A mahout sat astride Raja’s thick neck, gently rocking back and forth in time with the elephant’s stride. The mahout’s back was erect and his feet were lodged behind the animal’s ears. He was a short man with rock-hard calf muscles. Chunky blue veins ran across the length of his arms like the roots of a well-nourished plant. With an apricot complexion, slanting eyes and a wispy beard, he could easily have been mistaken for a Turkoman from Central Asia. His clothes – a rough tunic, old shirt and fatigues – were scruffy and marked with dirt and grease stains. He went barefoot and his toes were like bits of gnarled ginger. His hands were filthy and the palms had the texture of sandpaper. And yet, despite his slovenly appearance, his face exuded character. Like a piece of antique furniture, it had a worn, mellow finish, the grain and lines of his skin adding depth and substance.
Raja approached the banyan tree and the mahout barked out an order. The elephant stopped dead in his tracks. The rider called out again and this time the animal sank to his knees, allowing his master to slide down his bulky side on to the ground.
While we watched the two at work, Mr Choudhury told me something about mahouts.
‘They are revered by many people because they have power over the elephants,’ he said. ‘Some believe they use jadoo, magic. But this is nonsense. They just know and understand the elephants and have a special affinity with them.’
Mahouts, he said, were inseparable from their kunkis and they spent every waking moment together.
‘There have been many cases in the past when an elephant has died and soon after the mahout has died from a broken heart, and vice versa,’ said Mr Choudhury.
‘Do you ever get female mahouts?’ I asked.
‘I have only ever heard of one,’ he said. ‘The mahouts believe that elephants do not like women riding them because they menstruate. But I’m sure that’s just a way of keeping their wives at home.’
The head mahout walked over to where we were standing and clamped my hand in a vice-like grip.
‘Tarquin, this is Churchill,’ said Mr Choudhury before leaving us together.
‘Churchill? Well, that’s an interesting name.’
The mahout grinned, the creases around his mouth spreading from one side of his face to the other.
‘Yes. I am christened Churchill Nongrang,’ he replied. ‘We’re given different names in my tribe, no? My niece is “Dolly”, like “Dolly Parton”. My cousin is “Elvis”, like Elvis Presley. My younger brother, he is “Nasser”.’
‘Like the Egyptian president?’
‘No, no. Like NASA. American space peoples.’ I tried to disguise my amusement.
‘You said you were christened. Are you a Christian then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Presbyterian, all the way,’ replied the mahout. ‘I was teached by Welsh missionaries, no?’
He explained that many of the hill tribes of the North-East Frontier, including the infamous Nagas, were never converted to Hinduism by the Aryans, sticking instead to their own animistic religions. When European missionaries of various denominations flooded into the area during the nineteenth century, offering education as well as the concept of one god, many converted. Churchill’s tribe, the Khasis, who live in a range of hills in Meghalaya, another Indian state bordering Bangladesh, are a mix of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians. And yet much of their culture remains intact, including a matrilineal system which ensures that all property and land remain in the hands of the tribe’s women. It is a tradition that is resented by many Khasi men, Churchill included.
‘We men, we have nothing. We can be throwed from the home!’ he complained. ‘Women. They in charge. Women nightmare. That why I become mahout. I am free man!’ Once again, his face broadened into an infectious smile.
‘What you do here?’ he asked, curious.
I explained that I had come to write a book about the rogue and Mr Choudhury.
‘What you want with book? Book boring, no?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You learn about hathi!’
‘Hathi?’
‘It mean eley-phant in my language,’ he explained. ‘You stay here. Learn many thing.’ He shook me playfully by the shoulder. ‘Make you mahout. Okay?’
‘Sure.’
He showed his excitement by doing a little jig.
‘Come, meet eley-phant squad. They never seen firang. What kind of firang you? You not white. You red. Why so red?’
It was true that I had caught a little too much sun during the funeral.
‘I’m British.’
In most parts of the world, this would have sufficed as an explanation. Churchill needed more persuading.
‘Britishers not red.’
‘Some of us are, if we stay in the sun too long.’
‘Yes, yes. Your country weather very bad. Worse than Himalayas, no?’
I had to agree.
The rest of the squad were a rough-looking bunch, unshaven, dirty and as thuggish as a group of escaped convicts. Chander, the ‘number two mahout’, had a deep scar running across his right cheek and neck, which he claimed to have been given during a tumble with a wild bear. Bodo, the senior apprentice, had a broken nose that jutted out at a sharp angle. And the other two apprentices, Prat and Sanjay, who were covered in tattoos, looked as if they might come in handy in a bar brawl.
When we were introduced, the four of them gawked at me, shaking my hand cautiously. Amazingly, none of them had ever seen a white man before, even if he was, well, red. What’s more, none of them, with the exception of Churchill, had ever travelled to Guwahati, let alone New Delhi, and between them they had seen very little of the world, even on television.
We crouched around the campfire and they served me ‘ready-made tea’, the leaves and milk boiled together in a spitting steel kettle. There was an awkward silence followed by much whispering amongst the men who were, no doubt, puzzling over my presence in their midst.
Eventually, Chander plucked up the courage to ask me where I was from and, before too long, all of them were firing random questions at me in rapid succession.
How old was I? Where was my country? Was it near America? Was it true that we ate cows? What did I think of Punjabis? Did we have elephants in Britain? How did I like India? Did I have children? How did British people drink tea? Had I ever met Princess Diana? Had I seen the ocean?
Eventually Churchill broke in.
‘I have been London,’ he said proudly. ‘I have seen the Big Ben and the Bucking-ham Palace. Also, the zoo. Many hathis there, no?’
I was surprised to learn that Churchill was an extremely well-travelled man who had worked in zoos around the world.
‘How
