maria— explaining away her behavior. ‘She’s just a child!’

  Appa had beaten her on several occasions. Nine months earlier, there had been an especially heated argument with my father. It was about her boyfriend, of course. Appa and I disapproved of him, while Amma was on my sister’s side. Kavya was swayed by the luxurious gifts Prashanth had showered on her and the exciting things they did together, like going to the movies in a nearby town, all of it scandalous for an unmarried girl. The neighbors ridiculed us. Finally Appa felt his wild daughter had brought enough disgrace on our family and threatened to set Kavya and her boyfriend on fire if they were to stay together. Kavya must have known this was an empty threat, but she used it as an excuse to get Amma to whisk her away to an unknown place where none of us could find her. She and Amma disappeared completely, until that phone call.

  ‘Akka, please, can you ask Appa to put me back in school?’ she pleaded.

  My sister had often complained about school and frequently skipped classes for one reason or the other. Now she was asking for my help to get back?

  This time I would not fall for her tricks. ‘I don’t believe you’ve changed, Kavya. Don’t call me again.’ I slammed the phone down.

  Three days later, I was with my classmates at a surprise birthday party for Ms. Jayanthashree, a long-time manager at Shanti Bhavan, the school where I lived and studied. She and Ms. Denny, the school’s senior administrator, were two of the people I had g
rown closest to in my years at the school. While we were eating and enjoying ourselves, Ms. Denny asked me to join her on the terrace. I stuffed the remaining piece of hamburger quickly into my mouth and followed her.

  ‘Ms. Denny, what’s wrong?’ I said as soon as we got outside.

  She stared silently at me, and then looked away. My nerves tightened.

  ‘Shilpa,’ she said softly, ‘You have to be strong.’ She waited for a moment to watch my reaction. ‘Your sister passed away.’

  In an instant my legs gave way and I slumped onto the floor. ‘It’s not true. It’s not true,’ I cried out over and over again. Ms. Denny tried to calm me, but I was inconsolable. She attempted to lift me, but I crawled away from her frantically, kicking my legs to free myself. I didn’t want anyone to touch me. She yelled for help, and Ms. Jayanthashree came running. ‘Darling, we are with you. We are with you.’ Through my shock and grief, I could barely hear them.

  Kavya’s last words echoed in my ears. I couldn’t escape her gentle voice pleading with me.

  I don’t know how long I cried, but I was at last able to follow Ms. Denny and Ms. Jayanthashree back into the main hallway. By then my classmates, friends with whom I had grown up from the age of four, had heard the news. They hugged me tightly, but there was nothing they could do to console me.

  That night, Ms. Jayanthashree and Ms. Denny took me back to my village. They tried to comfort me through the long drive, but I wasn’t listening. Choking with sobs, I shut my eyes and tried to summon my sister back to life with every memory I had. Our fights melted away.

  When Kavya was small, she demanded to be carried and I piggybacked her around the village wherever she pointed, as long as she wanted, often ignoring Grandmother’s rule about being home before the sun went down. Neighbors saw us a troublesome duo who stirred up mischief at every turn. We played for hours in the lake by the woods, trying to catch tiny fish with our bare hands. At night we slept beside each other, sharing stories; hers filled with imaginary characters, mine about life at my faraway school. I often got the feeling she resented me for having got the chance to study in a ‘fancy’ school where I spoke English. I promised I would one day educate her to become a school teacher and pay for a grand wedding.

  Now she was gone.

  If there was ever a girl who was truly free in the village, it was Kavya, not because she was given any freedom by our parents, but by her own making. Even as a child she would wander about like a gypsy, and you wouldn’t know whether she was with friends or strangers. But she carried herself with an air of utter confidence, keeping any inner fears to herself. I was never at ease about her and couldn’t tell what she was up to. Every time I asked she’d let out a laugh like ringing bells that left me feeling foolish. She was a wildflower that swayed in the wind—a girl with uncontrollable energy and unexplainable dreams.

  Nearly three hours of driving brought us to my village, Thattaguppe, in the southern part of Karnataka state, surrounded by lush forests where wild elephants roam. Appa had recently taken a job as an elephant chaser, protecting the village and the sugar cane fields. Life is hard there.

  A line of dark trees marked the entrance to the village. As we continued down the road I remembered my previous trips back home and the joy I felt then in reuniting with my little sister.

  There was a small crowd by our house—men chatting with each other and women seated on mats by my grandmother’s side. No one smiled as I got out of the car. Keeping my head down, I gravitated towards Kavya’s body on the dull green cot we had shared as children. Even though unexpected deaths were always a part of village life, I was frightened. I had seen my friends in the neighborhood lose family members to murder, suicide, and illness. But in my own family, I had never seen death up close.

  I didn’t know what to expect. In her stillness, Kavya appeared peaceful, as if resting. But there was a strange, unnatural hue to her complexion.

  I stood dazed staring at her face. Her hair was pulled back tightly, revealing a new fullness in her face. I wiped the sweat off my forehead and reached out to stroke her hair, braided into a long plait draped over one shoulder. It had grown long since the last time I had seen her. I thought of the many times I had complained to Amma that Kavya had smoother, shinier hair than I did. The memory made me cry. She looked older somehow, her youth overshadowed by her stillness.

