An Elephant Between My Legs

“Aage hut!”, I bellowed, but Bhola wouldn’t budge. I looked back helplessly at Phul Chand, who couldn’t hide his mirth. His bony frame shook with the paroxysms of suppressed laughter and his tongue shot out like a snake’s from the gaping arch created by the handlebar moustache and the missing incisors… I turned and looked down at the massive head between my legs… Bhola was unmoved. He just stood there shaking his head and flapping his ears… I pushed behind his ears again with my toes and repeated the command. This time, success… the elephant moved a few steps and stopped again… Humph!! It’ll be a while before I got to be a mahout….

Wondering what I was doing straddling an elephant? I was learning how to ride one. One of my favourite travel writers, Mark Shand had once traversed a part of the Indian hinterland on his elephant Tara, and fascinated by his experiences I resolved to follow in Tara’s footsteps, on my own elephant… I wanted to take an elephant through the forested foothills of the Shivaliks… sprawled out on that broad back, staring up at the blue sky and the blue mountains, interrupted every once in a while by a leafy forest canopy, rolling in rhythm with my mount’s moods, like a castaway adrift on gentle waves… waking up to the songs of a cuckoo, camping at night around a wood fire, under a starlit sky, with a body aching with the sweet pain of the day’s rigours and the mind aching in anticipation of adventures to come… Aaah… someday… just for a fortnight… someday… and so I went out looking for an elephant and a ‘hathi guru’.

That’s how I found Phul Chand, maneuvering Bhola through south Delhi’s chaotic traffic lanes one spring afternoon and asked him if he’d teach me how to ride one … Phul Chand asked me to ‘come up’. Bhola cocked his rear leg. I stepped on it and hauled my way up to the howdah… “mushkil hai sahab, mehnat hai”, he said. But I was prepared for the struggle. That weekend, I started my lessons…

That was some summers ago… but the other day, while driving along the Yamuna, I met Phul Chand again. His handlebar had grown grey by now and instead of the magnificent tusker, Bhola, he was atop a demure female, Pawankali… Initially he couldn’t recognise me but then his face broke into that familiar smile, tongue thrashing about wildly in that arch as he cracked an intelligible joke and I smiled politely… I followed him to his camp by the river where all the hathiwallahs stay… The great Bhola was chained to a tree… They seemed to have fallen on hard times…

The government had stopped the trading of elephants and even those with private owners couldn’t be sold or even transported across state lines. “Humara waqt khatam ho gaya sahab… elephant and man have been together for centuries… yeh rishta koi aajka hai, batao,” said Phul Chand ruefully as he chewed on a blade of grass while sitting on his haunches, staring blankly at the Yamuna… Nearby, on a string cot lay the owner of the elephants – Ashraf Miyan (that Phul Chand, the mahout, rode to work). “Alah–Udal ke zamane se haathi hamaare purkhon ke paas hain”, said Ashraf whose family has owned elephants for many generations. Hailing from western UP, Ashraf today is a disillusioned man. “The great art of working with elephants – symbols of power, for us and our civilisation, will soon die out… a centuries old art lost to future generations for ever…”.

There was a lull. While Phul Chand and Ashraf contemplated their future, I wondered whose cause needed championing… Looking at these great and noble beasts tethered to a tree, swinging their trunks and nuzzling each other affectionately, I wondered which side these sentient creatures would take. It seemed cruel to tie them and make them play the clown at weddings and processions, and yet on the other hand, the bond between man and elephant was not only ancient but also intense, far removed from the relationship between man and any other beast – truly a bond that had shaped history and our national psyche…

Elephants are unique. They are perhaps as far removed from other animals as human beings are… They, distinguished by their great physical stature and we, by our intellectual stature. In that respect we’re kindred spirits… There’s nothing else that looks quite like them… in a whole different mould altogether. Elephants, for the most part, are benevolent and intelligent beasts, docile, biddable and kind… and usually that’s all there is to the picture… But there’s more to this relationship than meets most eyes. Mahouts perhaps have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. They are enslaved to the elephant, caring for it night and day, as much as an elephant is enslaved to the mahout. But every mahout knows that even a moment’s carelessness around their charge could be their last…

