A Matter Of Honour

by Dip Sengupta
I grew up in the tea gardens of North Bengal. Tea gardens tend to be lonely, isolated places - miles and miles of plantations, often bordered by dense forests. The bungalows, built by the British, sometimes lay bang in the middle of the ancient routes that elephant herds had followed for centuries - to go from one part of the forests to another.

The Brits, of course, couldn't care less.

It was of no concern to the greatest empire on earth if a herd of elephants was inconvenienced by a bungalow built right in the middle of the path they had known and used for ages. The elephants would have to shift their route and that was that. So, the British planters and engineers built their lovely bungalows with tall iron gates and bougainvillea hedges and thought no more of it.

The elephants too, couldn't care less.

Elephants, of course, are known to have elephantine memories. And etched into them was a sense of direction that had guided them for countless generations, almost like a pachyderm GPS. When a herd moves, munching, bellowing, trumpeting with pesky calves, anxious mothers and aggressive young males just about turning into musth with hormones flowing, traffic niceties and giving right of way to a bungalow in their path seems to be too much to expect. I was once caught in the middle of this standoff, when I was all of eight.

Pic sourced from the internet

My parents had gone for a dinner and I was alone in the bungalow. 'Alone' was a misnomer because my parents had left me with two chowkidars, two bearers and an ayah, telling me as they got into the car that I should read my books, eat dinner on time and generally behave as I was now the captain of the ship. For good measure, they requested Mr. Jhalani, a fellow planter and neighbor, to look out for me.

The elephants came soon after my parents left.

It was a large herd, and following their pachyderm GPS, they had come straight for the bungalow en route to the rice fields that lay beyond. The tall iron gates they just walked over, and when the bougainvillea hedge came in the way of a couple of playful calves, the lead elephant solicitously opened up a path right through it. Soon they were milling about all around the bungalow. The kitchen garden with its pineapple patch was being noisily relished.

The chowkidars, the bearers and I went into a huddle. The chowkidars put out the lights inside the rooms and we crouched down among the sofas as the sound of the elephants steadily increased - the trumpeting of the adults, the squeals and bleats of the calves, the sound of leaves being shoveled pneumatically down hungry throats and occasionally a rough scraping sound as an elephant or two scratched itchy sides against the bungalow walls.

In the midst of all this appeared Jhalani uncle. Armed only with a five-cell torch, the kind planters always had close at hand in those days, he had somehow made his way from his bungalow to ours, through the wall of elephants, to make sure I was safe. How he did it I do not know till this day, but there he was in our huddle. He wanted us to try to leave immediately, because the herd was growing in size and becoming a little restive. Grabbing my hand, he prepared to make a dash for it.
All of eight, I disagreed.

I had just started reading commando comics - World War 2 tales of leadership and valour in the face of adversity. Pulling myself up to my full height - I would have been about four feet in my pajamas; I uttered the ringing declaration, 'A captain does not desert his sinking ship.'

No reply was forthcoming. I just remember being bundled out of the bungalow by Jhalani uncle. I still recall the run in the moonlight, the crouching, the swerving, the strong elephant smell all around and trumpeting and snorting very close by.

It was a not so honorable night for the captain of the ship.

Meet the writer: 

Dip Sengupta

Dip grew up in tea estates in Cachar and Terai and the first words he picked up as a two-year old was not in Bengali but in “Madhesiya”, much to the horror of sundry relatives. He has a rich and varied experience of “Bagan life”, including elephants dragging out refrigerators from the dining room ,leopards on the porch and snakes in the storm drains. When memory overwhelms, he tries to put theses in writing and marvel at the wonder of it all. An advertising professional of 25 years, Dip now lives in Gurgaon, with his wife and two daughters. Occasionally he drives up to the mountains to feel once more the magical stillness of the tea- gardens and hear the sound of a leaf fall to the ground.

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