At first glance, Sircar and Mukherjee look unobtrusive enough, merging with the crowd. Sircar is a businessman and Mukherjee an employee with Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation. But few can match their nerves of steel and dauntless courage when they take up their guns against officially declared 'rogues' or predating elephants. Returning from work, they might find a Forest Department official waiting with an order, whisking them away to some ill-fated spot. For instance, they were given just enough time to pack their equipment and leave for Chhattisgarh for this particular job.

Once there, they found that the elephant had not been sighted for the last few days. They waited. "We were having our breakfast when a messenger arrived with the news that the elephant had destroyed some shops along the highway and disappeared into the forest. Accompanied by trackers, we began to follow its tracks. Soon we heard the typical 'rip-chew-rip' noise as it thrashed around a small riverbed. At first, we couldn't make out the animal through the dense vegetation. Then we spotted its eyes squinting at us. Soon the massive head emerged and within a few seconds, the mountain of an elephant was ploughing down at us. We hardly had any time to gather our wits and take aim," Mukherjee recalls. The animal was over nine feet with tusks 3.5-foot long.

Why does an elephant turn into a rogue? Various reasons are cited for this. Elephants are pack animals and when one of them is chased away, the lonely animal turns amok. The heightened sexual urge when a male is in masth but is without female company can also make an elephant run amok. And then of course, there is bad environmental management and human folly. With demographic pressures taking a heavy toll on forest land and villages encroaching upon the traditional migration routes, the man-animal proximity is growing at an alarming rate.

The hunter duo complements each other perfectly. It was way back in 1969 that Chanchal Sircar was first called in by the Raja of Dhenkanal in Orissa to put down a marauding elephant. Mukherjee joined him in 1974 when they went together to kill a single tusker in the Nagrakote range of north Bengal. They killed it on an abandoned airstrip. Together, they have killed 31 rogue elephants, but each incident is fresh in their memory. In 1980, they killed an elephant in the Gorumara forest of north Bengal that had earned the name 'grave digger' because the animal would carry away his victims and bury them. In Sircar's collection is a pair of tusks, the largest ones found in any private collection in Asia, that he acquired after they killed the infamous 'Kalapahar', a veritable mammoth measuring 11 feet and six inches at shoulder height, also in north Bengal.

Their modus operandi is simple. After reaching the spot, they listen to eyewitness accounts. Piecing together information like the size of the animal, details of its tusks, the footmarks etc., they chart out their course of action. The footprints of the elephant are a key to its height - twice the circumference of the foot gives the height of the elephant at shoulder level. They stalk the animal on foot. The hunters have to be on constant guard. Despite its size, the elephant can hide remarkably well among the tall trees and grasses, and rush out with extraordinary speed and silence.

The nearness of the elephant can be judged from several factors - the noise of breaking branches and twigs, the sound of flapping ears or the rumbling sound produced in the animal's belly. The understanding between Mukherjee and Sircar helps in making the crucial decision of who should take the first shot. The rushing mountain of an animal has to be stopped in its tracks, else the hunters themselves would be pulped to death. Besides, the aim has to be accurate for they may not get a second chance. The two most vital and vulnerable parts of the elephant are the brain and the heart. Nothing short of a 450/400 calibre double-barreled rifle and bullets of 458 magnum would do.

Sometimes the stalking takes hours and it can be wearisome. Sometimes villagers might have already injured the animal when it becomes more dangerous. Elephants react differently when hit; some try to run away, some charge at the hunters, some just drop where they are. An added danger is the maljuria, something of an understudy or an apprentice to the rogue. It is usually very loyal to its master and can even refuse to abandon the carcass. The hunters make all attempts to drive it away but if the period of apprenticeship is long, the maljuria itself can turn into a fresh rogue.

Several times, Sircar and Mukherjee have had to return to kill the maljuria.

Although the villagers hail them as messiahs, the hunters return home saddened by the thought of having had to destroy another fine specimen of the animal. Sircar and Mukherjee do not accept any monetary rewards, or any reward for that matter, for their appointed job. TWF