Sometimes, these incidents occur because of uncontrolled playfulness by sub-adults, but while a game gone wrong between humans or creatures of similar stature will only result in minor injuries, such an accident between a creature that rarely weighs more than a 100 kgs and one that weighs more than 5000 kgs, could only end in tragedy for the former. But most often, these accidents happen when adult bulls go into a state called musth – an annual phenomenon where glands near the animals temples secret an oily liquid and the hormonal changes make the bull elephant sexually aggressive. In the wild, it is meant to give them the courage to challenge authority figures like other bulls so that they may fight to mate and the best genes are passed on to the next generation. But in captivity, the mahout is the only authority figure.

If you look for it on the net, you’ll find a horrific video of a domesticated elephant in Thrissur charging around wildly. When his mahout tries to stop him, he gets kicked down and flung around like a rag doll and then, while the man screams in agony, the elephant gores him with his tusks. This video is not for the faint-hearted but it brings to bear the unstoppable force of an enraged elephant and how quickly things can go wrong when an elephant is around. Experts say that noisy crowds, ill-treatment by mahouts, being forced to walk on hot tarmac on hot summers days, and being poked and prodded by strangers causes these pachyderms to lose their cool and many settle down quietly after a few minutes of madness. That may well be, but in those few minutes, a rampaging elephant has the potential to snuff out dozens of lives.

But when I told Ashraf this, he protested: “The mahouts in Kerala demand too much of their elephants… An elephant needs space and care and we give it to them… we’ve never had any accidents.”

He may be right, for now. It’s true that most such attacks have occurred predominantly in Kerala but I know of such incidents having occurred in Madhya Pradesh too. And circuses around the world have had their elephants turning on and killing their handlers. Ashraf and Phul Chand wanted me to champion their cause and help them petition the government and allow for trading in elephants and issue new licenses, but I wasn’t too sure. Domestic elephants, even those that are well-cared for, are not happy elephants. Elephants need a family and live in one all their lives. They are explorers and have an adventurous spirit. Rootless lives without permanent friends or family, chained to stakes, even if well-fed only make these exceptionally intelligent creatures depressed and sad. Looking at those elephants in chains, I knew this to be true…

Those who say that captive elephants are the only way of safeguarding the future of the Asiatic Elephant are missing the woods for the trees. Though well-meaning, such advice perhaps doesn’t take into consideration the fact that an elephant’s heart bleeds to be free and any captive elephant’s eyes will tell you that. Elephants rarely breed in captivity and that is proof of the stressful existence they lead in our cities and circuses. Trading in them is only possible if we allow their capture in the wild to sustain the demand, which Ashraf assured me, had only grown. At that, I told Ashraf that I couldn’t help him. An elephant capture is a heartrending affair and given a choice, any elephant would surely prefer risking a poacher’s bullet to a life in captivity.

Not my dreams, nor the livelihoods of Ashrafs and Phul Chands, not the death of a centuries-old-art nor the end of an era justifies the torture and capture of these magnificent creatures… And we needn’t worry, for the bond between man and elephant is primal, we don’t need ropes to keep it together… Just this February, in the forests of North Bengal, a wild elephant driven by hunger, entered a village and broke into a hut. In the dark, with his groping trunk, he picked what he could find and brought it outside. It was a five-year-old girl. Pandemonium had broken out and villagers had surrounded it but the elephant calmly placed the girl, Kalpana, between his front legs and stood his ground. He didn’t let anybody near, as if protecting her from the melee, flinging things at the villagers to keep them at bay until they settled down. 30 minutes later, he calmly went forest ward, leaving the child without a scratch on her …and this was a wild tusker...
It’s time we set the elephant free, for ‘tis time we realised that having an elephant between our legs doesn’t make us bigger, or better men…

Yet another hobo story : the runaway

Munna was running for his life. The molten tar on the road sizzled in the heat, cooking his tiny bare feet, but Munna was too scared to stop… he kept running, unmindful of the summer sun and the abusive rickshawwallahs… he kept running till he reached the Old Delhi Railway Station. Once there, he crept in with a group of passengers and followed them onto a platform, getting into the first train he could find and locked himself inside the toilet… His heart was beating like a tribal drum; his mouth was dry and sticky… he pressed open the tap, splashed some water on his face and then put his mouth to the tap and drank some water… he sat down on his haunches and wondered why he was here…

