Chances are you’ve never heard of Allapalli.
A colonial-era forest depot village converted into a mini-town is located in a remote corner of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, a district often in the news for the Naxal-related violence that has gripped the region for decades.
However, before it came to define this landscape of violence, Allapalli was a name every colonial era forester needed to know. Officials of the Imperial Forest Service visited regularly to see the “working” (a euphemism for silvicultural management of forests) of fine examples of the famous CP teak (Central Province Teak).
JW Best, a young forest officer posted at Allapalli in 1904, wrote a vivid account of what life was like here in the book Forest Life in India (1935).
“Alla Pilli was so remote and had such a bad reputation for being home to the worst form of malaria that no one except the most adventurous…would dare to go near the place. Its foresight was its main attraction… The village had a main road where there were residences of some forest officials, and all around, there were forests spread over several acres, a cluster of wooden carts, bullocks or buffaloes and temporary camps of cartmen and porters,” he said. “It was in open weather; During the rainy season this place remained deserted, except for a few forest subordinates suffering from fever, who were ready to sell their souls to get away from this place. Needless to say, this was not a popular area among the local forest staff. In the midst of this vast cleared camp the elephant sheds and saw-mills stood together like some ancient monastery in a modern city.
***
Wild elephants had been extirpated from Gadchiroli for over a century, at that point, as a result of centuries of capture primarily for domestic use. However, the forest department of that time depended heavily on them for transportation, porterage, hunting expeditions and the logging industry. Therefore, some were brought to Allapalli from elsewhere. As they settled here, more people would be born here.
“Working in the jungle, we used elephants and buffaloes. It was good to keep an eye on them when they were nearby. One of the elephants adopted a playful way of throwing teak logs at people he disliked… A single elephant can drag a large log over rough ground; Sometimes it turns it by pushing with its nose, lowering its head for the purpose,” Best wrote.
Today, Allapalli is a very different place. Forests have been reduced and destroyed; Wild animals have disappeared and departmental activity has faded. The working elephants have also set off towards the sunset. The last of this glorious lineage were shifted to an elephant camp in Kamalapur, about 45 km away, in the 1960s, where the few surviving senior elephants now live quiet lives of retirement. (Elephants can live to be over 70 years old.)
Yet, the memory of dozens of gentle giants who lived, played, worked and died at Allapalli in the service of man and forest lives on, in the form of an evocative artefact: the elephant bells.
***
On one of the walls of the drawing room of the 116-year-old Allapalli Forest Rest House, which itself has undergone much change, is an open cabinet containing nine bells lovingly preserved.
Each of these bears the name of the elephant that once belonged to him, the bell being a type of pendant worn around the neck.
Sardar, Muktamala, Bisankali, Ramkali, Anarkali…, when I held these bells and ran my fingers over the names inscribed on them, I could not help but feel a deep sadness and sadness wash over me. I am reminded of Best’s nostalgic words of 1935, who by then had retired and returned to Britain.
He wrote, “In March 1905…I left the saw-mills of Alla Pillai with regret.” “This place has a special charm. The loud sound of the circular saw and the fragrant smell of teak sawdust remind me of that remote settlement. Now every year when… The rain splashes on the teak wood furniture… The scent of the teak again mesmerizes my senses and I think of those wonderful first days in the forest of Alla Pilli.“
As I put the bells back in their cupboard, I rang each of them once, and at that moment I could almost hear the quiet, fading echo of the trumpet in the distance.
From bells to tribute
When one travels to Dehradun by train, the last leg of the journey passes through 22 km of beautiful Sal Forest, before the city abruptly ends its sights and sounds.
On this stretch, which is now part of the Rajaji Tiger Reserve, if one pays close attention, one can see the sign of a desolate, forgotten “wild” railway station as the train passes by it: Kansrao.
Now no one stops here (although a train may occasionally stop briefly for railway staff to board or disembark).
Looking at it, you might not realize that this is the same station that inspired Ruskin Bond’s fictional railway stop at Deoli, immortalized in The Night Train at Deoli (1988). This comes in his other stories also.
If you somehow manage to get down to the station, take a short walk north from the small station-master’s cabin, down a dirt road, and you’ll soon spot a charming old British-era bungalow: the Kansarao Forest Rest House, built in 1891.
If the day is coming to an end then take a pinch. One must be either at the bungalow or at the station by early evening, because as night falls, the surrounding jungle comes alive with traffic of the four-legged kind: the sound of leopard bites, the alarm sounds of chital and barking deer, the howls of stately sambar, and the low rumbling of elephants.
