I have for long grumbled about the absence of accessible, entertaining and instructive 'nature-writing' in India—the sort of writing that may make the lay person, usually more interested in the nearest shopping mall lace up his/her hiking boots and set off for the nearest wild blue yonder. We've had a few great writers in the past—people like Corbett, EHA, Anderson, M. Krishnan and Salim Ali, ofcourse—but they've been few and far between; mostly nature writing in India has remained either dry and scholarly, or drab and too often terminally doomsday-ridden (no fault of the writers, really). So it was with some trepidation that I opened Choudhury's Trunk Full of Tales and peered inside. And was immediately entranced. Here was a book that you couldn't leave alone till you finished—and then started all over again. And each time it left a quirky smile on your face.
Choudhury's seventy-year old 'magnificent obsession' with elephants began in childhood—a childhood many of us would think of as idyllic—in the Mymensingh district of East Bengal (now Bangladesh)—in a 'mythic, feudal world of household elephants, shikar, Indian classical music and good food.' It's an obsession that has lasted a lifetime, and taken him—usually footslogging—through the dense leech-infested forests of East and Northeast India, as well as Uttar Pradesh and the South—wherever there are elephants. In this book he recounts some of his experiences with elephants—good, bad and ugly, elephant people, and elephantine problems.
It would be prudent at this point to mention that Choudhury is a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and was a member of the task force outlining India's Project Elephant, and later became its coordinator for eastern and north-eastern India. He has also authored several technical manuals and scientific papers and editedThe Great Indian Elephant Book. Professionally, he was Professor and Head of the Department of English at the Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta.
The book has been divided into three sections. The first, 'Elephants and Their Ways', is about some of the elephants he has known or met—both domesticated and wild. They're individuals, every animal a character in its own right, with its own likes and dislikes, and own personality and quirks. Some are big and benign, others unpredictable and moody at the best of times, some are outright rogues, others have a passion for sweetened coconut ladoos. There's the noble Pratap, the roughneck Gabbar Singh, and the 'dedicated gormandizer' Harjit to mention a few. Choudhury describes them with a characteristic peppery humour that delights one right through the book. Of the massive ruffian Gabbar Singh, a wild tusker having a bath, for instance, he writes:
'He sat on his haunches in the shallow pool and wriggled his bottom about, rubbing it against submerged rocks—as thorough a cleaning as the finickiest of elephant mums could wish. He did everything in his bath except sing.'
The second section deals with the more serious issue of 'Rogues and Marauders', elephants declared outlaws because of their propensity to kill human beings unprovoked or raid and raze crops and villages. He outlines the legal position regarding this—both as it was and as is now, as well as the reasons why some elephants—usually but not always solitary males—turn 'bad'. Choudhury's own first hunt, to put down one of these animals, is a nightmarish tale of following a wounded elephant for three days through the dank, fetid tropical jungles of Cachar, and then losing it. This section reminded me of Corbett'sMan Eaters of Kumaon, except that Choudhury's wonderful sense of humour and irony never deserts him even in the grimmest of situations. He also discusses the issue of how to deal with such animals—whether they ought to be tamed and trained, relocated away from populated areas, or—as a last resort—put down.
The third section tackles the vexing issue of 'Managing Elephants in the Wild'. The instances of man-elephant conflict have risen, mainly due to our incursion into elephant territories and the forest corridors used by the animals, as well as local overpopulation of the animals. So how do we manage to keep a balance that will minimize the conflict and yet keep the population healthy? He feels two sets of parameters need to be in place to determine optimal elephant density: 1: 'damage to forest cover and negative impact on natural regeneration; and2: Man-elephant conflict, calculating the 'edge effect' or 'cutting edge' of forests, determined by how much human habitat is exposed to elephants, as well as elephant numbers and the tendency to certain populations to extend their home range.'
Choudhury has succeeded in this book in doing what few nature writers have done: kept you turning the pages rapidly, chuckling all the while, and painlessly teaching you a great deal about these huge, sagacious (and sometimes downright wicked!) beasts and their increasingly troubled lives.
A slightly shorter, edited version of this appears in print.