Earlier in the day: Munna’s mother, just like everyday, had left for work at a construction site, leaving Munna in the care of his 14-yearold brother. Though only 12, Munna would often bully his elder brother and run away to play with his other friends living in the same slum. Munna and the other kids bounded into a nearby park for a game of cricket with a wooden board and a ball they’d found lying in the park, perhaps left behind by one of the kids from the housing complex nearby. ‘Luckily’, they didn’t go to school and therefore could play their own game before the boys from the housing complex returned and drove them away… The game had started and Munna was fielding near the edge of the park, getting bored when a red gleam caught his eye… it was one of the younger boys from the complex riding his brand new cycle. Munna had only just learnt how to ride a cycle and that shiny red bike seemed so much more interesting than standing in the sun waiting for the ball to reach him. Munna slunk away and went up to the boy with the cycle and asked if he would let him ride it for a while. The boy refused, got down from the bike and started walking homewards. Munna asked him again… the boy snapped and walked ahead… Munna grabbed the bicycle seat. The boy pushed Munna who pushed back and then the two rolled in the dust, punching, kicking, clawing and biting like feuding tom cats… until the boy started howling and Munna let go. His friends heard the commotion, dropped their game and ran up to Munna… the bawling kid took fright and ran off without picking up his cycle… The temptation was too much for Munna and his friends… Munna picked up the cycle and one of his friends sat behind him as he stuttered to a start and then rolled away… “Mat kar Munna, bahut maarengey… leave the cycle and let’s run back home”, said one of the boys. “We’ll come back in 10 minutes and leave the cycle in the park… darr mat!” Munna had said as he pedaled away. With the wind in his hair and shiny new wheels spinning and humming their own ode to a wild sense of freedom and joy, a delirious Munna turned to talk to Anku who sat behind him… Anku screamed, Munna turned to face the road and saw a buffalo cart right in front… They both tried jumping off in the nick of time and escaped with bloodied knees and elbows. But the cycle… oh the cycle sprang forward as if it had a life of its own and smashed into the cart, and then slithered under the heavy wheels, which went over it with a sickening scrunch leaving behind a mangled mass of rubber and steel… Munna looked on in horror while Anku trembled with fear… “ab kya hoga Munna? We’re done for… colony waale bahut maarengey, police bhi bahut maaregi… and your mom, oh God, she’ll burn us alive…” Munna started running… “Munna! Munna…! Where are you going…kahan…?” Munna didn’t stop to answer… He kept on running… Anku ran with him for a while but couldn’t keep up… “Munna… Munna…” Anku’s voice faded away as Munna kept running…

And now here he was locked inside a train… He didn’t know where he was going… and he didn’t care… If he returned, he would have to face the wrath of the boy’s parents, the cops and even his mother would wish he was better off dead. He didn’t remember his village or his father… life in the slums was hard. It couldn’t be worse no matter where he went… someone knocked on the door… he didn’t open. From the hole in the steel pot he could see the ballast and ties starting to move slowly as the train started pulling away from the station. Little Munna burst into loud sobs… he hadn’t cried in years, hardened by the indifference he saw around him. But now he knew he wouldn’t see his brother or his mother ever again… he cried himself to sleep on the damp floor of the toilet…

Munna woke up in Kanpur and found himself a job in a wedding band. He made friends with another boy, Ashok, who worked for a caterer, who it turned out had also run away from the same village. Life seemed better than he’d ever known it. He worked hard, had food to eat, a roof over his head, a good friend and best of all, a couple of hundred rupees to call his own, which he and Ashok spent watching movies… some years went by. Home and family had become a distant, hazy memory… until the year 1992.

When the Babri Masjid came down, its reverberations rocked the whole country, including Munna’s little world. He was a Muslim, living in the Hindu quarter of the city. Twice, mobs surrounded hisemployer’s shop, but the employer, a Hindu, managed to dissuade them. Then during a curfew, he gave Munna some money and advised him to leave town. Munna left, but not for the station… just as he was about to reach the Muslim quarter of town, a policeman chased him but yet again a local resident pulled him into his house, fed him along with his family and when safe, guided him to the Muslim quarter… There, little Munna looked for Ashok and found him safe with his Muslim employer… Together, they left for what they thought would be a new town… New Delhi.

