The Elephant Chaser's Daughter Read online

  ‘You have said that before,’ one of the men replied. ‘Next time, we will not wait. We will take her with us,’ he added, pointing a warning finger at me.

  They left and Appa escorted me into the house. He wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘You aren’t going to send me away, are you?’ I asked, wiping away tears.

  Appa slowly raised his head, looking at me sadly. I could tell he was terribly worried. Seeing him helpless, I was worried too.

  I had heard of daughters and even wives of men who had failed to repay their debts being taken to work as servants in the landlords’ homes. No one in the village dared to challenge that practice. Only last summer, Appa told me a little about being a ‘slave’ in the same Gunna’s house when he was a young boy. His father had put his son there when he couldn’t repay a loan and several years passed before Joseph Thatha got Appa out. I couldn’t even begin to comprehend something like that happening to me.

  ‘Shilpa, stop crying. I will pay him,’ Appa said.

  Kavya had returned and came to sit by my side on the floor. She reached out to dry my tears. ‘Don’t worry, Akka. Nothing will happen to you.’

  I took her hand gently. ‘You don’t know that.’ Turning to Appa, I said, ‘Take me back to Shanti Bhavan.’ I didn’t have anything more to say and my silence spoke for me.

  From that day on, even with Grandmother or Francis escorting me, I didn’t feel safe. I just wanted Appa to tell me he had repaid the debt.

  After the incident at the water mill, we grew even more suspicious of Appa whenever he disappeared for days on end. It was a complete surprise then when one day Appa sauntered into Grandmother’s house with the long stride of a proud man. He settled down on the floor with a big smile as though preparing to announce something very important. Uncle Christraj and Uncle Naresh leaned against the door and stared at him with disdain. Neither was fond of Appa. They blamed him for my mother’s absence and neither had forgiven him for the incident at the mill.

  I wanted Appa to announce that he had repaid the loan but instead, after capturing everyone’s attention, he revealed that he had gotten himself a government job chasing elephants from sugarcane fields. As part of the arrangement, at night he would have to stay in a makeshift hut close to the forest. ‘My boss will come to check whether we are vigilant.’

  Grandmother was aghast. ‘You leave that job right now. I don’t want my daughter to become a widow and these three little ones to be fatherless. Do you understand?’

  Unlike her, I was actually excited at the news and amazed at the thought of anyone chasing elephants for a living. It may not have been the news I wanted to hear but I still couldn’t resist the sense of adventure.

  Within a few short weeks, Appa had accumulated a horde of crazy tales from his new job. Francis and Kavya sat close to him and listened attentively, not wanting to miss a single word. I sat on the wooden cot a little distance away and pretended I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t ready to forgive him for cheating on my mother and bringing disgrace to the family, but I loved his stories.

  We knew elephants loved snacking on sugarcane, their voracious appetites often destroying whole harvests. ‘During the day, we inspect the fields next to the forest searching for any signs of elephants the night before and decide whether they might come back,’ Appa began.

  ‘What are the signs?’ I asked, unable to hide my interest. I had loved hearing my classmate, Avinash, talk about animals and the snakes he had caught on several occasions. I couldn’t wait to tell him about Appa’s new job.

  ‘Often, you see large clumps of dung and deep footprints. At night, we carry firecrackers to scare the elephants away from the fields back into the forest.’ Appa opened a green cardboard box he had brought with him, filled to the brim with the small, round fireworks.

  Just a month before, some villagers had tried to chase the elephants away from the fields, but the animals attacked them, stomping two men to death. Since then, the government had added more men to the team of elephant chasers and ordered that some animals be caught, if possible, for a nearby zoo.

  A renowned forest ranger, Narayananna, was appointed by the government to lead a group of men on an expedition. Narayananna and the group veterinarian rode atop tamed elephants, while forest guards and their officers followed in a jeep. Appa and some others travelled on foot, working tirelessly under the hot sun to clear a path for the jeep by breaking or pushing aside tree branches and thick bushes with their bare hands.

