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Chapter One – The Elephant Heist
Once upon a time, around a hundred years ago, in the land of elephants and spices, lived a boy who had a storm in his chest and a twinkle in his eye. It was a time when India was under Crown Rule: the time of The British Raj.
The boy was Indian; his skin the colour of earth, his eyes and hair as black as night. Most of him was dark and brown and black on the exterior and within him flickered a zest for life – an unpolished diamond, he was. And thus his name was Heera – which means diamond in Hindi.
Heera was the son of Vasu, an Indian tribal woman who used to collect wood in the forest. On one of her routine wood-collecting expeditions, she had given birth to Heera. That day, she had walked out of the forest as casually as she would on any other day, except she held a baby to her bosom, instead of a bundle of wood on her head.
Born in the wilderness – under the cloudless, blue Indian sky and amongst the bird song – Heera had a piece of the forest etched within him. By the time he was seven years old, he could climb most trees with the swiftness of a squirrel and could swing on branches with the agility of a monkey. Snakes fascinated him more than they scared common people, and he could tell which ones were venomous, just by looking. He knew most medicinal herbs there were to know and where to find them. Wild fruits such as wood apples, java plums, gooseberries, custard apples, coconuts, and bananas were his staple diet. And he always had a glut of these, eagerly supplied to him by Bali – a magnificent, eight-foot-tall elephant.
Heera and Vasu lived in a small hut at the edge of the forest. Thatched with bamboo and hay, the hut’s roof slanted at a precarious angle to the walls which were plastered with soil and cow dung. Heera had painted these naturally ochre walls with a mixture of rice paste, water, and gum, using a chewed bamboo stick as a paintbrush. The inside of the hut smelled of wood, smoke, ash, earth, animal dung, and sweat. And the only thing that glinted in the hut, with whatever light it could catch, was a piece of a broken mirror that had been embedded in the mud wall by an insistent Heera and his reluctant mother.
“No, no. We can’t be keeping this.” Vasu had looked at the mirror with disgust as if it were a dead rat. “Where did you find it?”
“Under a tree.” Heera, then only five, had pointed outside the hut, dejection strewn across his face like the dust that coated it from all the digging he had done to discover the mirror buried under the ground.
“Someone might have buried it there. Nobody keeps broken mirrors inside their homes. It’s a bad omen, child.” Vasu rubbed at his grubby face with the loose end of her saree.
Heera’s guileless black eyes batted and grew as wide as plates, with wonder, as he turned the mirror in his hands. “Look how beautiful.” The mirror – an irregular pentagon – winked in the sunlight through the window. “It’s my treasure, Ma. Please let me keep it,” he implored.
Vasu’s insides warmed with affection. She couldn’t get herself to say no. The worse omen could only be an unhappy child. Her unhappy child.
It all started with a loud BANG that set off a cacophony of birds ringing through the forest one afternoon. Heera was in his hut, painting diamond shapes on the walls that looked unbearably naked to him after his mother had given them a fresh coat of cow dung a few days back. The paintings, even though plain white, added colour to his life.
Heera was busy admiring the half-done wall and was wondering what patterns to draw around the irregular piece of mirror, to accentuate it.
Spitting into the palms of both hands, he slid them through his longish hair, looking into the piece of mirror as he did so. He repeated this a couple of times until all his shoulder-length tresses had been slicked back and set. I’m never losing these, even if Ma doesn’t like them.
Satisfied, he picked up an apple and sank his teeth into the crisp sweetness.
The gun shot shook him. The mirror on the wall trembled. The apple fell to the floor and tumbled away. Heera’s stomach bunched up to his throat.
It had to be the Sahibs hunting.
The first time Heera had heard a gunshot was a few years ago. Then, he didn’t know what he had heard. Like any curious child, he asked his mother. Vasu had tried her best to avoid answering him. She couldn’t bear to burden his innocent mind with the cruelty of the world. However, Heera, who was as obstinate as a mule, didn’t give up and Vasu had to speak up.
“Must be the sahibs on shikar,” Vasu had said reluctantly.
That answer didn’t satisfy Heera’s appetite.
Who were these sahibs?
What was shikar?
He dug at Vasu until he tired her. And although he had got the truth out of her, he had found it hard to comprehend. Why and how could someone kill for fun? Whose vile and preposterous idea was that?
