Elephant Stories
Mamoni Raisom Goswami writes about her southern Kamrup childhood and an elephant who was her childhood companion.
Paul Zacharia (Thanks for the email, Pradeep) writes about elephants in Malayali culture.
The plain fact is that paraded elephants have to go through hell to please God and man. They are brought from hundreds of kilometres away, walking on the near-boiling roads, some killed or wounded by the traffic. They are also brought in trucks and every year a few trucks overturn. They are made to line up without moving anything other than their tails and ears, in an ear-splitting circus of massed percussion, followed by, believe me, the most terrifying fireworks whose explosions are proudly referred to as garbham-kalakki — capable of triggering abortion.
Pepita Noble, the Britisher who was researching Kerala temples, had once written an article in which she recounted how some local papers in Kerala had reported the panic which had gripped a temple when an elephant had become angry (most probably due to the hormonal swing known as mast in north India). The headlines the next day were: Bihari Elephant goes mad.
p.s. for elephant lovers http://www.elephant-news.com/
Comment by Dev — July 22, 2006 @ 8:22 am
Many of my friends found this story to be funny. But many did not know that there is a cattle fair held in Sonpur in Bihar which is supposed to be one of the few fairs in which elephants can be bought. This is supposed to be a fortnight long fair held after Kartik Purnima - the first full moon after Diwali. So the elephant which went ‘mad’ may well have been one which was bought in Sonpur. And one can always conveniently blame Bihar if things go wrong.
Comment by Dev — July 28, 2006 @ 7:25 am