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The Burning Elephant

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The Burning Elephant

Christopher Raja

For David, Edith, Indigo, Harper, Jala and Natasha

The Burning Elephant

The Burning Elephant

The elephant strolled into the schoolyard, tipped over four buckets of water, tore branches off the Banyan tree, beating them against his knees and back, then stuffed the leaves into his mouth. The money-lenders, spice-sellers, and the stray dogs from Serpent Lane came to watch. Even the crows seemed interested. Govinda had seen the elephant enter the school gate and terrify Tenzing and his goat.

‘You can’t have an elephant running wild in a school compound,’ his father said.

‘What does it want?’ Govinda whispered. His mouth was so dry that he could utter only a hoarse sound.

His father’s white shirt collar stood out when he pulled at it, as the students hollered and cried at the elephant which seemed to be growing accustomed to the hullabaloo and stood still, quite content.

‘This isn’t a circus,’ said the headmaster with his hands on his hips.

Govinda admired his father as most people did because Sunil Seth was a leader – the principal at St John’s Mission School. But at this moment, as the elephant walked about the school, Sunil Seth looked scared. Nevertheless, he threw himself in front of a schoolboy who moved close to the elephant. The beast then stared at the headmaster and shook its head violently. Its size and weight made it extremely dangerous. The bull was foaming from the mouth. On closer inspection it had a rip on one of its ears and a large chunk of flesh was missing. Govinda pictured its long trunk picking up his father, shaking him and then flinging him over the school wall. The headmaster stayed low and quiet to avoid being charged.

Govinda’s father was an orphan who had made himself a successful sahib. He took pride in the way he dressed and wore sensible, conservative, long-sleeved shirts and trousers. He was tall and strong and tried to keep his hair neat, parted to one side, but near the elephant, with its frightening intensity, his hair was in disarray and he looked small and terrified. He did not look like a sahib now.

Two bald Hindu priests arrived at the school and prostrated themselves.

‘Om Ganesha,’ they chanted. ‘Om Shiva and Kali.’

The neighbourhood dogs barked at the elephant as it reared up on its hind legs and threatened to trample the priests.

‘What are those idiots doing?’ asked Sunil Seth. ‘Do they want the bull to trample them?’

Govinda had once been to a circus where he wondered why the elephants, lions and clowns could not be left to be themselves. He believed animals should be free. His thoughts were interrupted by a loud siren as a police inspector and two constables arrived in a jeep with flashing lights. The elephant stamped its feet and shook its head.

‘Get away,’ commanded the stern-faced inspector with a stick in one hand and a rifle in the other. ‘Get away, all of you, now!’ The baton-wielding constables cursed and waved their sticks to disband the crowd, but a few school children and teachers, as well as the stray dogs and the two Hindu priests, refused to go.

Govinda watched as the inspector loaded his bolt-action rifle, a leftover from the British army and the days of the Raj. His heart lurched. The elephant looked stately but sad. It raised its trunk proudly and flapped its ears. The speed and forcefulness of the swinging motion created a wave-like appearance across its ears. Then the elephant shook its head rapidly. It swayed its trunk and moved its pillarlike legs from side to side as if it was preparing to charge. It produced a distinctive rumble like water gurgling through a deep drain. Suddenly, the magnificent animal burst forth with more rumbling and trumpeting and tore into a group of teachers who were trying to keep their students away. Govinda noticed the elephant appeared to have a pink birthmark on its back and he wished that there was more he could do. Did it really have to end this way?

‘Leave it alone,’ he cried but the inspector took no notice. The Hindu priests protested and the school children screamed, pretending to be elephants and lifting their arms as if they were trunks. The teachers caught the students and pulled them out the way of the rampaging animal. An ever-increasing number of onlookers gathered.

The inspector shoved a cartridge into the rifle’s magazine and aimed straight at the elephant’s forehead. It was like aiming at a holy god – Boom! The dogs fled. The crows flew up and away. Govinda jumped. The elephant let out an appalling, furious sound and turned up its head with indignation. It charged wildly as it headed straight for the inspector. The endangered policeman shot again and hit the elephant near the trunk. Govinda felt the second shot between his shoulders as the elephant moaned in pain amidst the terrible sound of the gun.

‘It’s going to fall,’ the younger constable screamed. After a few seconds, the elephant’s hind legs collapsed beneath him and he landed on his belly. It seemed to Govinda that the ground trembled. The wound was not like on the silver screen. The blood leaked out.