The thought of the atrocity lingered in his juvenile mind even though he dodged it for days and pushed it aside when it pained him. Finally, he buried it in a dark corner of his mind.
A few months later, he had found young Bali, struggling to get out of a deep mud pit flooded with the monsoon rains. Falling in love with Bali changed things – for the worse. He loved him like his child, his best friend, his brother, his everything. It was like letting a piece of himself walk outside him. Love made him vulnerable. It excavated that dark corner in his mind and let out his nastiest fears. What if it was Bali next?
Heera’s heart sank when the gun went off. And what followed next left him in a state of shock and panic that rose and rose in him until it had him in its grasp, paralysed from head to toe.
It was a sharp, high-pitched trumpet that cut through the forest. And Heera recognised it. Were his fears coming to life? He couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t a playful, happy trumpet. It was a cry of fury and pain.
BALI!!! No. No. No. Please God. NO.
His soul contorted with anguish. Forcing himself out of the terror that overpowered his mind and body, he ran in the direction of the sound, legs flying.
Another trumpet followed.
Bali. I’m coming, dost. I’m coming.
Heera ran unthinking and unstoppable, channelling all his fear into his legs, his heart thrashing against his ribcage. He knew the forest well and threw himself over the branches and ducked under them as he ran. Wind whipped through his long tresses, sending wisps of hair flying in tangles. The trumpeting continued, helping to direct him. Thorns and branches bruised and cut his skin as he lanced through the dense undergrowth. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered more than Bali. Heera’s limber body vaulted over puddles of water left behind by the monsoon and skidded through sludge, sometimes falling. Nevertheless, he got up and ran. His legs smarted with exhaustion, but his spirit would not quit.
After a while, in the distance, he could see a clearing in the forest. He saw some men on foot and a mahout riding an elephant, surrounding what looked like the head of an elephant on the ground. The men were shouting in a mix of excitement and exasperation.
Heera by now was covered head to toe with a thick paste of mud; face included. Not even Vasu would have recognised him, unless she looked very closely. He ran as far as he could go without being seen and hid behind a tree. He then pulled himself up on to a branch to gain a vantage point.
An elephant’s head was bobbing in and out of a ditch on the ground below. A koonki stood above and the mahout on his neck was throwing a rope down into the ditch trying to lasso the elephant. It was an agonising sight in itself but, within a second, what Heera noticed made the agony excruciating – the conspicuous pink-beige triangular patch of skin on the forehead of the trapped elephant. Terror tore through every inch of his body with the realisation it was Bali! Tears blurred his vision. An overpowering sense of helplessness choked him.
“BALI!” Heera screamed with all his might. His voice drowned in the commotion of the shouting men and the trumpeting elephants.
Another elephant appeared, ridden by a mahout on its neck and an English officer on its back, in a howdah. Two shikaris approached and were shouting out to the white man who sat on the elephant. It was hard to tell what they were saying since they were all screaming, their voices colliding with each other. But it looked like they were beckoning him.
“Sahib,” Heera muttered to himself, recollecting what Mother had told him. His nostrils flared with raw emotion. Hot indignation exploded within his chest and he set off in the direction of the English officer.
There were far too many to fight. But anger defied logic. He ran as if he had just invented bravery.
The shikaris didn’t see him come. Heera launched himself at one of them. The man fell to the ground swearing. Heera showered him with fists. The shikari kicked Heera away and the other seized him and forced him to a standing position by gripping his hair and neck.
“Let him go! Let Bali go,” Heera cried, kicking wildly at his captor, tears flooding his face.
“Who are you?” one of the men asked, shaking the boy by his hair. Heera screamed in pain.
“Bali who?” shouted the other.
“That elephant,” Heera replied, wiping his tears rapidly, hoping he would be heard, and pointing to Bali. “He’s my dost. Don’t kill him.” Heera looked up at the British officer who sat tall and smug on his elephant as if he owned everyone and everything around him.
The officer glared down at him. His face was all sharp angles. The lines on his forehead looked as if they had deepened with savagery over the years, to look more like trenches. He had a distinctive underbite that gave him the look of a bulldog. His moustache was dense and huge – it took up most of the howdah. And under the thick tuft of the moustache hair sat his lips – the kind that looked as if they hadn’t smiled a happy, hearty smile for ages. Although they most certainly had borne the vicious smile, the sadistic smile and the smug smile, amongst many other smiles across all shades of malevolence.