At the Old Delhi Railway Station, unaware that he had once jumped onto a train from this very platform, the two teenagers banded together with some others, doing odd jobs in the day and scurrying around to avoid cops and criminal elements at night. As the band grew, the group got into more organised activities, carting cargo boxes from railway cars to the parking for people. In time, Munna and Ashok started making a decent living, making about 16,000 rupees a month… but one day, he gave it all away… for a dream…

A dream that one day, even the homeless will have a voice and that irrespective of their circumstances, they will exist, not just on our streets but in our consciousness. A social worker met him at the station, and impressed with his organizational skills, showed him the possibilities and asked him to set up an organised effort for the homeless. That social researcher was Mr Dhananjay Tingle and little Munna had grown up to be Mansoor (refer to column in TSI issue dtd 20-26 April, 2009), a man who has dedicated his life to the cause of the homeless, including the responsibility of finding them a voice by giving them the right to vote, “the only way the woes of the homeless could ever be addressed…”

The day I met Mansoor, he had to leave early. It was a Tuesday. Mansoor is the secretary of a small temple near the railway station. And the evening’s ‘aarti’ is his responsibility… Every big Hindu festival, like Janmashtami or Diwali, Mansoor fasts and attends the puja. And it is he who distributes the prasad… “It really isn’t a big deal. We homeless folk are a very secular and bonded lot. We celebrate each other’s festivals and all my Hindu friends, including Ashok, join me for Iftar during Ramzan and celebrate Eid,” said Mansoor. “Why, I know of another fakir who was in fact a devotee of Shiva and had set up a small temple in the old Delhi area…” added Mr Tingle. “The homeless have been branded criminals by the local authorities, but only a small percentage, are into criminal activities… mostly drug addicts who in fact have homes in the city but have been driven to the streets and to stealing by their addiction,” Tingle continued, “Most of the homeless are displaced people who’ve lost homes to feuds and floods, or are runaways, making ends meet by doing essential odd jobs. The recent Kosi floods, for instance, have sent thousands into our cities. The government wants to remove the homeless from our streets. They can’t be wished away… what we need is to create an equal opportunity society across cities, towns and villages and greater sensitivity for disadvantaged populations. Delhi, just like other big cities, has thousands of homeless workers, and just to remind the city that they matter, I think they should go on strike for a day. Believe me, the city’ll come to a stand still… Mansoor’s life reads like a fairy-tale (he even found his mother again) and I know of others who’ve been lucky, becoming photographers, social workers, even school teachers; but most don’t survive the grind… they die young; and their bodies are only discovered when some passerby sees rats jumping out of the eye-sockets of the man they thought was sleeping on the pavement…”

If a nation really is known by the way it treats its weakest, then at least for now, we, including you and me, remain a nation of cold, callous and self-centred egotists...

The hobbled hobo

Wasn’t long into the afternoon when we first saw him… We were a little lost and needed to stop and ask for directions, but that hot summer afternoon, on that usually busy bridge across the Yamuna that connects what Delhiites fondly call ITO to the sprawling industrial pastures of Western UP, there wasn’t a soul to be seen… as we trundled along slowly, we saw him bundled in rags by the pavement… We stopped to ask, he got up… a ghastly sight with his long matted hair gathered in greasy clumps, his sunken cheeks stretched over high cheek bones and at his chin grew a scraggly beard… his filthy and tattered clothes seemed to have grown brittle with dirt and age and his skin was dry and scaly… There are many such homeless tramps on our streets so I didn’t think twice about rolling down the window and popping the question when the stench hit us and we saw flies buzzing around what must have once been his left shin… His left leg below the knee had swollen like the stomach of a dead cow and near the shin was a gaping hole… “Gosh, he’s got maggots in there!” my friend Eravee exclaimed… “and isn’t that a bone sticking out from that wound?” I looked and realised that it was so. The man seemed to feel no pain though. He casually started peeling dead skin from his foot and then looked at me as if to ask why I had disrupted his slumber… So I stopped staring and asked him the way to our destination. He mumbled and pointed to his left… we drove off….