Govinda stood near the elephant and wailed as his father, the police and the servants discussed what to do with the beast. The elephant breathed slowly now. Ohhh, Ahhh. Govinda almost felt the life coming out of the elephant’s lungs. When the last breath left the elephant’s body, its colour transformed and it lost the appearance of life.

Govinda gasped for breath whilst the students, staff and the residents from the lane and the nearby bazaar looked in horror at the scene unfolding before them.

‘Should we take it in a truck?’ enquired a constable.

‘We could cut it into little pieces,’ suggested the inspector who had shot the elephant. When he noticed the disapproving faces looking at him he shook his head and waved his arms.

Govinda imagined them cutting off the ears, feet and trunk of the elephant and then piece by piece loading it onto a truck. All the while, the elephant lay there, irresistible to the eyes of the onlookers. Govinda stood transfixed. He didn’t say anything. He heard the men talk about the elephant who was called Ganesh and belonged to a travelling circus where it had been cruelly treated. It had struck and killed its handler, stomping his head into the ground.

‘No! Impossible!’ Sunil Seth cried. ‘Why don’t we burn it?’

The police agreed it could not be removed any other way so they built a pyre to burn the elephant. The headmaster supervised as the servants felled a banyan tree and sawed its branches. The tree was at one end of the school compound and the elephant was at the other. The tree was wide and the branches were heavy. To compromise they built the pyre near the elephant, which lay near the school gate.

Within the compound, shadows were falling and gradually getting longer. The school building and five large trees loomed over the playground. Govinda’s apartment on the second floor of the school had lit up. Light fell out the windows and onto the balcony, in between the potted plants, reflecting off the tall trees, all the way down to the compound below. Around his apartment, beneath it, on the sides and above, on the third floor, the classroom windows were shut, and the building was in darkness. Nearby, under the neem tree, stood his father’s curvy Ambassador. Based on the Morris Oxford, it was the car driven by headmasters and politicians. Along the edge of the compound were the servants’ quarters. There were various shades of bougainvillea growing against the compound wall.

As the servants, teachers and students sadly collected wood for the pyre, Govinda stood near the lifeless body of the elephant. The enormous animal looked peaceful. It had long eyelashes. He looked closer. Its eyes were wide open but there was nothing behind them, just a dark cave amidst a pool of blood. Govinda dipped his foot in the elephant’s blood, which stuck to his shoe.

The pyre was made up of a huge amount of wood that had now been placed on top, around and under the animal’s body. Govinda watched as the flame was lit. With the heat and the flames came the cries of all the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs in Serpent Lane. Govinda watched in dismay as the body of the elephant was engulfed in flames and the insatiable fire churned out ashes. It was worse than seeing the elephant shot. The stench of burning flesh and the billowing black cloud of smoke would last for several hours, and he could not stop watching.

It was a great bonfire but the smell of dung and crackling elephant flesh made him queasy. ‘Why, Dad?’ The fire choked his words.

‘The dangerous animal had to be killed,’ said the headmaster, looking at Govinda, pressing his face up close, putting his large, veined hand against the boy’s back. ‘There is nothing more to it.’ Govinda’s nose leaked a little. A few yards away a group of mourners chanted prayers.

Through wet little stars in his eyes, Govinda saw that the mourners, led by the Hindu priests, were not happy. As a sudden gust of wind rustled the trees, orange and red embers from the fire floated up into the sky and blew against windows, in the school yard and beyond, and onto freshly washed clothes. He could see why people revered the elephant, marvelled at its majesty, its towering size and strength, and its death appalled him.

‘Why did the elephant have to die, Dad?’

‘It was damaged,’ said the headmaster, his face reddened by the warmth of the fire.

‘Will you and I die because we are damaged for letting the elephant die?’

‘No. Not for a long time to come, Govinda. Not until you have had children of your own and they have had children and you have watched them grow up.’

‘And then I will be damaged?’ Govinda felt more hot tears in his eyes. He angrily rubbed them away.

His father laughed and again said, ‘No.’

Govinda found it hard being the headmaster’s son and he lived rather a lonesome life, but he was never filled with pity for himself. Although he didn’t blend in, he was trying hard to accumulate more friends. Nobody bullied him or called him names, but Govinda found it hard to turn acquaintances into friends. He was a strange boy, the way an elephant’s tail or Kali’s face is strange. He existed, and was perfectly made in every way...but he seemed not quite right for the world.

The headmaster called to his wife, Gitanjali, who had been standing nearby. ‘Listen what our son’s saying.’ Then he told her about Govinda’s reaction. She gazed at Govinda with pity and held him tight. ‘You won’t die, honey. You won’t.’

