We rose into the city of Jaipur through a road that was on a slight incline. On each side of the road were pink walls with intricate white stripes. They looked regal, yet worn down. Like India herself. Standing on the edge of a brighter future, yet constantly evoking a regal past – all the while in the midst of squalor and misery. This was Jaipur, a microcosm of India.
After the incline ended, we saw the Jaipur itself. It was an Indian city with goats, trash, colors, chaotic movement, scents both delicious and nauseous, and a past that declared itself everywhere you looked. Jaipur was known as the pink city because of the deep pink paint that was applied to the facades of the city. It was striking, and all of the declarations of how "touristy" Jaipur was melted away. Jaipur was about as "touristy" as Indian got, and it was still raw. Raw and regal. Jaipur was indeed a place that let you know that the Rajput kings had ruled from here with strength. they had formed a convincing and consistent bulwark against the invasions from the north. This walled entrance was an echo from the past, declaring that all who entered were guests of the Raj.
Jonah asked, “Is this it? Are we in Jaipra?”
“Jai-PUR, idiot,” Aidan responded. “Yes, but it’s Jaipur, not Jaipra.”
“Be nice, Aidan,” said Tara.
We continued to drive through the crowded streets of Jaipur.
We pulled into the entrance to the hotel in Jaipur. The entrance itself suggested a need for trepidation. One the right side was a small stall where an old man was bending bicycle tires into shape, on the other side was a man with a welding torch sitting in the midst of a fountain of orange sparks, free of a protective helmet. I had a sinking feeling that any place that was near these shops could not be nice. We started to turn left, and I remember all of the places I had convinced Tara to stay when we were young and broke. We were past the financial barriers to staying in low end places, but maybe an old impulse had emerged and I had misfired. Maybe we were going to stay in a dump.
Oops.
We pulled the van between these two shops, and the first thing we noticed was that there was greenery all around. It was a beautiful setting. Behind the greenery was a series of decks, balconies, doors, a pool - an enchanting environment. We could barely make out the details. Alsisar Haveli - it seemed to be what we had seen on the web. An old manor house that had been renovated into a beautiful in for a few hundred travelers at a time, we had seen something that truly made us excited - now we felt that we had made a good choice. We all tumbled out of the car, stretching, yawning and generally sore from four hours in Santosh's van. A cool breeze hit us, and a good smell. Someone was cooking something. I thought to myself that only in India could you pass through such an uninviting gate into something so spectacular. It was a metaphor for India itself - get past the mud and find a lotus.
A series of men in uniform shot up to us and smiled, "Welcome, sir. Welcome, ma'am." They exchanging Hindi with Santosh, who opened the back of the car and let them descend on the luggage. We were gently ushered through the foliage and into the main courtyard of Alsisar Haveli. It was pristine. A few tables of elder Europeans sat in the middle of the courtyard, maps out, planning their upcoming voyages to Who-Knows-Where. We took note of the fact that the entire manor was made up of intricate balconies, balconies of different steps and height, intricately carved marble reliefs with bright colors and striking contrasts. The workers in the manor were wearing brightly colored turbans of huge scale, inviting their heads to careen off to one side, yet they remained stable. Each man had a mustache of surprising width.
This was Rajasthan.
Rajasthan occupied a place in the Indian psyche that I noticed immediately upon arrival. People would mention their home state with a sense of pride, mentioned Kerala as the jewel of India with comments about how green it was, and mentioned the northeast with a sense of distance and puzzlement, even amusement. Each region and state would elicit a response of some sort, but Rajasthan would bring forth the same type of response every time. When you asked about Rajasthan, the Indian person whom you asked would often take on an entirely different demeanor at the mere mention of its name. They would get a far-off look in their eyes.
"Ah, Rajasthan. That is good. Go to Rajasthan."