“This is the capital… how could a man with a shattered rotting leg be lying around on a busy flyover without anyone stopping and doing anything about it! It’s shocking!!” I exclaimed. “What’ll anyone do,” asked Eravee … “What did we do? Aren’t we walking away too, just like everybody else… We aren’t doctors; we can’t take him home and the condition he is in, can’t even take him to a hospital… We don’t even know if we’ll be able to pick him up without worsening his condition. And then who cares for him, pays for the treatment etc? He obviously has no one to do this for him… really, who cares? Would you… could you, or I take on this responsibility?”

“But isn’t there anything one could do? How could we allow something like this to happen in front of our very eyes and not react? I mean, this is not someone being robbed or raped on gunpoint wherein concerns for our own safety stop us from stepping in and trying to help, right? I’m sure there is something we could do to reduce this man’s suffering… isn’t there,” I asked…. “I don’t know…. I’m sure there are some NGOs we could ask around for….,” Eravee wondered aloud. Hmm, NGOs… these days, isn’t there one for everything one could think of (and thank God and their funding organizations for that)? So, we called a friend of ours who we knew would’ve been busy spilling coffee over her keyboard at that hour and asked her if she could find out about an agency that was committed to providing medical aid to the homeless. And that resourceful little Samaritan called us back with a handful of options. Eravee called on two of those numbers and sure enough, we got a response from a certain Mansoor who promised to reach the said spot and attend to the tramp… We were relieved. We felt that even as we drove off, we hadn’t ‘walked away’ from our responsibilities … aah, the moral high ground offers a great view… of oneself.

However, when I called that evening to check with Mansoor about our patient’s health, I found out that apparently they hadn’t been able to locate the man and had left without him. I was upset and grew skeptical of this Mansoor. I asked him why they couldn’t spend more time looking… He said he tried his best… Disappointed, I arranged for a meeting the next day with Mansoor at the venue so that he wouldn’t have an excuse this time… he agreed… and sounded rather somber…

Next day, I was late and reached the spot more than an hour behind schedule… I was afraid that Mansoor might leave, citing the delay as an excuse, so I called him to assure him and he assured me in turn, saying I’d find him there… We were supposed to meet at the mouth of the aforementioned bridge and that is where I found Mansoor and his friend Mr Tingle. We drove up a few metres and we found the man just as we’d left him… There was a dirty rag tied around the wound. I couldn’t go near him because of the pungent odour and grime around the man. But Mansoor gently put his arm around the man and started talking to him… he had my respect… I strained to hear the man but couldn’t understand a thing. Mansoor tried to explain…. “His name’s Babu Rao.. he’s from Andhra Pradesh. He came here looking for a job and can’t quite remember how he injured his leg… he seems to have lost his mind a bit,” he surmise. “Now what?”, I asked. “Well, it’s a terrible wound… he’ll need a surgeon. So we’ll have sent to a charitable hospital. But we’ll inform the cops first… the ambulance wouldn’t take him unless the cops are present. Don’t worry, it won’t take long… but we’ll have to be here till they arrive…” I nodded… Mr Tingle dialed 100 and informed the cops while Mansoor called CATS* on 1021099 (a friend of mine suggested we could also try dialing 1092). Within 15 minutes, both the ambulance and the cop car had arrived… but Babu Rao wouldn’t budge… Mansoor put an arm around him, “kya hua baba… kyun nahin jaoge…” Babu Rao mumbled… “he fears that he’ll be jailed… the homeless are terrified of the police”. With a compassionate patience, Mansoor explained that they were only here to help. Rao seemed to trust Mansoor and after a lot of cajoling, he agreed and was carried into the ambulance. “Don’t worry… he’ll live…” the ambulance driver called out as they drove off.