  Not long after they entered the forest, the team spotted a herd of elephants a little distance away. Narayananna brought his elephant closer to the herd, and fired his tranquilizer gun. Thinking he had missed the target, he reloaded the gun and fired again. After allowing a moment for the tranquilizer to take effect, they rushed forward to assess the condition of the animal.

  ‘A young elephant was lying in a shallow depression with its neck tilted in an unnatural position, gasping for breath. It had two tranquilizer darts, one in its rear leg and one in its neck, and appeared nearly unconscious,’ Appa said, his voice strained with emotion.

  Appa saw the vet dismount from his elephant and run to the injured one on the ground. He frantically tried to feed the fallen elephant glucose through a long tube. ‘But by that time, the elephant was already dead,’ Appa said.

  It surprised me to see him struggling with the memory.

  Some discussion followed between the vet and others, and an officer said they had to investigate why the elephant had died. Appa suspected everyone knew that an overdose of tranquilizer had killed it. Nevertheless, two officers began to cut up the elephant while Appa and his partners hastily dug a pit for the animal’s corpse. The officers sliced into the elephant’s head and removed its small tusks.

  The herd stood at a distance, looking on and making low, mournful trumpeting sounds. ‘I will never forget how much the elephant herd cared about one of their own, even when they were scared,’ Appa said, turning his gaze deliberately upon me. ‘Unlike us humans, even in danger they stay together.’ I averted my eyes.

  Appa kept his focus on me for a moment before continuing. One of the officers was sent to fetch a local pujari—a temple priest—from the nearby village to bless the body before burial. The pujari lit incense sticks, placed them at one end of the pit, and slowly poured milk onto the dead elephant’s body. All the while, he chanted a holy hymn in Sanskrit that no one could understand.

  ‘When we die, no pujari comes near us,’ Appa murmured. ‘The elephant must have belonged to a high caste.’ Such rituals were done to receive blessings or deflect harm brought about by angry spirits. Unholy untouchables had no need for any such rituals. They couldn’t please the Gods in any case.

  Appa’s story ended there that night, but it embedded itself in my memory. Since that day, whenever I hear the sound of firecrackers exploding in the distance on festive nights, I think of my father and the fallen elephant.

  Appa had led an adventurous life since childhood, yet his new occupation as an elephant chaser was even more dangerous. Strangely, he didn’t seem concerned about his safety. He was proud of his official job, and often joked that for once he was working for, and not against, the government. ‘In our family, I am the first one to have a government job,’ he would often declare with pride, irking other members of the family. He reminded everyone that if he were to be killed, the government would give his family one lakh rupees—a very large sum by his standards. This was no comfort to me.

  Villagers held government employees in high esteem as they could earn plenty of money one way or another. Bribes made up the bulk of their monthly income. I didn’t know much about Appa’s salary, but I was reasonably sure the elephants didn’t give him anything extra on the side.

  Each evening, Kavya and I would wait for Appa to wish us goodnight before he left for work. He would be dressed in dark green pants and a green shirt to camouflage himself in the forest. I would picture him moving about at night, his ears attentive to every rus
tle of leaves and to each hoot of invisible owls. I liked to think of him as our soldier, protecting our family from the elephant threat. More than anything else, for the first time in my life, I felt proud of him.

  Appa often glanced at me to see if I was noticing him dressed in his uniform. I could tell that he wished I could like him and respect him. One evening, he produced a gunny sack filled with several large wood apples and wild berries. I avoided eye contact with him, but secretly enjoyed his show of interest in us. He cracked one wood apple open on the doorstep and handed it to me before he gave any to Kavya and Francis. I was touched, but hoped Kavya and Francis hadn’t noticed. Crude as his ways were, those simple gestures were worth much more than the expensive gifts he wished he could give us.

  Occasionally, I would go with Appa to buy beef from a butcher. Until recently, nobody sold beef in the village, as the higher caste people did not permit cows to be slaughtered openly. Gunnas sold their cows to the poor when the animals got too old to give milk. The coolies butchered the cows far away in the fields and sold the meat there. Everyone, including the Gunnas, knew of this practice.