It was hard to figure out why it held such an elevated status, until you went there - it was an amazing land. Home of the Rajput kings who had held their Hindu Kingdoms intact in the face of Mughal onslaughts, it held a sense of traditionalism and mystique that was unlike anywhere else in India. Mostly desert, it did not have a beautiful countryside. It was dry and dusty. But the people had a certain something to them. The women held a very traditional bearing, often hiding their faces entirely from onlookers. Not through a veil, but rather through a scarf that was worn across the top of the head and pulled forward in such a way as to obscure anyone who was not directly in front of her. The colors and quality of the saris that they wore were of a quality not seen in much of the rest of India. Rajasthani women drew enough interest that made you turn your head at their splendor, but were modest to the point where they left you guessing. The men of Rajasthan wore turbans that were made of brilliant colors, very often being made of the brightest orange that one could imagine. They also relished the ability to grow facial hair that made their mustaches cascade down their cheeks and extend almost to their ears. They were a set apart from the rest of India that we had seen. In America, we had the habit of calling the mid-west "The Heartland", the place which typified what many of us believed to be our best attributes. I had long had a sense that Rajasthan occupied a similar place in the collective Indian psyche - an Indian Heartland.
As we walked up the desk to check in, I remembered that it was expected that I would do it.
"I'll be with you in a bit," I told Tara.
"Oh, yeah," she said, and turned around and walked the boys out into the courtyard.
In India, having a family of five stand at the edge of a desk was a distraction that would often immobilize the staff of a hotel. I was expected to do it as the father in the family, so I kept Tara free of thinking about such things.
The man at the front desk was in uniform, and had earrings in each ear. I sensed that this practice was not one that came into style during the 1980's. I had heard that some Indian men had their ears pierced as babies. I was learning that Rajasthan was one of those places, as I noticed that all of the men around the front desk had earrings in each ear. It made me think of the fact that pirates often did that and perhaps they picked the practice up during trips to.....
"Sir, welcome. Credit card, please," he stated, snapping me back into reality.
"Oh, sure," I said, and reached into my pocket. I handed him my card. He swiped it on a machine that hummed the data back to the US. He stood there looking at me, orange turban on his head.
“Which country?” he asked, smiling.
“US,” I stated, smiling back.
“Ah, George Bush. Thank George Bush for helping India,” he stated.
I looked at him, a little puzzled. “OK,” I said. What else could I say?
"Please," he said, and walked me to the room . Tara and the boys were sitting in rattan chairs in a small porch right outside of the rooms that were ours. They had the general daze about them that always follows a four hour drive, but they were experiencing that in a beautiful and serene setting, so for the first time since we had left Hyderabad, they had a feeling of peace. I could tell. Made me feel happy.
The man opened the door to one of the rooms using a key that made me think of Agatha Christie. The doors were inlaid with white marble leaves set in black wood. Splendid. And when the door opened, a whole world was opened up to us. A room with a large bed that had a canopy, walls that were painted with green, red and black intricate vines. Black and white marble floor. It was at once too much and something that left you wanting more. Tara was amazed, looking up at the ceiling. It had a chandelier hanging from it. Every other place we had been with chandeliers, it was always mentioned to have been a gift to a Maharaja from "someone in Belgium". This looked akin to those chandeliers, just detailed enough to match the other splendor in the room. The room had so much detail, very Indian detail. It was undeniably Indian, and had a very regal feeling to it. The detail seemed to engage more than one sense. Certainly sight was the primary one, but there was some untapped sense that was more about aesthetics than sensory input, and this sixth sense was being massaged by this room. It even seemed to be laughing, whatever it was.
Tara turned to the boys and said, "Daddy and I will take this room." I laughed a bit.
"Really nice, huh?" I asked. She just smiled.
"Long way from Maple Street," I joked. I had started to date her when she lived on Maple Street in New Haven.
Our bags were walked in after we had declared this would be our room, each one carried by a man in a white khurta and an orange turban. Each was sporting a strong mustache. They depicted such strength and they carried our heavy bags effortlessly despite the fact I had about fifty pounds on each of them and I had found them heavy. These were the guys you would see in so many travel books about India. In such a diverse land, you could choose from many faces to depict out to the world, but this was the one that seemed to be chosen more than half of the time. Rajasthan was starting to make sense to me - it was the heart of India. These guys could be interpreted as putting on a show with the turbans, mustaches, and traditional clothing. But I got a good sense that "touristy" in India means something different than what it means in the rest of the world - these guys were the real deal.
It made me feel awkward that men of such pride and strength would be employed to carry items for the likes of me. It seemed that something fundamental had been upset in history and things took a turn where they were serving me. I pondered it, but only for a second. The inlaid marble on the walls pulled me back into the real world.
We asked that the boys' bags be carried to their room, and it was even more fantastical than the one we had chosen. It had a lotus shape on the ceiling in which sat a multi-armed chandelier of black caste metal and fluted glass bulb covers. The room was like another world in its details of leaves, vines, branches and birds. There were a couple of beds, each covered with fine linen and a small mountain of pillows.