“We couldn’t sleep last night”, Mr Tingle said as saw the ambulance off… “We felt really bad about not being able to rescue him yesterday. There’s so much that needs to be done for the homeless but we just can’t seem to do enough. Two years ago, in Fatehpuri, the government had set up some temporary night shelters to protect the homeless from the biting cold of Delhi’s winter nights… Mansoor and I had gone to help and inspect the arrangements. Outside one of these tents, at about 9:00 p.m., we saw an old man haggling with the caretaker… “The caretaker’s not letting me in… please ask him to let me… it’s so cold outside”, the old man complained in desperation. We rebuked the caretaker and asked him to let the old man in. The caretaker apologised and showed us in… Inside, the shelter was bursting at the seams. Equipped to house 60 inmates, it was packed in with more than 250 people… it couldn’t have taken in ant without squashing it. It was so difficult… telling the old man that there just wasn’t any space left... Our words took the fight out of the old man… He nodded… he understood… The caretaker emerged with a couple of blankets and we wrapped them around the old man as he sat down outside the tent. We promised to look around and let him know if we found a place for him and left. After hours of searching and calling, we finally found a shelter which had some room. We rushed to Fatehpuri. In the December mist, we could see the old man where we’d left him, wrapped in blankets, sitting outside the tent, his right hand holding on to one of the tent’s ropes. As we got closer, we called out to him but he didn’t budge… So Mansoor patted him on the shoulder and then on his bare arm. Mansoor froze… the old man’s hand was cold and stiff… he was dead! We felt so hollow.. so helpless that day… and this feeling hounds us all the time…. because of our countless limitations, we can’t always provide help on time, and are haunted by the thought that would it be too little… too late. When Mansoor called last night to say that they hadn’t been able to look long enough to find this man, that old helplessness returned. We were feeling sick in the stomach as we waited, unsure if we’d be reaching this man in time… I’m so glad we did…” The enormity of their task was obvious… I asked him if there was anything we could do to help. Mr. Tingle smiled, “Just let people know that they don’t need us to help people like Babu Rao. Just call the cops and the ambulance (take note, folks… the numbers are up there for Delhi and each city will have its own) and insist that you’ll wait for them to show up. They’ll do the rest… Just remember the numbers, and please don’t hesitate to help… The homeless aren’t always junkies and losers but often people from decent families who’ve been pushed out of their homes in distant villages by catastrophes and feuds. They come to our cities seeking shelter and a livelihood … We might not have the means to offer them that but don’t they deserve at least our compassion? Remember, circumstances, whether ours, theirs or of those who we love, could change, have changed, in an instant… I always believe that if we keep doing our bit for those in need, providence too tries its best to let us keep ‘doing’, never ‘needing’…”

To touch a Mirage

“There’s a magic portal somewhere down this road”, I told her… “Close your eyes and I’ll take you there…” and she closed her eyes, smiled and swam off into an easy slumber, in tune with an Ismail Darbar rendition on the radio… Outside, through a half open window, the winter sun caressed the mustard metropolis that grew tall on both sides of the six-lane highway and the hum of radials on tarmac danced with the whizzing wind as it wafted in… it was going to be a long drive to the Valley of Valour…

Hours later, having navigated past crowded lanes buzzing with auto rickshaws, open drains lined with squatting late-risers and modern cities that had sprung up around ancient walls, I finally reached a lonely tamarind tree next to a narrow black ribbon that rolled out of the magnificence and frenzy of Udaipur and disappeared north into the high hills of the Aravallis… we were almost there. I gently nudged her and she stretched, smiled and with her eyes still shut, asked “ … are we there?” I ran my fingers through her hair and said “ …no, not yet… but the magic has begun…” She opened her eyes and saw that we were surrounded by golden hills that leapt up towards the sky, like noble warriors, fierce and bold, guarding the gateway to an old world and its secret treasures… we had entered the portal… the road to Kumbhalgarh.

Tucked away in the brave heart of Mewar, in Southern Rajasthan, lies Kumbhalgarh – a land of austere beauty, forged by courage and sacrifice, where it is said, even today, roam the spirits of long-dead warriors, protecting this land from the evil in our hearts. And through this land run two great arteries; one a river called the hope of the forest – Banas, and the other, the great walls of the Kumbhalgarh fort that snake their way along these hills for 36 kilometres, said to be the longest running fort walls after the Great Wall of China. Kumbhalgarh is perhaps too far away and too little known to figure in your holiday plans, but that is exactly what makes it such a great place to visit… for if you’re looking for a romantic destination that doesn’t cost the moon and yet is a world where all that stands between the horizons stands to wait on you, then Kumbhalgarh it has to be… In all our time there, we practically had the place to ourselves, except for a busload of French tourists who dropped by one afternoon and I did see a group or two of Indian tourists in the three days we spent there. But honestly, they seemed to have lost their way while heading out of Udaipur… and this was at the height of the tourist season!