The flames still rose high and the sparks flew about. The body of the once powerful elephant looked charred and crumbly but it took a long time to burn. Many people came to lay flowers where the elephant was shot, but were told to go away, so the mounds of flowers stacked up on the pavement outside the school gate. As the moon came up, under its nocturnal light Govinda saw a poorly dressed elderly lady leave marigolds and wipe away a tear. The cleaners had begun sweeping the school compound with brushes.

Govinda’s mother appeared again. Her gold hoop earrings jiggled back and forth like ripe fruit ready to be plucked against her shoulder-length, freshly hennaed hair. Indians vow to love all things as their mother. It is believed by many Hindus and Buddhists that all things have been their mother in one or another incarnation. Even the land itself is seen as their mother. Bharat Mata or Mother India, is the embodiment of India as a mother goddess. She is characterised as a Hindu goddess dressed in a saffron saree holding the Indian national flag, escorted by a lion.

Govinda looked up at his mother. Her hair was plastered back, full of thick, brown paste, and a strand had fallen and covered one eye. If his father was grey and serious his mother was fun, spiritual and imaginative. His father was predictable but his mother was not. She was a Christian. Often she would tell Govinda stories of how Christianity arrived in India, about the same time as it touched Europe, more than 2000 years earlier. Christianity, he had learnt from her, originated in Israel. To begin with, Christians were Jews and the new religion was seen as a Jewish cult. One of the Apostles, St Judas Thomas, sailed to India and converted Indians to Christianity. St Thomas a disciple of Jesus, was a carpenter. He found his way to Kerala after a merchant brought him to India to construct a temple. He built seven churches instead. Later on, she told him, other Christians arrived in India, the Dutch, French and Portuguese. The British arrived much later and they not only spread Christianity, they also built schools like this one, she explained.

Had Gitanjali, his mother, been given the opportunity to express herself she might have been an architect or an editor, she was good with numbers and would have enjoyed being a mathematician, but she never had the chance. She was satisfied with being a teacher at the local Christian school. Yet she seemed to supress the inquiring aspect of herself and like a frustrated artist she looked for creativity and boldness in others. She said to Govinda: ‘Come on, you need to take a bath.’ Govinda turned to look, in surprise.

He followed her inside, into the school building and up the flight of stairs. On the second floor on the right-hand side of the building facing the playground, was their apartment. From the balcony he could see the pyre still burning. He stood there for some time. The inspector’s gun still boomed in his head. The heat, the police sirens, the rumble and scream of traffic that never seemed to stop, it all appeared to be closing in. Surely there could have been another way. The fire was nothing now but a funeral of smoke, dead and dying simultaneously, leaving only white ashes.

He took off his shirt and got ready for his bath. His mother led him towards the back of the house, away from the verandah facing the playground, past the lounge and dining area, through a guest bedroom, and into the bathroom where the smell of the rubbish from behind the school came wafting over.

His father was built like a former boxer – right down to the punched-in nose. Govinda was often mystified by how unrelated they looked. He was small and chubby, had a pointed chin, slightly protruding teeth, and ears pressed flat against his head. Govinda didn’t look like his mother either. She was fair-skinned and slim and she was a mystery to him because she often told him scary stories of magical women who could see into the future and visited palmists and Sufi fortunetellers. Once she had been warned she would drown, and this made her afraid of the water. She taught girls in Class One and Two at Little Sisters, the most prestigious Catholic school in Calcutta. At work, Mrs Gitanjali Seth was expected to wear a saree or a salwar kameez but away from school she wore Western dresses. He thought of her as mysterious and beautiful, like a unicorn. She was blessed and gorgeous, spending most of her time near the Victoria Memorial that lies on the maidan by the banks of the Hooghly River, with her rich and stylish friends. She made it a point to go out whenever and wherever she liked and Govinda always looked forward to her coming home from Flurys, his favourite tea room, where they served shortbread, chocolate cakes and rum balls. At night, when she came back from work, his mother often slipped out of her shoes and stood in a bucket of cool water. She would stand there for a while and then walk wet-footed to bed.

‘Come – you will bathe,’ she said, tying the dupatta of her salwaar. ‘No!’ said Govinda. The elephant was on his mind.

She headed for the tap on the wall, her gold earrings jostling back and forth, her gold bangles clashed against each other. Govinda burst out crying as the water poured on him. His mother stood outside the shower area talking.

‘Look at your beautiful arms,’ said Gitanjali in her melodious, soft voice. ‘Nothing like your father.’