"Oh, cool. A television," said Liam. He walked over and turned it on. Jonah was staring at the room, but Liam and Aidan started to surf the channels. I was shocked, and started to say something. Tara reached out and touched my arm. Her look made one point very clear - if this place was to remain beautiful, I'd have to avoid getting into argument with the boys. I sat on a couch on the side of their room, just looking at the ceiling. It was the kind of couch from a remote era of greater finery, and it afforded no comfort. It was not the box of flabby cushions that a couch means in the US. It was stiff and served to remind you that there was no rest for the weary. I think they called these a "settee".
Jonah sat down next to me. He said, "This place is very Dorothy." Jonah had taken to declaring things "Dorothy" after he saw the Wizard of Oz for the first time. It was the highest affirmation that he was giving these days, although I failed to see how a farm girl from Kansas stranded in an alternate world applied to the regality of Rajasthan. But that is the difference between 6 and 39.
"Yes, it is, buddy," I told him. I pulled him up onto my lap and we sat there for a while, just looking around. It was beautiful.
Tara wandered out of the room and went back to our room. I followed her in a few minutes.
We stayed the night there, eating in a dining room where the walls were covered with painted profiles of Rajput kings. Every item on our table was served to us, someone rushing up whenever we instinctively reached out for more of anything. The food was good, the setting beautiful.
We put the boys down, giving in to their request to fall asleep in front of a movie. It seemed like a form of sacrilege to put on an American film in this setting, yet we gave in and found something suitable for innocent minds.
Tara and I sat outside of our room in a private portico between our room and the children’s. She ordered a glass of wine and I ordered a fresh lime soda, salted. We sipped these and ordered another round. It was a setting that is rare. To live a life where such serenity and peace became commonplace was to belittle reality. Such moments were made for rare experiences, and we sat there for hours, enjoying the breezes. Even though the day had been hot, the evenings had cooled off nicely. We made our way into the bed room.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too, Kitty,”: I said.
We fell into a motionless and long night of sleep.
When we awoke we wandered out into the courtyard groggy from a long night of sleep. We had fallen asleep early and that was why we were up early and well-rested. It was a great feeling, Tara and I sat outside of our room and had hot cups of coffee brought to us. Again, men in white khurtas and orange turbans. They were polite to a degree that almost embarrassed us, yet we frankly were enjoying ourselves immensely.
At that moment, I considered the amazing nature of the decision we had made to move to India. Living in India had provided us, and more importantly had provided the children, with a chance to see a side of life that helped expand our provincial American perspective on life and the world. We had seen things that shocked out sensibilities of order and cleanliness, and even our basic sense of fairness. We had also seen some small glimpses of a way of life that was rare in the current world, and was also very foreign to us. Coming from the US and sitting in such surroundings as the Haveli provided us that morning, was a very nice thing. Being waited on in this way was virtually a dead paradigm, yet we were enabled to see this side of life because Java programming was a ready available and less expensive commodity here in India. The digital Raja, of which we were a part, was rising in India. This new Raja ushered in a time when social mobility and seamless movement throughout the world, and even movement through history itself, was the domain of a few of us who were helping corporations move their business models out of their localities into India. Another new feature of this Raja was that Indians were participants in the process in ways that the prior Raja would not allow. I worked for an Indian. All of my peers were Indians.
We got into the car after we showered up and Santosh greeted us with a smile. He pulled out of the gates of the Haveli and Indian welcomed us back into her multiple arms with a cascade of beeps, crowds, filth, wild dogs, and ubiquitous cows. The tranquility of the Haveli and the quiet cups of coffee were a mere one hundred yards behind, yet we had taken a quantum leap out of the Raja life and were back into the chaos of the Indian streets. We drove through alleys, through boulevards lined with new malls, and along the edge of a lake in the middle of which was a palace in the water. Beautiful, evoking an era of lost regality that we had resurrected for thirty minutes this morning.
As we came to the Amber Fort, we noticed the large numbers of tourists in the area. A sea of large white, older white people in safari gear and with huge black cameras draped around their necks. We were getting close, these people were on foot, which usually indicated that we were within a very short walk to the Fort. We saw a long lines of about one hundred and fifty people in the bottom of a recessed segment of the fort's ruins. It was the line for the tourists to go to the top.
