April 2: A 35-year-old tea garden executive airlifted to Calcutta from Assam with critical injuries around seven weeks ago has recovered enough to recount how he almost got killed in the rarest of accidents: an encounter with a wild elephant.

Debashish Sarkar, an assistant manager with Andrew Yule, had been attacked on the morning of February 11 while he was out supervising routine field operations at Hoolungooree tea estate in Jorhat.

He had run, tripped, fallen and lost consciousness by the time the elephant coiled him in its trunk and hurled him several feet away into a thicket of tall Guatemala grass. Scans revealed six fractured ribs, a broken hip and internal bleeding from a liver injury.

Debashish underwent surgery at Fortis, Anandapur, to repair the hip fracture and spent several weeks recuperating in the hospital before being moved to a company guesthouse in the city. He narrated his brush with death to Metro recently.

I could not see the elephant approaching because of the tall Guatemala plants. She came so silently from behind the bushes and was suddenly standing right in front of me. I could not believe my eyes - how could such a huge animal move so stealthily?

I turned around and started running. I looked back to see the elephant coming after me. I ran a few more yards before I tripped and fell. My glasses broke and my watch fell from my wrist. I lost consciousness.

The first thing I remember after coming to was the excruciating pain that had immobilised me. One of our garden employees, Johnny, tried to drag me out of the thicket. He told me: "Sir, the elephant will return. Please move."

I was in no position to move; the pain was unbearable. Several other workers had gathered around me then and they carried me to a Mahindra Bolero sent by our manager.

It was only later that I heard about how the elephant had coiled me in her trunk, lifted and hurled me to the ground. I could have died there had I fallen on a hard surface. But the Guatemala plant grows very dense and I landed on top of one such thicket, which cushioned my fall.

Some garden workers told me that the elephant was going to trample me as I lay unconscious, but apparently changed her mind. She stopped in her tracks and went back to her three calves, leaving the place after I had been rescued.

I had been transferred to Hoolungooree barely two months earlier from another garden in Dibrugarh. Hoolungooree is near the foothills of the Assam-Nagaland border, around two-and-a-half km from Gibbon Wildlife Sanctuary. An elephant corridor to Nagaland runs through the middle of the estate and a herd passes by every two to three days.

When I was taken to my bungalow that morning, my wife Moumita saw a deep cut on my back and asked whether I had been attacked by a worker. I was in such bad shape that the company decided to airlift me to Calcutta.

At Fortis, I would often have nightmares and convulsions. I am still unable to stand and am undergoing physiotherapy. My doctors say I came back from the brink of death. I think the elephant calves and the workers saved my life. Had the elephant not returned to her calves, I would have been crushed under her feet.