  Meat was piled up in clumps on fresh banana leaves. For twenty rupees one could buy a hefty kilo of fresh beef. Everyone bargained with the butcher for a little more. Those who could not pay stood to the side looking longingly at the red meat. ‘Please, Anna, I will give you money later. Just give me a little,’ a sorry-looking mother pleaded, her two little daughters watching hopefully from behind.

  The bald butcher barked at her and gestured for her to leave. ‘You said the same thing last week. Go from here.’

  The butcher weighed the beef using a stone he claimed was a kilo. He had stones for other weights as well. Whenever customers complained the weights were incorrect, he would respond, ‘These stones are heavier. My price is for my kilo, not someone else’s.’ No one could argue with that.

  The cooked beef was as tough as leather, but we found our fun in the endless chewing. My siblings and I often bargained with each other for better pieces without bones. For us, the meat offered an irresistible, magical taste.

  We knew this was our rare treat. There were no others. But Kavya longed for good clothes and trips to the theatre, and Francis wished he could eat something different from time to time.

  Appa once remarked that I looked like him. In a way, I was glad that he seemed to want me to, but I wasn’t happy to think I might resemble him. His sunburned face was almost as dark as charcoal and his moustache was even darker. At just over five feet tall, Appa had passed on to me his short stature. But his arms were strong and hard, and he often asked me to check his muscles, which he told me were made of rocks. The roughness of his hands resembled his feet, broken nails sticking out from an array of cuts. I would stare at his legs, especially at his dry, patchy skin that was visibly peeling in many spots. When I asked him why his skin wasn’t smooth like mine, he replied with a mischievous smile, ‘I shed my scales from time to time, like a snake.’

  Seeing how hard my father was trying to make me happy confused me. He was an enigma to me. He was domineering with my mother and mostly absent for Kavya, Francis, and me, but subservient in the presence of Gunnas. Though uneducated, he was smart enough to escape the clutches of the police and the landlords, and win over the women he secretly courted. There could be no doubt that he was also one of the best elephant chasers in the village.

  Not all of Appa’s stories were sad. Some were funny and others scary, like the one he told us about other elephant chasers who thought they saw ghosts in the woods and ran away. Appa was skilled enough to distinguish shadows and silhouettes from real creatures, and wasn’t easily scared. ‘I’m more frightened of humans than spirits,’ he once said with a chuckle.

  Kavya was afraid of ghosts; Grandmother used to tell her spooky tales to stop her from leaving the house at night to play with friends. ‘Just wait and watch,’ she said. ‘The drunken fool who hanged himself across the street is going to catch you one night,’ she would say to my sister.

  I didn’t need ghosts to frighten me. Just a few days later, I saw the same two rowdies from the market in front of grandmother’s house on a motorbike, stopping to stare into our hut. They wouldn’t dare come inside the house, I told myself. I searched for Kavya to warn her, but she was nowhere to be found.

  Even though Grandmother was strict about my sister and me staying at home after darkness set in, she couldn’t control Kavya, however hard she tried. Eventually she gave up, comforting herself in the thought that Kavya was used to the ways of the village and was smart enough to handle any dangerous situation. Despite Grandmother’s confidence, I was growing more and more concerned about Kavya’s increasing defiance of her elders and the restrictions placed on her. Why wasn’t anyone taking strict measures to set her right? Or was I expecting too much from her at eleven? And why was Kavya’s rebelliousness a matter of such concern to me while I remained blind to the reasons for my own willfulness at school?

  After a restless night spent worrying about Kavya, I woke up early, feeling unsettled and in need of a walk. My wayward sister was fast asleep on the cot we shared, her face peaceful and innocent. A surge of love filled my heart, and I kissed her gently on her forehead. I wished she would wake up, but she didn’t.

  With a heavy heart, I stepped out into the misty air.