I had a surprise for the family.
We got out of the car. We crossed the street and walked down the few steps down to the line of tourists. It was an eclectic group to our eyes, Europeans of various ages, American couple taking their trip of a lifetime, and Japanese tourists with cameras that seemed impossibly large for their necks to hold, yet hold them they did. To the eyes of the Indian people, the people in the line must have been hard to differentiate - a mass of white people who had been feeding themselves too much for a lifetime. A mass of white people who came suited up as adventurers from the Victorian era, ready to blend into the African bush, a veritable sea of khaki and off white. Sun glasses that wrapped around the temples, producing one large undifferentiated black eye. Cyclops. Unblinking. I took a step back and decided not to look at the people in the line as if I had Indian eyes. When I did that, they produced a very frightening picture. If looked at them as my extended kin from abroad, they seemed less odd and less bizarre. I had to remind myself that the five of us were of them. Even though we had been in another culture for four months, and spent our days in the midst of Indian people and Indian sounds and Indian tastes and Indian habits, we were still from the girth-cursed white tribe that stood here in the Indian morning. We got in line, at the back. It was refreshing to know that even if we stood there for a half hour, that none of the fellow tourists would cut into the line in front of us.
There were advantages to the white tribe, and I considered that this was an excellent one. Respect for the line.
Even if it was called a "queue" or a "line" or any variety of other things in the languages of Europe, there was a general sense of respect for it. Almost sanctity. We perpetuated respect for the line from the youngest age. Children were taught to shout "Look, so-and-so cut!" at violators. In India, on the other hand, cutting in the queue was an art that was cultivated from the same ages of extreme youth. If you could walk around someone, do it. Act incredulous if anyone says anything, or ignore them outright.
So, we had that going for us. The line was the line. We had our place in it.
As we stood there, the children and Tara started to look around. Tara knew what was up, and she had told Liam. Aidan and Jonah were unaware. It wouldn't be long before they saw what was coming. Then it happened.....
A huge exhale came from the front of the line, about on hundred yards in front of us. It was a sound that was familiar to us, but it was not a sound we were used to hearing first hand. A rush of wind leaving a creature that was unlike any other in the world. In addition to the rush of wind in the exhale, there was a deep rumble of a groan that came from the same. Aidan and Jonah both looked toward the front of the line, their heads bobbing around the tall adults in front of them. At the same time they saw what we were waiting for.
"Elephants!" Jonah screamed. Aidan looked back at Tara with a huge smile, and asked, "Are we going to...."
"Yes, we're going to get on their backs and ride up to the castle on the top of that mountain," she told them.
Jonah laughed and clapped his hands together. Aidan had a look of excitement and fear mingled together in a strong dose of each. Tara was smiling and rubbing their backs as they stood there. Liam looked excited, too. I was happy. How did we ever get to be in queue to ride on the back of elephants up to a mountain citadel of a Rajput dynasty? How ever did this happen to us.....
As we stood, we all were struck speechless by the parade of elephants in front of us. Each had a man in a long white khurta and an orange turban sitting in a small seat on the back of their necks. Each man had a strong mustache and was carrying a large bamboo staff. They elephants upon which they sat were more than the striking creatures that we had seen in zoos and on screens and in carnivals our entire lives. These elephants colored in spectacular ways, with geometric shapes painted down their legs and across their expansive foreheads. Bright green diamonds, pink triangles, yellow leaves, and purple lotus flowers. All of the designs were interlocked, so your eyes followed the designs in ways that produce a meditative state. Each elephants had a unique pattern, an exquisite declaration of whose elephants was owned by whom, almost certainly mixed with a dash of superstition of some sort. The bright and colorful shapes that cascaded down each elephant's legs and head were hypnotic. As you looked at them, you noticed that the skin underneath was wrinkled and hard with tiny hairs rising from it. The wrinkles were of such depth that you felt you could sink your entire hand into one of them, and the hairs had inherited the color of the paint that had been applied to the skin in that area. There were pink patches of hair, purple patches of hair and so on. Each elephant had a different level of color, as some had been painted anew this morning while others had not received a fresh coat of paint for weeks. The Rajasthan sun beat down upon all of us and baked the paint onto their thick and gnarled skin.
As the line moved, we could see the lined up elephants in greater detail.