But if you are sitting on the fort walls at the right hour, when the evening skies are set ablaze by the setting sun and shadows lengthen in the vast empty plains below, there is one who will, on occasions, tap you on your shoulder and whisper in your ear, and tell you tales that only ‘time’ could tell… It is an hour when, like centuries ago, the empty valley seems to come alive with warriors streaming out of the shadows, the sounds of horse hooves pounding the earth, elephants trumpeting their fury while conches blare… the screams of soldiers as they clash, kill and die… the valley becomes the battlefield it was born to be, streaked with blood and glory, and then a stray gust of wind, brings ‘time’ back to the present, and he’s gone… the tale remains unfinished, the sights and sounds of the past fade into the folds of the earth and the valley returns to its serene solitude… but by then you know, you’d been touched by a mirage…

This might be the place where Rana Pratap was born, the fort that Rana Kumbha built and the land that was both witness and ally to the legendary conquests of Rajput valour. But there’s more to Kumbhalgarh than just history and heritage. At more than 6200 feet above sea level, Kumbhalgarh is one of the highest points in the region, and those who like driving holidays, the winding roads that cling to these rugged hills offer a fair challenge… sharp hair-pins, blind corners, more trail than tarmac and on occasions so narrow that barely a car can pass… but it rewards you with vistas that take one’s breath away… every once in a while, the copper landscape would break into a brilliant blue with little lakes and streams springing up where you least expect them, and these hills, though not a patch on the tall mountains further north, have a wild untamed spirit that touch a chord in every heart that’s been bitten by wanderlust. The best thing about this road is that it is almost always empty (all along the 80 odd kilometres, I saw just one other vehicle), except at every third blind corner because just when I got used to the idea of having the road to myself and my eyes drifted away from the horizon and into her’s, out popped a camel from the corner with a bright turbaned rider on top, whose piercing hazel eyes burnt a hole in my wind-shield; on another occasion, it was a pair of tall slim women with fire-wood stacked on their heads who giggled and turned away as I slowed down to let them pass… and finally it was an adorable little naked sand-haired tyke running with gay (I use the word in all innocence as it once used to be used ) abandon, being chased by a hobbled donkey who in turn was being chased by a similarly attired little moppet, on the very last of the blind corners… so keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel and keep the romantic urges in the dash board for a while, for a mistake here would send one crashing many metres down the sheer cliffs that skirt the road…

Back on the fort, I held her by the hand and pulled her towards a ledge at the rear of the fort, helped her on to it and stood behind her. Below us, for as far as the eye could spy, there spread the green woods of the Kumbhalgarh sanctuary… where panthers prowl and wolves howl… She shuddered, in fear and anticipation, of the adventures that lay ahead of us in these enchanted forests…

Just a few hours after midnight, in the freezing cold of the wee hours, we got into an open rickety Mahindra MUV and juddered into the forest…the bone wracking drive along a perilously narrow hill track and the biting cold only brought us closer as we huddled together and hurtled into the forest… a rustle in the thicket, a pair of eyes glowing in the dark, the crackle of dry leaves… the forest flattered to deceive… it was almost dawn and we hadn’t seen a thing. And then, in the feeble light of the plains, I saw shadows… a pair of loping silhouettes… I turned towards her and whispered… she looked up as did I but the shadows had disappeared back in the darkness… had I really seen something? I wasn’t so sure… and then the long lonely wail, a wolf ’s howl… there, we’d touched a mirage again…

That night, after dinner, while the Rajasthani dancers danced to the lilting beats, we retired to the roof of the Aodhi and lay in each other’s arms and looked up at the clear starlit sky… it was beautiful… in that moment, we spoke no words and gazed at the sky… with no mirages to touch, in joy we’d cry…