She reminisced about when she was young. ‘Your father took me on an elephant ride in Darjeeling and proposed on the back of the elephant. He slipped a silver box in my hands. He had his back to me when he proposed. In the box was an expensive ring. I never saw his eyes throughout. Oh, he could be affectionate, even charming, but romance was beyond him. One month after our marriage he had that droll, completely vacant look men have when they are looking through you.’

Govinda splashed his face before his arms reached out for the soap and his hand closed around a lathery, red bar of Lifebuoy.

‘I left out your favourite dolphin towel that your father bought you,’ said his mother. The burning elephant was forgotten, if only for the moment, then it reappeared in his mind and he grabbed more water in his cupped hands and splashed his face. He wanted to cleanse himself of the smoke and fumes. He splashed his face again. He spat out water. His eyes still closed. ‘I’m going,’ she called, ‘you will feel better again.’

Gods and Beggars

Gods And Beggars

If there were a beginning, it would have to be Kali. Kali came before the Marxists arrived, before the British took over Calcutta, before the French and Dutch and British competed for India, before the Portuguese discovered the sea route and arrived in the south, before the Muslims and Syrians and even before the Greeks. Long before Guru Nanak Dev, Mohammed, St Judas Thomas, Jesus and Buddha, Kali was there in Calcutta laying down her laws for gods and beggars. Govinda often thought of Kali because her fearsome image could be found all over the city: in temples, murals, pavilions, restaurants, classrooms and even taxis. She had four arms, with a sword in one hand and the decapitated head of a demon in another. The other two hands blessed her followers. There were two heads for her earrings, a string of skulls for a necklace and a belt made from human hands as her skirt. Her tongue protruded from her mouth, her eyes were red, and her face and breast were sullied with blood. She stood with one foot on her thigh and another on the chest of her husband, Shiva.

Govinda was looking at an image of Kali when he heard a familiar voice. ‘Hey! Butt-scratcher, why’d your father have to shoot and burn that circus elephant?’ It was Nitesh, one of his classmates. Govinda lifted his hand, extended two fingers and cocked his thumb like he was aiming a gun. ‘Phow! Phow!’ he said.

‘My father told me that’s bad karma,’ said Nitesh in a grim voice. ‘I tell you we are born alone and we die alone. No one will accompany us after our death. But don’t worry. I will follow you wherever you go.’ Nitesh was a bright gentle kid who wore thick glasses that made him look like he was always straining to keep up with the rest of the world.

Nearby, outside the school compound, on Serpent Lane, the gamblers sat cross-legged on a red sheet and were throwing down large sums of cash. This group of men, a regular feature, sipped tea and played cards on the pavement. Onlookers stood around. Nitesh’s father was playing, so the boys stopped and watched.

Nitesh and his father, Ashok, who wore equally thick glasses that looked like they belonged on the bottom of a Campa Cola bottle, lived in the school’s servants’ quarters – Ashok was the headmaster’s plump chauffeur. He wheezed and coughed and sneezed.

A man with oily, neatly combed hair took off his new, digital watch and said it was worth five hundred rupees. He put the watch down onto the heap of money.

‘I play,’ he said.

‘No, this can’t work,’ said one of the gamblers. The man with oily hair insisted he would pay back any money he owed if his watch did not cover the loss. The other gamblers mumbled that they were being hoodwinked, but then agreed to let him play. Cards were dealt. The players held onto their cards tightly. When it was time to show his hand, the man with the oily hair began to cry. He gave up his Casio. Ashok took all the money and the digital watch. Looking up, he noticed Govinda and Nitesh.

‘Here take this,’ said Ashok. He gave them two rupees each. The boys were thrilled. They took their money and walked away as the next round of cards was being dealt.

Even though it wasn’t school time Nitesh wore his school shirt. His blue trousers showed signs of dirt on the knees, but he wore a pair of new Reeboks, which were almost impossible to get in Calcutta.

‘Where did you get those?’ Govinda asked. Nitesh didn’t need to say anything. Govinda knew. He just wanted to give his friend a hard time.

‘My father won them in a game,’ Nitesh said.

Nitesh smirked and looked ahead. On the lane the boys greeted acquaintances. Nitesh nodded to an old rickshaw puller, as Govinda smiled at some college girls talking about boys. Govinda was aware of the changes his body had been undergoing. His height and weight were increasing.

‘So why did your father shoot that elephant?’ Nitesh asked. ‘My father told me that’s bad karma.’

‘Suck cow udders,’ said Govinda. ‘What do you know about karma? You are a driver’s son, know your place!’

‘You’re too clever,’ said Nitesh.

‘How can a person be too clever?’

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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