*The rum guzzlers : THE TRIBUNE **by Rachna Singh* *A*S an Army child I was quite accustomed to staying in never-heard- of places. One such place was Bengdubi in West Bengal. When my father was posted to Bengdubi it did not even have its own train station. We had to alight at Jalpaiguri and then make our way by road to Bengdubi.
We first arrived in Jalpaiguri one cold December morning and were ritually picked up at the station by a captain and ushered into the ubiquitous one-tonne (a small army truck) for our journey to Bengdubi. Soon, we had left the small town of Jalpaiguri behind and were moving through a thickly forested area. As we moved through the forest, I thought I spied a huge grey hump behind a distant clump of bamboo trees. Seeing my interest, the captain accompanying us informed me that it was nothing but a ‘Rum-guzzler’. Seeing my total incomprehension he twinkled: “This is what we call elephants here as they have a great fondness for rum and can smell it from miles away”. My skeptical look elicited a complacent “you will see” from the captain. In the bustle of shifting to a new place I soon forgot this conversation. Then arrived the day when my father was to be formally ‘dined-in’ at the officers mess. We were ushered to the dimly lit lawns as soon as we arrived. The bar was set out at the far end of the lawn. Suddenly, in the middle of the party bonhomie, I heard a shout “rum-guzzlers aa gaye”. Before I could spy the gatecrashers, the entire entourage, with practiced agility retreated to the mess lounge and positioned themselves before the bay windows. Intrigued, I squeezed myself into a crevice near one of the windows and peered outside. Nothing. And then I saw them as they materialised out of the dark, ‘them’ being two mammoth elephants walking through the gates of the officers mess with a stately sway. As I watched spell-bound the duo stopped, lifted their trunks and delicately sniffed the air. They moved their heads as if in confirmation and purposefully headed towards the bar. Then with an enviable delicacy they curled their trunks around the bottles of rum on the bar counter and tapped them on the ground till the bottle broke and made a ‘rum-puddle.’ Using their trunks they guzzled down the liquor and continued till the bar counter was empty of all bottles. Then they beat an unsteady retreat and disappeared into the darkness. The spectacle was something out of a Ripley’s ‘Believe it or not’. The image of the rum-guzzlers has stayed with me and even after three decades brings a reminiscent smile to my lips.