On a cool afternoon in late 2024, my father (conservationist and former Indian Forest Service officer SEH Kazmi) and I found ourselves in this bungalow. I’ve been wanting to visit Kansarao for many years – partly for the bungalow, which is a rare heritage forest rest house that has not yet been ruined due to “renovation”; And partly for what is within.
Step inside and look at the ceiling of each room to see the vintage hand-crafted fans still hanging there. These ancient cooling systems consisted of a large horizontal beam of wood or metal with ruffled cloth hung along its length. Each beam was connected by a system of pulleys and ropes to the verandah outside, where a “fanwala” sat or lay, pulling the rope to fan the sahibs inside.
There are only three other rest houses that I know of where this system still survives: Supkhar in the Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, and Achanakmar and Chhaparwa in the Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in Chhattisgarh. I had already been to others, so when I found out Kansarao also had one, I knew I had to go.
***
However, the bungalow and its fankha were only secondary reasons. The main reason that brought me to Kansrao was an elephant named Rampyari.
I first read about Rampyari nine years ago in a book by naturalist Stephen Alter. I was eager to meet him since then. Soon after reaching Kansarao, as the shadow started getting longer, I went out to look at it.
I walked out of the bungalow on the muddy road towards the forest. Lots of birds were fluttering in the trees, while others were chirping in the bushes, looking for their last meal of the day. After a leisurely walk of about 100 metres, I was at a forest road crossing. On my left was a path leading out of the forest, and on my right was a road named after martyred forest guard Naresh Singh Chauhan, who was murdered by timber smugglers in 1993.
However, I needed to go straight, down a road that looked as if it had not been driven on recently.
“Go down that road a few hundred meters and you will see a tree leaning over the path on the left, and that is where you will find him,” the bungalow watchman had told me.
The sun was beginning to set over the “Rao” (the local name for a bouldery forest stream) a few hundred meters to my left, beyond the trees. A golden hue drenched the hundreds of blooming Kansa flowers on Rao’s carpet, giving Kansarava its name: stream of Kansa grass. I heard the faint sound of a train running on the track.
As I moved quickly, dozens of small grasshoppers jumped awkwardly from the layer of grass on the road. There was a dense network of trees and bushes ahead.
Just then, a clear rumble over Rao’s Old Bridge announced the arrival of the train at Kansarao station.
By now I could see the bending branch. A clear space opened up on my left, and there she was.
“In memory of ‘Rampyari’, Major Stanley Skinner’s favorite elephant. Died here. 6th August, 1922. Gave her the best shooting in this world for 14 years. Will never be forgotten. Brave as a lion, steady as this rock” read the inscription carved on a large block of rock, located above a cave of stones raised from the stream.
The face of the rock that bears the inscription was carved in the shape of an elephant’s footprint.
It is said that the tomb of Rampyari was lost for a few decades, until it was noticed by researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, who were surveying the fauna in the area in the 1980s. Despite my best efforts, I could not find any written record of the life and times of Rampyari. I also couldn’t find much about Major Skinner, except for the fact that he was a descendant of James Skinner or Sikandar Saheb, the Anglo-Indian founder of the famous 1st Horse aka Skinner’s Horse Regiment of the Indian Army.
Major Stanley accompanied his beloved Rampyari to happy hunting grounds in 1932. After that, his property became part of the Doon School. Legend has it that his ghost still wanders the halls of his bungalow, named Jaipur House; And behind that was the abandoned shed where Rampyari once lived.
***
The forest department respected the sanctity of his final resting place.
There is a discreet clearing around it, and the engraving on its inscription is softly painted white. There are some round, whitewashed stones marked around the perimeter of where she lies. Luckily, there are no gaudy signs, concrete, chains or grills to “protect” the place; There is nothing that spoils the gloomy beauty of this place. I pray that it always remains so.
I sat near him for some time. Covered with deep emerald forests, she lies on a green carpet, with lush green trees as her steadfast sentinels.
Just then, I saw that I was not the only one who had come to pay homage to him at his final resting place. He has other visitors too. Around his grave I could clearly see the footprints of wild elephants. I smiled in my mind.
It was quiet, peaceful and beautiful. I sat there quietly, until some playful langur monkeys who stayed for the night reminded me that it was time to say goodbye to Rampyari. As I turned to leave, I ran my hand over his inscription for the last time, and at that moment I thought I heard the sound of an elephant’s bell somewhere in the distance.
(Raza Kazmi is a conservationist and wildlife historian. He can be contacted at raza.kazmi17@gmail.com)
