I asked him why the jungles and forests hadn’t been protected.
‘Corruption, man! The system is corrupt to the core. Mostly it’s the Bangladeshis who have cut down all the trees. Hundreds of thousands of them have settled here. And guess who’s allowed them in?’
I didn’t have a clue.
‘Our politicians, man! Our Assamese politicians!’
‘Why would your leaders allow all these Bangladeshis to settle on your land?’ I asked, confused.
‘Vote banks!’ cried the angry young man. He made it sound as if that was explanation enough.
‘Vote banks? How do you mean?’
Mole smiled at my naïvety.
‘They bring them over the border, teach them a few words of Assamese, give them ration-cards and assign them some land, usually a bit of forest,’ he explained. ‘When it comes to voting time, they show their ration-cards at the booth and they’re eligible to vote. Each one marks a cross in the box of the politician who’s patronized them. It’s that easy, man.’
‘Ingenious,’ I commented, scribbling it all down in my notebook and eager for more details. But our conversation was suddenly cut short by one of Mole’s deputies who came running into the mess.
‘The rogue . . . the rogue. He killed again . . . he killed again last night. In the middle . . . of the night,’ he stuttered. ‘A m . . . m . . . man. He was dragged from his house. He was dragged and then trampled to death. Horribly trampled.’
Mr Choudhury, who was sitting next to me at the mess table, put down his mug.
‘Where did it happen?’ he asked slowly.
‘Near Hathi Khal. Just a few miles from here.’
‘I know the place,’ said the hunter, standing up. He put on his Guwahati Rifle Association hat and made for the door.
‘Let’s go.’
Self-consciously, I followed everyone outside into the compound, hoping to be invited along. I felt like a dog anxious for a walk.
Mr Choudhury looked my way.
‘Tarquin. Okay, yes, I suppose you can come for this.’
Eagerly grabbing my camera-bag, I jumped into the back of the Land Rover together with Mr Choudhury, Mole and two armed guards. We took a left out of the compound, Rudra at the wheel. He floored the accelerator, shooting along the dirt track at top speed. I bounced up and down on the seat like an india-rubber ball.
‘I am Mister Grand Pree! Yes?’ yelled Rudra. ‘Just like Tom Crooooz!’
Our destination was an isolated hamlet surrounded by lush paddy and sugarcane fields. Along sandy lanes shaded by coconut trees stood rows of mock-Tudor cottages, a design introduced during the British Raj and still popular in Assam today. The white walls of each house were criss-crossed with black beams. Several homes had thatched or tiled roofs capped with chimneys. One or two even boasted porches over which crepe myrtle vines bloomed with brilliant scarlet flowers.
We parked the Land Rover in the middle of the village, leaving Rudra to keep an eye on it. A crowd had gathered near the scene of the disaster. We approached on foot and several of the villagers spotted us, whispering amongst themselves ‘Firang, firang. Foreigner, foreigner.’
Word of my arrival spread quickly and, one by one, with a nudge here and a wink there, the villagers turned to stare in amazement and curiosity.
The crowd parted and we made our way through a gate into a garden with a pathway leading up to a pretty cottage. It was a lovely place, the air filled with the perfume of jasmine bushes. Bottlebrush trees with red bushy flowers and weeping branches stood on either side of the path. White roses grew in carefully tended flowerbeds. Ostensibly, everything was peaceful.
We made our way around the cottage and into the back yard and suddenly I stopped short. On the ground just a few feet away, lying under a dirty, stained tartan blanket, was the crumpled, mangled body of the dead man.
Only a single foot jutted out from beneath the undignified shroud, the veins black against the deathly, bluish-grey skin. The ankle was twisted gratuitously, as were some of the toes. In places, slivers of bone jutted out from beneath the surface.
Nearby, the victim’s grieving widow was slumped amidst rows of trampled cabbages, her expression empty, her eyes bloodshot, her cheeks stained with tears. She grabbed at her hair and moaned. The rest of the immediate family stood, traumatized, in tightly knit groups. One by one, we filed past them, offering our condolences and explaining our purpose for being there. Then, with the family’s permission, Mr Choudhury, Mole and I approached the body.
The hunter kneeled down, peeling back the top half of the blanket. The forest officer stood back while I peered with trepidation over Mr Choudhury’s shoulder. What I saw was to haunt my dreams for months to come.
The man had been reduced to little more than a pulp, barely recognizable as a human being, his face frozen in a contorted, agonized expression which told of an unbearable death. I had seen dead bodies before in various war zones, but nothing as grotesque as this. Feelings of nausea overwhelmed me and my immediate instinct was to look away. But curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I braced myself to take a closer look at the bruised, blood-encrusted body, grimacing at the sight of the head, crushed as if by a steamroller.
Gingerly, Mr Choudhury pulled the blanket back still further, revealing the man’s arms. These had been wrenched from their sockets and were now hanging by a thin thread of skin.
The hunter let the blanket fall.
‘This is just how we found the other bodies,’ whispered Mole, his voice edged with fear. ‘This elephant is evil. He has the devil in him, I’m telling you. He rips off the arms and legs, and crushes the body. He’s a monster.’
‘Are you sure there’s only one elephant?’ asked Mr Choudhury.
Mole nodded energetically.
‘Yes. All the eye-witnesses have seen only one. They describe him as a giant. Some say his tusks are fifty feet long. They’re terrified.’
Mr Choudhury looked interested but curiously unimpressed by these details.
‘Look, you know that’s not true. Come now, let us find out exactly what happened here.’
He rose and turned to the family, asking whether anyone had seen what had happened. An old man leaning heavily on his cane shyly volunteered to relate the story.
‘The elephant came while we were eating,’ he began, his voice croaking. ‘We heard it trumpeting and then it crashed through the fence and came towards the hut.’
He pointed at a mud and straw structure in the right-hand corner of the compound.
‘We felt the ground trembling as he came nearer. Stomp, stomp, stomp.’
The old man beat against his shrivelled thighs with clenched fists, making elephant sound-effects to add to the drama of his storytelling.
‘He pushed against our hut. It shook as if there was an earthquake. There were seven of us inside. We were all terrified. None of us could even move. We did not make a sound. I was certain that any moment the elephant would kill us all. But he turned and attacked the other hut.’
The old man watched through a window as the animal tore down the other structure.
‘He grabbed the roof and wrenched it off, tossing it on to the ground,’ he continued. ‘He tore down the wall as if it was paper. My son was inside. He was down on his knees, praying. The beast grabbed him with his trunk. He lifted him up high in the air.
‘My son called out, “Help, Father, the elephant is killing me! The elephant is killing me!” Then it smashed him down on the ground. My son begged for mercy. Again, the animal threw him down. All the time, my son was