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Shooting an elephant
DAVID DAVIDAR
COMPARE these two paragraphs, both of which deal with the same thing — the death of an elephant. The first is from George Orwell's "Shooting An Elephant", in my estimation the finest essay written on the colonial experience:
"He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed like a long time — it might have been five seconds, I dare say — he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise. For as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upwards like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay."
The second is from a book called To The Elephant Graveyard by Tarquin Hall (John Murray), the book that I'm reviewing this week. "The elephant's head jerked back as the high-velocity bullet penetrated his temple. I could see clearly the spurt of blood that gushed out on to his ear and dripped down his cheek. His trunk whipped back in the air. His mouth opened wide, revealing his writhing black tongue. He reared up on his hind legs, kicking out defiantly.
"Then the fight went out of him. His ears fell to his sides. His trunk flagged. His head slumped as if he was overcome with fatigue. Like a disgraced child who only now understood that he had misbehaved, the rogue tried to turn and walk away, almost apologetically.
"Then, in one violent movement, he reared up once again, his trunk reaching for the sky as if he was trying to clutch at his departing soul. He let out a tortured, rasping noise. Then his legs buckled. His body slumped forward. And he dropped to the ground with a thud, his tusks driving into the soft earth."
When you compare the two, it is evident that Orwell's description is the superior. Each word is brilliantly chosen and placed and lingers in the memory far longer than any other depiction of the death of the unfortunate animal. But Hall runs him close, a considerable achievement.
To The Elephant Graveyard describes the hunting down of a rogue elephant in Assam. Tarquin Hall, a foreign correspondent, based in New Delhi, read a small item in the papers that described the depredations of a wild elephant in the North East and decided to go and see how it would be dealt with. He had another motive to make the trip — an ancestor had been stationed in the area and had fought in the battle of Kohima during the World War II.
At the outset, Hall makes it clear that he opposes the killing of any wild animal. This makes him uneasy about the whole project — couldn't the elephant be trapped and incarcerated in a zoo, instead of being destroyed? The hunter called upon by the government to dispatch the rogue, Dinesh Choudhury, tells the journalist that much as he would like to spare the elephant, the beast is much too dangerous (having killed over 30 people) to be spared. Initially, the writer doesn't accept the shikari's argument but over the course of the book, as he discovers Choudhury's deep understanding and affection for the huge animals, he is won over to his view.
Tarquin Hall tells a good story. The troubled reality of the North East provides the background to his tale, and he gets pretty much all the details right. Occasionally he lapses into the irritating clichés beloved of foreigners — misspelled Indian signs, the quaint use of English, unctuous Indians, our head waggle and so on — but these are slight lapses that are quickly forgotten as we get into the story.
The rogue is tracked, and finally cornered. The chase is brilliantly described, as are the final moments that I've quoted at the beginning of this review.
One last puzzle remains. One of the ancillary reasons, Hall decided to visit Assam was because he wanted to see if he could find the fabled graveyard of elephants — the final resting place these behemoths head towards when they sense the end was near. Most of those he interrogates pooh-pooh the notion, but one villager says he knows the place.
Hall and the villager set off, and when they finally arrive at their destination, the journalist (and the reader) is astonished. Indeed, the truth about the elephant graveyard (which I shall not reveal) makes for one of the best endings I've read in a book for some time now.
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