An ‘elephant’ on a moonlit night

Buddhadev Nandi

IT was a June evening. My friends Prakash and Soumitra barged into my house and persuaded me to join their expedition to the forest range at Basdevpur village to enjoy a moonlit night. I restrained myself from pouring cold water on their exuberance.

An unused and dilapidated runway of the military airport built by the British, penetrating the forest, bore testimony to World War II. The forest had been in the news because of the regular migration of herds of elephants from the Dalma range of Jharkhand.

When we were deep in the jungle, a small group of people engaged in cutting a big sal tree warned us not to proceed further as a herd led by a tusker had become ‘permanent residents’ of that part of the jungle. We disregarded their advice, if only to show them that we were not scared.

But fear had already started looming large in our minds. Prakash, seemingly an omniscient person, advised us to run in a zigzag pattern if an elephant made a real charge, as it was not very nimble due to its bulky size. After a long silence, Soumitra gave his expert view, which seemed strange to me. He stated that if we stayed downwind from a charging elephant, it would find it difficult to smell us and detect our position. I suggested that they throw their rucksacks to distract the chasing elephant if it drew nearer.

However, we were so exhausted after a long walk that our hasty steps turned into a trudging stroll. The desire path seemed never-ending. All of a sudden, Soumitra stopped like a beagle catching the scent of a quail, looking at something on the left side. We followed suit. But before I could see or perceive anything, both of them scrambled, clamouring ‘elephant, elephant...’ like two aircraft chased by enemy planes.

Both Prakash and Soumitra claimed there was a big elephant swinging its trunk a few metres away from the desire path. My heart almost sank in fear imagining the sight of a wild pachyderm nearby. Prakash had already hurled his rucksack on the path. We reached home around 9 pm.

Early next morning, Prakash turned up at my house on a motorcycle to retrieve his rucksack. Luckily, as the desire path perhaps had still not been used by any person, we found the blue bag lying on the narrow passage between dense shrubs. We moved forward a few metres until we reached the spot where we had apparently come across an elephant the night before.

We turned our eyes to the right and were astonished to see, nearly a hundred metres away, a bushy mango tree with creepers hanging down from its boughs — like the trunk of an elephant. The creepers were still swinging in the morning breeze. Both of us burst into laughter.