The human-elephant connection in India has deep roots dating back thousands of years. One of the only cultures in the world to worship the elephant as a deity, the relationship between human and animal has a colorful and complex history. In 300BC, the emperor of India created one of the first recorded wildlife conservation laws when he decreed killing elephants to be illegal, even as domesticating elephants has long been viewed as a valuable economic asset and, in many cases, necessary to human survival.
Over the past six months, National Geographic photographer, Jody MacDonald and I have been partnered to create a comprehensive series on the human-elephant conflict in northern India. We believe that to understand the nature of the conflict, we must first deeply understand the unique history of elephants in India and the special relationships that have been possible between elephants and people. During our research, we learned of a mysterious woman, Parbati Barua, the foremost, and only female, mahout (elephant caregiver/trainer) in all of India. She is widely revered as a guru and elephant whisperer, and in high demand as a trainer, teacher, and advisor to elephant handlers and Forest Service officials across the country. She has recently won awards for her work in elephant conservation.
Over two decades ago, the Discovery Channel produced a documentary about the plight of the Asian elephant in India, along with a companion book, “Queen of the Elephants” by Mark Shand, both which featured Parbati Barua and her work. However, there has been little written about her since, and virtually nothing about her vast elephant wisdom and her experience with the vanishing art of mahout. We were determined to find her and see if she would be willing to spend time with us, teaching us some of the secrets of elephants, their relationships with humans, and how captive elephants are helping conserve rhinos and their own species. The following excerpt is from our book in progress, “Parbati Barua and the Vanishing Art of Mahout” and part of my reading at the Explorers Festival in Húsavik, Iceland this October, 2018.
Dhupjhora Elephant Camp, Gorumara National Forest, Dooars, West Bengal, India
August 2018
A soft but persistent rain falls on the thatched roof of our bamboo hut at 4:30 am. We wake after a fitful night of sleep on the shared, square bed, with one thin cover on top of hard wood and little padding. Outside, layers of mist hovered above the rows of tea gardens. Roosters crow from the yards of mahout homes just across the lawn. No birdsong. After weeks of traveling together, in quarters more intimate than comfortable, we have developed our own routines, which, in near silence, we embark on now. Tap water splashed on sleep-encrusted eyes, bottled water to brush our teeth. The rustle of sliding cameras into waterproof backpacks, the zip of rain jackets.
From the dining area we wait for her, and for coffee. The rain now falls in sheets, spilling from the roof, and spraying through the open walls onto the floor. Parbati arrives. Her black hair, with no sign of grey, is pulled back in an artful bun held together with a tiny stick and dangling ornament. An emerald green bandana is wrapped around her head with the effect of an aging activist from the 1960s. Still the gold hoop earrings, but gone is yesterday’s elegant sari. This morning she wears the oversized camouflage army jacket we recognize from the hours of research we conducted before we began this project: internet photographs, the book about her journey with Mark Shand, and the Discovery Channel documentary from two decades ago. “She looks bad-ass,” I whisper to Jody, who smiles and agrees. Finally, we think, we are getting to see the Parbati Barua who we journeyed all the way back to India to meet.
“It is raining,” she says as a greeting. “We will still go, I think.” Tea and coffee in hand, we strain to see the Pilkana, the sheltered elephant stables, along the Murti river. The mahouts are shoveling and raking the beds, cutting banana stalks for this morning’s breakfast. We drink in silence. Parbati has told us many times, “Jungle people do not like to talk.” And even though she has granted us this week to live with her and observe her with the elephants, we only ask questions during the windows of time she permits. The rain is easing and a pink light begins to form above the tea gardens. Jody reaches for her camera. Two elephants emerge from the tree-lined path. Kabeti, with her white and pink chalked Hindu designs drawn on the triangle swath of leathery skin above her trunk by her mahout, and Denobundu, who had once flown with an elephant to Japan to teach the art of mahout to the handlers at the Tokyo zoo. Behind Kabeti is Hillary, also carefully painted, her name on her side, entwined with yellow chalk daisies. We climb the tower so we can be high enough to get on top of the elephant. We are specks of weight for her, and evenly distributed so she is comfortable.
“Barefoot is the best way to ride an elephant,” our guru says. So I leave my flip flops behind and let the warm, rough sandpaper of Hillary’s neck and sides wrap around my feet, I massage her as a thank you and wonder if she can feel it, knowing she does. We set off into a part of the jungle we haven’t been to yet. Into the core, where these elephants carry forest service officers on regular duty to check on the heath and safety of the endangered rhinoceros and wild elephants that reside in this wildlife sanctuary, protecting from poachers.
Alternating between a slim winding path and dense vegetation, the continuous tree canopy shelters us from getting wet. The jungle is so thick that only elephants can work their way through and cover this significant ground. Rain drops on fat leaves, branches cracking underfoot, periodic soft calls of the mahouts- Meil, Meil, rush of the rapids in the stream crossing, the splash of the river as it is blocked against the elephant’s thick sides. Plodding feet, slow and deliberate.