"Look, they don't have eyes," Aidan exclaimed, a bit surprised.
"They have eyes, but they're really small," I explained. I bent down next to him, putting my hand on his shoulder. "Look at that one there, it was a flower painted on the side of its head. See it? In the middle of that flower is the eye of that elephant. It's really small."
"I see the eye!" Jonah screamed. He stared at it for a moment and then said, "It's crying."
There was some fluid coming from the eye of the elephant we were looking at. I remembered having seen this before. I was not sure why so much fluid would come out of an elephant's eye. It gave the elephant a sad appearance.
"It's not exactly crying, buddy. It's ok, the elephant is fine." It was neither a well-stated nor a convincing statement.
"Yeah, it's crying," Aidan said, backing up Jonah and correcting me.
I decided not to debate the boys, as I had no good information on why there was a stream of tears coming out of the elephants tiny eyes. I looked closely at a few others and noticed the same. They all appeared to have weeping eyes. Odd.
There were only about ten more tourists ahead of us in line. An girth-burdened American couple was standing on the stone podium at the front, trying to step onto the large chair on the back of their elephant. They were having trouble, and there were two Rajasthani men pushing them both from behind with all of their might. They were yelling something in Hindi. The man and woman came crashing back off of the elephant's side. The men called two other men over with energetic waves of their hands, and they yelled loudly. The elephant that they were attempting to mount slowly shook its head from side to side. It let out a huge exhale. The man and woman attempted to step off of the stone podium again, and they fell inches short of the chair. They fell into the side of the elephant again, but this time each of them had two strapping Rajasthani men pushing at their substantial hocks. The four men, whose bodies were thin but rock hard from a lifetime of hard labor, pushed with all of their might into two bodies that had done remarkably little hard physical labor. Eventually, they got onto the back of the elephant and sat in the chair. It lilted to the side, but ever so slightly. The elephant received a crack of a bamboo pole and proceeded to take its place in the line of elephants walking up the steep incline toward the top of the mountain. I was not sure who was in greater jeopardy, the American couple whose sense of balance was key to their safe arrival, or the elephant which was used to carrying less humanity.
Two older Japanese women got onto their elephants and proceeded.
A German couple with an amazing array of pierced body parts got onto their elephant. Whack! Off they went.
I wondered for a brief second about insurance and if what I had would cover anything that went wrong here. I let the thought pass.
French Canadian retirees. Off.
Then it was us. We took a few steps up onto the stone podium and we decided to have Tara, Liam and Jonah all go together. I would go with Aidan.
The three of them mounted the back of the elephant with ease. They sat on the chair upon the elephant's back. Off they went.
Aidan was the first to mount the pachyderm. He was scared, so I held onto his leg in addition to the hands of the Rajasthani men that lifted him up. He held onto the rail of the chair, white knuckle grip. I quickly shot up into the chair and put my arm around him. The elephant received a whack on the rear and started to walk.
The man sitting on his neck turned to us and said, "Good morning." His grin was wide.
"Good morning," I replied.
"Which country?" he asked.
"US," I answered. He smiled.
"US," he repeated. He smiled again and then turned forward.
We were in a long line of elephants, dozens of massive creatures lumbering their way up the walled road that zig zagged up the side of the mountain. The castle was at the top, small and insignificant, but strategic and impregnable. As we rose, we did so through a long swaying motion that arose from the elephant's scale. It was huge and its steps were infrequent yet covered a great deal of ground with each gate. There was a gentle rocking back and forth within the chair where we sat. The surroundings were a light brown in every direction. The road was old, and appeared to be made of sandstone. On each side of the road was a trail of elephants, one going up with tourists on their backs, one coming down, free of tourists. The sun beat down on us, but the motion of the elephant's walk served to comfort us. As we rose, we realized that we could look over the wall down onto the roads and the city of Jaipur. We got to an elevation that made the cars below appear as ants.
Step, step, step. Rock, rock, rock.
Aidan was still holding onto the edge of the chair with all of his might, but he was silent, and his face was calm and composed. He looked at the mountains on the other side of the valley, and then up at the castle. I watched him, and glanced at the brown Rajasthani countryside below. It was almost desert. In a few months it would almost certainly be free of any green, when the heat cranked up. It was stark, but beautiful.