“Oi!” he called to Heera with ridicule, as if he were talking to an insect. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, his English words dripping with a heavy British accent.
Heera didn’t understand what he said. He simply brought his palms together, from the elbows to the tips of his fingers, in a desperate plea and held them up towards the officer. If grovelling could help save Bali then so be it. His ego was miniscule before the immensity of love that throbbed in his veins for his tusked friend.
“Sahib,” he begged. “Don’t kill that elephant,” he pleaded in Hindi, pointing to Bali and waving his hands in a criss-cross fashion, in front of his chest. “Please let him go.”
The officer looked at Bali and then back at Heera. Then he glanced at the men expecting them to translate what the boy had said.
But before they could, Heera spoke in broken English. “E-LAA-FANT-TT,” Heera cried in a strong Indian accent with a solid, jarring ‘T’ sound at the end. His eyes were set on the British officer.
Heera knew a few words in English here and there. Being a smart child, he would gather things around him, even subconsciously, sometimes at the bazaar, or in the main town overhearing school children. He had no friends.
A snort escaped the officer. The shikaris jeered.
“He says, sahib, that let elephant go. Don’t kill,” one of the men told the officer in English.
The Englishman guffawed. “I don’t get told what to do, boy. I only give orders.”
The shikari holding Heera slapped the back of Heera’s head.
“Shut up,” he scolded. “Don’t you dare tell sahib what to do.”
“Please, sahib. Please. He’s my dost, sahib.”
The men roared with laughter and one of them translated Heera’s plea for the officer. Heera’s eyes moved from the men to the British officer.
“Friend? Huh!” The officer said in English.
Just then Bali shrieked in pain; the trumpet shook the ground. Bali had caught Heera’s scent. In his desperation to break free of the noose around his neck, he had gripped the foot of the koonki and tugged at it with all his might. The mahout on top of the koonki had poked Bali with a pointed iron rod.
Heera broke free from the shikari’s hold and ran in Bali’s direction.
“STOP HIM,” bellowed the officer.
The shikari ran after Heera and gripped him by his torso with all his power, lifting him off the ground. Heera kicked his legs in the air frantically. He fought in vain to set himself free from the vice-like grip of the shikari. The officer raised his arm and gestured the shikari to bring Heera to him. The shikari twisted Heera’s arms and locked them behind his back, shoving him towards the Englishman.
“Get the hell out of here,” shouted the officer. “Else I might blow your friend’s brains out.” He raised his rifle to his eye and took aim at Bali.
Heera flinched. His stomach gnarled with the fear of loss. He dropped to his knees and begged.
“Don’t do it. No. NO”
The officer continued, sadistically: “He’s a wild beast worthy of being tamed or killed.” He shrugged his shoulders. “A fine tusker indeed. Can’t make my mind up.” He paused, lowering his rifle. “A fine ivory sofa, won’t hurt, eh?” He looked at the men below. “Tell him.” He raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Tell him what I said.”
The men did as they were told and the officer examined the effect of his words on Heera’s horrified face, savouring every drop of terror.
Heera could feel his blood boil.
“Some people are worse than animals, sahib. In fact, there are brutes in uniforms, worthy of being tamed,” he spat.
The men looked at Heera wide-eyed, then one of them grabbed him by his nape and shook him. “Shut up, you fool,” he screamed in Hindi.
The intensity of Heera’s insult transcended language. The officer felt it like a blow in the face.
“What did he say?” he yelled at the men.
The men bit their tongues and looked at the ground.
“Can’t you hear me? Speak up, you rascals!”
With great reluctance one of them translated Heera’s words.
The officer raised an eyebrow – with both surprise and ire – so high, it almost touched his hat. Quick bursts of breath left his flaring nostrils.
“A bit rich coming from a ragamuffin, aye! You’ve got some nerve,” he said, anger pulsing through him. “Come here.” He crooked his finger at Heera. His right eye twitched with undiluted hatred while his left one widened its glare over the boy.
The shikari flung Heera towards the officer’s elephant. In an instant, the officer slammed the butt of his rifle on Heera’s forehead.
Heera staggered backwards, his legs buckling under him. The whole scene span around him before he collapsed to the ground.
“That’ll teach you to keep that insolent tongue of yours wrapped around your teeth,” the officer sneered.
Heera was unconscious before he could hear the words.
The Elephant Heist – Rucha Dixit
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