have done without, especially at four in the morning. Still, I took comfort from the fact that something in the betel nut seemed to be keeping him awake.
By Indian standards, Rudra was a good driver – that is to say, we only came close to death once during more than six hours on the road. But his vehicle’s shock absorbers were defunct and many of the back seat’s springs had come loose. As a result, I had managed only a few hours of continually interrupted sleep before midnight when Mr Choudhury turfed me off the back seat and put me in front with Rudra.
By now, I was in no mood for conversation. All I wanted to do was sleep. I tried conveying this to Rudra, but even when I closed my eyes and pretended to snore, he kept up his one-sided, tedious conversation. His main interest in life, apart from betel nut and playing chicken with oncoming heavy goods vehicles, was the vital statistics of Bombay’s Hindi film actresses. The latest goddess to grace the Indian screen, Karisma Kapoor, had won a special place in his heart – and, no doubt, in his fantasies.
‘She is the most beautiful pearl of our continent!’ he boasted, pushing the Ambassador into fourth gear around a tight bend.
He slapped me hard on the thigh and guffawed, grunting and breathing through his nose and mouth simultaneously, a feat that would have been remarkable had it not been so revolting.
‘You should see her dance! Her legs go all the way up! And as for her breasts – they are big! As big as mangoes!’
He sighed and for a moment his mind seemed to drift. Then he nudged me hard in the arm.
‘Who is your favourite chick?’ he asked conspiratorially.
‘I don’t have one, and I’m trying to sleep,’ I replied grumpily.
However, Rudra would not take no for an answer and prodded me again. I knew that I had to name a name, otherwise he would never leave me alone.
‘Madhuri Dixit,’ I said, not daring to mention that it had once been my pleasure to interview this beautiful lady in Bombay.
‘Madhuri! Yes, you are right. She is good!’ He spat another mouthful of betel-nut juice out of the window and grinned mischievously, displaying his stained gums. Some of his saliva flew back in through the window, splattering his forehead. He wiped it away with his shirtsleeve, drew a deep breath and, with his smile broadening into a maniacal grin, added with finality: ‘Madhuri Dixit is very good – very good for BAD purposes!’
While the Brahmaputra valley still lay under a cloak of darkness, the first rays of sunshine fell on the range of mountains to the north. Their snow-capped summits hovered above the viscous, milky haze, illuminated like so many shining cloud cities. Over the next hour, the morning light crept closer and the landscape below began to reveal itself, the sunlight dissolving the mist that swirled around us. Soon, I could make out dozens of paddy-fields stretching towards the horizon. Huts made of earthen walls, bamboo frames and straw roofs stood on little islands surrounded by floodwater. Farmers knee-deep in mud urged on their black water buffalo as they pulled wooden ploughs through the rich, sodden soil.
Near a roadside shrine that housed an effigy of the goddess Durga, women with lovely almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones harvested rice by hand. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were wearing saris, I might have mistaken them for Vietnamese or Cambodians. Children on their way to school played with fighting kites. Their strings were coated with finely ground glass, the object of the game being to rub against your opponent’s line in the hope of severing it. Fierce dog-fights were in progress, half a dozen red, yellow and green paper birds ducking and diving, attacking and retreating against a backdrop of pristine blue sky.
Ever since my arrival in India two years earlier, I had longed to visit this part of the country. Geographically, it is alluring, a misplaced piece of jigsaw puzzle. Assam is lodged between five nations: China, Bhutan and Tibet to the north, Bangladesh to the south and Myanmar, or Burma, to the east. And culturally, it is totally different from anything in the rest of the subcontinent. A land of diverse tribes, its peoples have more in common with those of South-East Asia and the Far East than with their Aryan or Dravidian cousins. The state is connected to the rest of the country by a slim corridor known as the Chicken’s Neck; a legacy of colonial diplomacy, it runs between Bhutan and Bangladesh
Despite its staggering beauty and rich folklore, India’s North-East is a part of the world avoided by even the most intrepid backpackers. As such there was little in my guidebook about Assam: it has been off-limits to tourists for many years. However it did say that the word Assam is derived from the Sanskrit assama, meaning ‘peerless’ or ‘unequalled’. It was so named by Thai or Shan invaders called the Ahoms who conquered the valley in the thirteenth century and loved it so much that they never left. I was beginning to appreciate why. Wherever I looked, the landscape was lush and green. Rickety wooden bridges spanned streams and brooks whose surfaces were covered with sweet-smelling water-lily blossoms. Peepul trees, their branches straining under flocks of white birds that suddenly lifted into the air at the sound of our approach, lined the road. In the distance, hills bristling with jungle rose up above the fields, mist crawling across the foliage and pouring down into the valley like smoke brimming off a witch’s cauldron.
We left Highway 37 and turned north, crossing the Brahmaputra on a high, mile-long bridge guarded by a legion of Indian soldiers armed with machine guns. The river, far below, was at least three times as wide as it had been at Guwahati. A dozen canoes bobbing on the surface of the water looked like miniature toys. Upstream, the Brahmaputra bulged northwards, the far bank lost in a haze of mist and bright sunshine, while downstream, thousands of water hyacinths lay beached on glistening sandbanks.
Just after six o’clock, a yawn from the back seat told me that the hunter was waking up. At last, I could talk to someone about something other than Bollywood bimbos.
‘Good morning,’ I said, trying to decide whether to call him by his first or last name. I settled on the latter. After all, he was old enough to be my father, and in India people still set store on courtesy.
Mr Choudhury stretched and glanced out of the window, quickly recognizing the area.
‘I used to come here as a boy to watch wild elephants,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘In those days, this was all jungle for miles and miles, as far as your eye could see. There were hardly any people. Now, there are millions of them.’
His voice had a bitter edge to it and he seemed sombre. Rolling down the window, he relaxed a little, breathing in the fresh air, relishing the smell of damp moss and pine.
‘See over there,’ he continued, pointing to a wide depression in the ground where sugarcane grew in abundance. ‘That area used to be a lake. Entire herds of hundreds of elephants would come down from the hills and eat the aquatic weed. It’s their favourite delicacy. I used to sit up in a tree and watch them down below me, all trumpeting, playing and splashing about in the water. It was wonderful.’
There was a glint in his eye as he reminisced. I sensed that he was in a talkative mood and I wanted to hear more.
Had he been much involved with elephants?
‘Oh yes. I grew up surrounded by them,’ he told me as we continued along back roads. ‘We used them as transport. My father owned a huge estate, thousands of acres, and he always collected rent from our tenants on the back of Chamundi Prasad, his favourite tusker.’
In those days, elephants were the ultimate status symbol, as prestigious as the BMWs and Mercedes of today. No special occasion was complete without them. When Mr Choudhury’s elder brother married, he arrived at the ceremony riding on an elephant in a silver lotus-flower
