Tarquin Hall follows a hunter in pursuit of a rogue. Anand Sankar sniffs a man-animal morality tale.
Sometimes it’s not the big headline that catches your eye in the newspaper. Tucked away in the folds will be a small story measuring not more than five column inches which will transfix you and convince you that there is something larger behind it. Journalist Tarquin Hall decided to follow one such hunch.
The brief report Hall read announced a prize for hunting down a rogue elephant which was terrorising villages near Tezpur in Upper Assam. There was a bounty on its head, and Hall set out with a hunter who wanted to claim it. Thus began the roller-coaster journey of a foreign correspondent through an unknown land, to try and understand why anyone would want to hunt down a harmless, lumbering herbivore which was identified in Indian law as an endangered species.
Clutching a copy of George Orwell’s timeless essay from a completely different era — “Shooting an Elephant” — Hall tried to come to terms with the events unfolding around him.
The hunter who took up the challenge offered to take Hall with him, but under certain conditions. Hall follows the hunter as he almost forensically investigates each attack by the rogue elephant in order to track it, and soon is in awe of him. The hunter, when convinced Hall is not a crusading environmentalist, opens the door to the entire world of elephants.
To his surprise, Hall finds that the elephant holds its own in India’s spiritual hierarchy — so much so that even a rogue elephant killing humans is revered and shooting it will spark a mob seeking to lynch the hunter. But Hall’s main script is the under-reported and gut-wrenching story of the existential struggle between man and elephant, when forced to share the same patch of land and resources. There can be no denying that there is a crisis in India’s north-east where elephant populations have nowhere to go, and starve to death as their jungles are wiped out. They will not die without a fight though, one that will be bloody on both sides.
It is particularly enchanting to read Hall’s account of the mythological elephant graveyard. Yes, it is true that not many carcasses of elephants who have died of natural causes are found. Where do they go? Hall perseveres and does find the answer to the puzzle, but read the book to know what it is. And what about the rogue elephant? He meets his end, but not before the story of his life has left an indelible mark on you emotionally.
TO THE ELEPHANT GRAVEYARD
A true story of the hunt for a man-killing elephant
Author: Tarquin Hall
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: xii + 260
Price: Rs 299