Eyes closed. Breathe in and breathe out. I conjure Parbati at fourteen years old, exactly the age between each of my daughters now. Trying, but failing, to picture them perched on the back of this small, swift koonki (specially-trained) elephant, lasso in hand, scouting, swinging, rising up to stand alongside a wild tusker? Deft capture of the young bull and proudly taking him into camp, caressing him, singing to him, and along with other koonkies, painstakingly training him over several weeks. Mela Shikar: the ancient, and now forbidden, art of elephant capture with lasso. Phandis: the experts at catching wild elephants, whose specialized knowledge and techniques are now useless.
This is Parbati Barua. Born a royal princess, her family’s lost material fortune gave way to found natural riches. Inspired by her guru father, the legendary mahout, P.C Barua, the late Rajah of Gauripur, Parbati’s true palace is the veins of the Assam jungle and elephants are her tightest family. This woman rides alongside me right now, lounging high on the padded chatti, at utter ease, lost in thought. A sprite, a myth, a legend. She is tiny and mighty, a shy force, stubborn and easily irritated, a child and a sage. All these things at once. She is the intersection of fact and fiction. Her knowledge is elephant knowledge. She holds the mystery of the vanishing art of mahout.
“Here is a story,” she had told us a few days before. It was raining then as well; monsoon season and the parks are closed to all but the forest patrol, mahouts, the elephants, and us. We sat on chairs along a wall that blocked any hope of a breeze, not daring to move. The heat was as thick as the jungle that spread out before us. Parbati in a grass green tunic and athletic sweats, rainbow flip flops and faded crimson painted, ridged nails. She took up half of the chair space; she may have been floating. I had waited a week for this.
“Young people today,” she begins, “they have too many distractions. When I lived in the jungle with my family and our elephants, catching and training wild elephants, we had nothing to do except to bond. The elephants have a very special place. We talked about them and we sang to them. There are so many songs in our folklore. All are about nature. There are love songs and song about how we inter-fit. The elephant herd is about being female. No king, only a queen. The male is the guard, but the female is in command. She tells the others where to go and when to go. In our folklore, there is one story:”
The first wife of a Brahman was abandoned by her husband and cast out. Every day she went to the jungle to pick flowers and fetch water from the river. There, unable to contain her grief, she weeps many tears. Downstream, one day, the king of elephants is drinking water with his herd. The water is salty. The King asks his herd to look upstream and find the cause.
Parbati pauses and considers. She says, “At that time everyone could talk- even the birds.” She continues:
The full herd came to the wife and asked why she is making the river so salty. She said, ‘I am so sorry.’ and explained her plight. The King of the elephants said, ‘Come with me.’ So, he took this lady in his trunk and travelled to his home at the base of the Himalaya. He told the other elephants to bring seven pails of water from seven streams. The king poured this over her head, and then placed the lady on his throne. He told the elephants ‘From today, there is only queen and you must obey her.
With enlivened eyes and amplified voice, Parbati expands with fresh energy that is palpable and contagious. “When I was young and traveling with my father on elephant-catching journeys, we would go deep into the jungle into this part of Assam.” She runs a thin finger along a route that follows the border of Bhutan and the Himalayan mountain range. “You can not travel through this area anymore. It is very disturbed with extremist groups now. It has become dangerous. But at that time…”
She stops. “This one is a true story.” she said, “Not folklore.”
“In that area there are many, many elephants. There is a lady in the jungle. I have met her two times. All the elephant people know her: elephant owners have heard of her, old phundis and mahout families have met her several times. We call her “Goddess of the Forest.” She is a human being, but she never talks. You cannot get too close to her. She lives in the forest and we pray to her for permission to capture elephants in her part of the jungle. You can only catch elephants there with her permission. She will show you a finger. If one, then you can take one elephant. Two fingers means two elephants. Sometimes she will throw her hands down like this.” Parbati flings her hands out in front of her lap. “That means ‘no catching.’”
“This lady always has a laughing face. When I have seen her, she wears a beautiful sari and is alone. Maybe she is like Mowglis in the ‘Jungle Book’—an abandoned child, adopted by the elephants. When we track there, if we see an elephant footprint and also a human one, we know we are among her herd. Sometimes she will shout ‘uh oh ho’ and just where she is sitting, on all sides, wild elephants will come and surround her. And none will harm us. But, if you say the wrong things to her…then that fellow will go. He will be thrown by her elephant. We have seen that also. Her elephants protect her. It has been a long time since we have entered that part of the jungle. As elephant catching is no longer going on, we don’t travel anymore. But that was our path, years ago, and twice I met her. She has allowed us to capture six elephants.”
“In her herd, the tusk is like this..” Parbati lifts one arm high over her head and the other curves at the elbow, low by her waist, stretched out to the rail. “One is up and one is down. The Goddess of the Forest sits on his lower tusk.”
Parbati stops and sips her tea. Jody leaning so far at the edge of her seat that the plastic warps. Images dance and blend: The elephant queen placed on the throne by trunk, the silent goddess of the elephants swinging on a tusk, the young girl with her lasso overhead as she rides and captures. Parbati searches our eyes, trying to sense the effect of her stories. Here we are, the three of us, women who have travelled more than miles to get to this moment. Joined by suspended disbelief, rapt with attention and fully inside the jungle, consumed by, and committed to, every word. Parbati looks out on the dense leaves and vines, “People will not believe this thing. This is not folklore. This is truth. This is magic.”
And we believe.