  CHAPTER TEN: TALK OF MARRIAGE

  For some strange reason, I had turned to the tranquility of the village for comfort that morning. But peace was fleeting with the sounds of the village hurrying to life rose with the dawn. People were rushing to work in the fields and elsewhere on foot, bicycles, and bullock carts. Those struggling to make a living couldn’t afford to stay home once the sun came up.

  Early on the last evening of my vacation, Grandmother called me over for a private conversation by the kitchen. To my surprise, Grandfather was also there. He usually returned only after sunset but today he was home before dark. It had to be something important.

  Patting the ground near him, he signaled me to sit facing them. ‘What is it, Thatha?’ I asked, plucking nervously at a knot in my hair.

  They glanced at each other like children hiding secrets from their parents. Grandmother, as usual, was the one to break the silence. Making no effort to hide her excitement, she blurted out, ‘Shilpa, after you finish tenth grade, you will marry your Naresh mama.’

  ‘Marry Naresh Mama?’ I exclaimed, the weight of her words failing to sink in.

  ‘Yes, Shilpa.’ Grandmother raised her eyebrows at my look of confusion.

  I laughed, certain they could not really be serious. The thought of me marrying my uncle was as revolting as Grandfather slaughtering a hen we had raised since it was a chick.

  But Grandmother was persistent. ‘Your mother wants you to marry him. Thatha and I spoke to her.’ She relayed this information with the casual tone of a teacher announcing weekly test results. Still, there was urgency in her voice. ‘She asked us not to wait any longer to tell you.’ They were studying my face intensely.

  I realized with dread that my grandparents were not joking. ‘Grandmother, what are you saying? You know I can’t marry my uncle.’

  Maybe she had imagined I would jump with joy and hug her. She knew I was fond of her youngest son and preferred his company to my other uncles who often scolded me for being too talkative. She was certain I would consent and had been looking forward to announcing the happy news to her son and the rest of the family.

  Turning to Grandfather, she snapped angrily, ‘How dare she talk like this?’ Without waiting for him to reply, she returned to me. ‘Shilpa, it was decided before you were born that the first granddaughter in the family would marry my youngest son.’ She looked straight into my eyes. ‘He loves you more than he ever loved any other girl in the village.’

  Nothing she said made sense to me. Desperately seeking support, I turned to Grandfather. ‘Thatha, how can I marry Naresh Mama?’ Mrs. Law’s face flashed before my eyes, and DG’s voice te
lling us to stand up to our families when they were wrong rang in my head. I wished they were here to protect me from my own family. ‘It is bad. How can I marry a close relative? We learnt in school that marrying a family member will cause health problems for the babies.’ I must have sounded like a doctor counseling a patient. I was tense, struggling to appear respectful.

  Grandmother was not impressed. ‘In our village, many have married within their families, and their babies are not missing an eye or a leg, like you say.’

  My world was spinning out of control. I wanted to run out of the room, but felt rooted in place. Why were my grandparents asking me to do something that was harmful to my future? I had my own fantasies and dreams about marriage.

  All the girls in my class often talked about dating and marrying our heroes in movies. Sheena wanted her wedding ceremony on a grand ship. For a long time, I had a crush on a volunteer from America who taught us math and computer science; I cried bitterly upon his departure. As young girls, every time a kissing scene appeared on the screen, we would erupt in screams of conflicted disapproval: ‘Fast forward! Fast forward!’ It was embarrassing, especially in the company of boys. Marriage was just a farfetched fantasy for us, not something immediate. I had never given it a serious thought, until now.

  I was struggling, unsure of everything. I clung to DG’s words about the importance of not letting anyone dictate what your life should be.

  My grandparents were waiting. I leaned towards them eagerly. ‘I want to become a journalist. I want to travel the world when I grow up. My principal always tells me I will make a good reporter.’

  The blank expressions on my grandparents’ faces told me they were far from enthralled by my ambition. It was also clear they didn’t know what a journalist or a reporter was.

  I described it to them with hand gestures that they would have seen on television—young women speaking into microphones. ‘I want to write about what is happening in the world and speak on TV.’ Biting my lip, I waited for the storm to hit.