  Appa who had been leaning against the lamppost a few yards away, slowly walked up to Amma and whispered something in her ear. She tried to put her arms around me, but I shrugged her off. She and Kavya had run away and lived together for nine months, hiding from Appa. Kavya was barely fourteen years old, and Amma shouldn’t have let her spend time with such an undesirable man. She was responsible for her daughter, and should have known the dangers Kavya was getting into. Why didn’t Amma protect her?

  A few minutes later I took a chair next to Grandmother. She was seated with her small back hunched and her head bent low in deep prayer.

  ‘Grandmother, please tell me what happened,’ I asked.

  Grandmother refused to look at me. She whispered, ‘Your mother says Kavya killed herself.’

  I didn’t believe her. I reached for Grandmother’s trembling hand. ‘How?’

  Grandmother looked down, her head bent. She struggled not to cry. ‘She hanged herself from the rafter with your mother’s sari.’

  The air was knocked out of me. I never thought she was capable of killing herself. I saw her as a vibrant girl, looking for fun at every opportunity. But probably I didn’t know her well enough. She had never begged for my help before. Even as she pleaded on the phone to return home, she was hiding her other life.

  Some in my family believed that Kavya had been murdered. She had spent much of the last nine months with her boyfriend and another man as well. According to Grandmother, these men got her to act in ‘backyard movies’. I clapped my hands over my ears, refusing to hear any more. Embarrassed, Grandmother looked to see whether anyone else heard her.

  I turned towards Appa. All this while he had been standing alone, some distance away from others, in deep contemplation. He still hadn’t said a word to me. Silence was his way of taking responsibility. He had driven her away, calling her a prostitute and beating her. But no one would blame him for being strict with a rebellious daughter. It was totally unacceptable in our village for a girl to be involved with a man before her marriage.

  Amma was weeping. No one came to console her. I heard others say how secretive Amma had been, blaming her for not taking better care of my sister, and even now Amma wasn’t telling us everything she knew. She had returned home that morning in an auto-rickshaw with Kavya’s body in her arms. It was clear from the condition of the corpse that Kavya had died at least a day or two earlier.

  The silence ended with a shriek. ‘What has she been letting the girl do?’ My father’s older sister, Aunt Teresa, was screaming and pointing at my mother. ‘She has never been a decent mother. She—’

  ‘You shut up!’ Amma snapped, furious. I was shocked to see the flood of shame and rage in her eyes.

  Uncle Philip, Appa’s younger brother, broke in. ‘She might have been pregnant.’ He turned to others for agreement.

  Grandmother would have none of that. She walked over, not bending her head low in shame as I thought she would, and placed a gentle palm upon Kavya’s abdomen. Then she turned around, and declared furiously, ‘She wasn’t pregnant. Stop your lies.’

  The dam was broken, and anger was spilling from all sides. ‘You killed her! You killed her!’ Aunt Rani, Amma’s younger sister, yelled, her body shaking with rage. ‘She was murdered by the men she was with. And you. You’re only pretending not to know what really happened.’ She rushed to strike Amma with one of my sandals, which had been lying by the door. Grandmother lunged into the space between them, taking a blow on her shoulder from Aunt Rani.

  Uncle Philip shook his finger at my mother. ‘Next will be Shilpa. Who knows what those criminals have in mind.’ I got sca
red, not trusting that my family would be able to protect me.

  Another matter could no longer be ignored. We needed to get Kavya’s body into the ground. It was almost morning, she had been dead for at least two days, and the stench from her body was becoming unbearable.

  Many neighbors objected to burying Kavya in the village graveyard because of the disgrace surrounding her death. But the priest reminded them that they were not the ones to judge a young girl. When they persisted, the priest conceded by directing that the burial take place only in a small, secluded section set aside for those with dishonorable endings—suicide or murder. My little sister, harmless and innocent in the ways of the world, was being discarded in death as she had been in life.

  Memories of our childhood rushed in. Incidents that had been buried in my mind for years were coming back. When Kavya was happy and playful, we never stopped laughing, screaming, and running around. There was so much sweetness between us, even in our arguments. Nothing, not even death, could take away what was Kavya’s and mine to cherish forever.

  I went to sit by the gutter along the road, aimlessly gazing at a crumpled sweet wrapper rotating in a dirty puddle. All I saw was Kavya. I wanted my sister to be the little girl she once was, the one who demanded to be carried around. I wanted to carry her one more time. Unlike me, she had never enjoyed the taste of good food, the comfort of sleeping on a mattress, or travelling. I longed for the conversations we never had, the laughter we hadn’t shared, the places we hadn’t visited together, and all the happy moments I hadn’t spent with her. I prayed to God with all the fervor I could muster, wishing to catapult my way into the heavens for a second chance to say goodbye.

  How could the lives of two daughters of the same elephant chaser turn out so differently? The only explanation I could come up with was rooted in my family’s spiritual beliefs: Kavya had met her karma and, for some unknown reason, I had been spared the misfortune of my sister.