An elephant coming down let out a full trumpet sound, a different sound than the exhale that we had been hearing that morning. It was the cry of en elephant that came from excitement, fear or something else. We all looked up at it. It was about twenty feet ahead of Tara's elephant. It was walking toward us, but with a bit of a canter to its gait. It bumped up against the sandstone wall, releasing a cloud of dust from the impact. It was moving too quickly and too erratically to be a normal progression. I got nervous, and Tara turned around to look at me from her elephant in front of ours. She had noticed, too. Her face betrayed some concern.
The man riding on the excited elephant's neck pulled out from a holster a metal spike about two feet long. It came to a point, and off of the side it had a second curved spike. The man picked up the spike and drove it into the back of the ear of the elephant that was getting excited. It jerked its head back and stopped walking. It let out a weak trumpet sound. He lifted the spike up again and drove it down again. The elephant let out a small trumpet, and then it started walking again. Slowly. In a controlled fashion. As it walked past, I noticed that the back of its ear was punctured and the wound was red and raw. It was clearly from a pattern of stabs, not just this one time.
I leaned forward and glanced behind the ear of the elephant upon which Aidan and I were riding. It had the same raw mark behind the ear. I noticed that our guide also had the same spike holstered next to his right leg. It was horrible, the elephants were stabbed in the back of their ear in a spot kept perpetually raw for the purpose of inflicting pain. It was the same thing in each elephant that I saw walking down the road. They all had the same pit in the back of their ears.
I considered that if that was what was necessary to make the situation safe, then I supported the abuse of the elephants. Then I considered that what we had chosen to do was perhaps not very wise. But the die was cast, and we were loping slowly up the side of the hill.
As we sat there, I noticed more jabs in the ears of the elephants that were going up with tourists on their backs and down with only their driver on their backs. An occasional trumpet of pain was released, otherwise, there was little evidence of the abuse. As far as I could tell, none of the other tourists were taking note of what was happening.
What the elephants were experiencing made me think of India itself.
Since we had moved here, we had noticed something that was not evident during my prior visits of shorter duration. Many people in India, actually most people in India, enforced a certain amount of control on Indians below them on lower rungs of the social ladder through similar means to this poker. Although the tool might be humiliation or an unkind word or even physical abuse, many Indian people treated those beneath them with a high degree of contempt for those below them. Even though they rode on their backs to make progress in a difficult environment, they did so through ensuring obedience to an unjust order through invoking pain. And what was the most amazing of all was that people submitted to it with almost complete obedience. Even those that were deemed lower than their fellow Hindus desired to visit the temples where the theology debased them. For those of us from a society that, albeit imperfectly, espoused a basic equality of all people, it was often shocking to experience the way that people treated each other in India. it was especially difficult when someone in a business setting mistreated a waiter or another person performing a service simply to impress me. It was one of the facts of life in India that was simultaneously unavoidable and at the same time difficult. It eroded some of your confidence in humanity, or at least India. And this experience with the elephants served to remind me of the way in which India itself still functioned. Although the changes that we were all bringing through the technology industry were shifting the order of things, there was still evidence of the old order intact. Jabs to the ear.
The view from the road remained spectacular, and I focused my attention away from the elephants and drank in the view. The mountains all around formed strong sentinels above the Indian countryside. The signs of life in the city below were miniscule yet we saw a bustle and hustle. Only the wind filled our ears. It was nice to be free of the ongoing beeping of vehicles. There was a quietness of the elevation that made the transition into the castle all the more meaningful. This was exactly the sound that was heard by those who inhabited this castle when it was at its peak. The sound of an elephants walking up, wind in the ears, bright sunlight enveloping us, and wind in our ears. We were leaving one era and entering another. I peered up at the castle. It had grown larger and showed its dominance and strength clearly. A place that had preserved the Rajput dynasties against Mughal invaders, this citadel was profoundly strong.
When we got to the top, we were helped off of the top of the elephant and the five of us got together.
"Pretty nice, huh?" I asked Tara.
"Beautiful," she replied.
"Hey, did you notice what they were doing to the elephants? They were jabbing them in the ear if and when they showed signs of getting riled up. Pretty nasty, they all had puncture marks behind their..."
"I know, I saw. Yeah, it was sad," she replied briefly. I sensed she had the same idea I did - if that was what it took to keep us all safe, then we had to acquiesce to the judgment of the elephant drivers.
We turned around and started to walk up the ramp to the castle.....
