(This is an
unauthorized translation of an article by N.A Naseer in the May 5 issue
of Mathrubhoomi Weekly in Malayalam titled Pirakile Aana Chandam. Ever since my father read it out to me, I’ve
wanted to translate it into English to help this brilliant story reach out to
non-Malayalis. This is that attempt. Hope I do justice to it.)
Creatures that are supposed to be comfortably living in
their own habitats fatefully end up in villages and towns. Here, in order to
sustain, they find themselves dancing to the tunes of cruel actions and harsh
chidings of humans, let alone the sadness, fear, homesickness and grief of
being away from family.
(These lines that describe the life and times of elephants
in our world are from Matangaleela, a renowned text on Elephant Sciences or
Gaja Shashtram).
The unbearable season of festivals and heat is here. Brought
to the city by crook, Kerala’s wild elephants are dreadfully walking towards
their most hated time of the year.
While walking amongst fans of Elephant Festivals, it is the
hind legs of these creatures that I always notice. The decorations that adorn
the front of the elephant do not fancy me. I am reminded of unwilling brides
forcefully dressed up and presented for an exhibition without any importance to
her wants or wishes (Girls are now known to break their shackles.)
What revelers see are sparkling gold plated decorations that
cover the elephant’s forehead and eyes. What they do not see are the wounds on
its hind legs caused by the constant irritation of the linked chains, now
smeared with ash and turmeric and the agony this causes. Even if they do see
this, it probably adds to their beauty.
In Kerala, along with playing instruments of amusement, elephants
are always present for religious festivals (this is yet another instance where people
of all religions compete amongst each other), why even for inaugurations of
serbat shops! It is no secret that the pachyderms are made to walk in the hot
sun, made to stand among flaring torches and loud firecrackers with linked
chains and threats of deadly weapons. If all this is part of the package called
‘Elephantine Beauty’ (Aana Chandam in Malayalam), then there is something has
definitely gone wrong with our mental state. How else do we explain how such a
proud and cultured community metes out such cruelty towards these animals?
As days pass by, newspaper pages are filled with sordid
stories of the plight of Kerala’s elephants. ‘Elephant lifts priest during mass
procession’ (Matrubhoomi, March 31, 2013). The elephant couldn’t move his feet because
they was held in place with linked chains or…
Tecchikaatu Ramachandran, an upset elephant killed three
women in Perumbavaoor, during the Taipooyam Kaavadi festival. This elephant’s
fans association has a wonderful explanation as to why this occurred.
Apparently, Ramachandran was upset because he saw a saddle being installed on
the back of another elephant and was jealous! Clearly it was not upset because
of memories of old tortures, painful blindings (most elephants in Kerala have
been willfully blinded. That is yet another cruelty.), strained calves,
exhaustion, musth or any other ailment man hadn’t found out about elephants. We
personify the elephants with our feelings of jealousy, deceit and arrogance.
It is the era of flex boards everywhere where elephants
competitively rub shoulders with politicians and film stars. Flexes bigger than
the elephants themselves that say, ‘Here I come’ and ‘He’s Coming’. Don’t be
surprised if fans associations claim that elephants got upset because they
couldn’t find themselves mentioned in the flexes!
I was travelling through Thrissur – the city of festivals
when I walked into this sight. An elephant raising one of his hind legs for the
mahout to disembark. There’s nothing special about what I saw. It is
commonplace for elephants to bow low or lie down to facilitate ‘passengers’ to
climb atop. Why is it that we do not see the tortures the wild animal went
through to perform such subservient chores repeatedly?
P. Balan’s documentary film Patinettam Aaana (The Eighteenth
Elephant) is about the plight of such elephants. The heart-wrenching scenes of
elephants being tortured include one from an Elephant Market in Bihar with
elephants lined up in rows like in a cattle market. Apparently 500-700
elephants participate here (It must be remembered that sale of wildlife
including elephants is under prohibition since 2004. However, such markets
still function.) This particular scene shows an elephant standing ready to be
sold but without chains or any such bindings, uncharacteristically still and
quiet. Its caretaker stands not too far away. If the elephant as much as moves
his head, the man would raise his hand seeing which the elephant would shrink
back into its former position. The man has a ‘mazhu’ (a kind of axe) in his
hand. Imagine the dreadful horrors he must have been through if this huge
docile creature is now afraid of a tiny axe. Every time the sharp instrument
cut into it, the flesh and bone animal reduced to an obedient toy in the man’s
hands.
Tales of an elephant’s obedience are famous among mahouts
and the elephant’s owners. Here, one must not forget all the pain the animals
must have undergone to become so docile.
There used to be an elephant in North Paravoor. One who
wouldn’t let anyone near it and refused to attend festivals. That’s when a
brave mahout entered the scene. He was known to bring every elephant line to
toe. Finally, this elephant relented and started going for festivals.
Impressed, the businessman who owned the elephant presented the mahout with a
gold medal. This mahout happened to speak to a friend of mine who cares for
elephants. Apparently, the mahout had said, “For the next festivals, either I
won’t be here or the elephant won’t be here.”
The elephant relented yet again. It succumbed to the
multiple blows it had received during training.
A lot of moves in weapons training can be attributed to
elephants. Why even the Gajavadivu in Kalaripayattu and the weight shifting
technique in Chinese Tai-Chi is inspired by an elephant’s gait. To date,
elephants are revered as gurus for people who study weapons training, where an
elephant’s every movement is equivalent to a thousand techniques.
Our traditional art forms and yoga derive inspiration from
the elephant’s movement. Our poets, writers, artists and storytellers continue
to be inspired by this giant animal. These artists need to see the atrocities
their favourite wild inspiration has to bear.
Somehow we humans believe that we rule over every other
living creature in the world. We even have justifications for feeling this way.
Elephants don’t need our gods, temples or decorations. To understand what they
really need, one must trace back to their roots, the elephants that are
treacherously brought to the cities from their wild habitats. Their elation and
freedom must be seen to be believed. Rice and palm leaves is not what they
really eat. Mutton soup and kashaayam (kadha, medicinal concoction) is not
their medicine. The forests are their temples, their gods, their mother and
everything else.
As seasons change, they perfectly know what food to have and
what to avoid. Research shows that elephants consume 112 plant species. The
genetic knowledge to identify and use medicinal herbs is passed through every
generation of elephants.
I catch myself thinking of elephants that eat rice and
rotting pam leaves. Devoid of sweat glands, how do they manage to stand in the
scalding sun? Fully grown elephants can see clearly up to 30-50 metres away.
It’s their sense of hearing and smell that they use adeptly. Mahouts destroy
the right eye of their elephants, apparently to keep them from getting
frightened with moving vehicles and to avoid any fracas.
Elephants are known to communicate with each other using infrasonic
waves that we humans can’t hear. Catherine Penn, a researcher studying African
elephants has proven that elephants can hear sounds that the human ear is not
designed to access.
Once I was sitting in the verandah of a camp shed at the
Mudumalai Wildlife Research Centre. A tusker stood quietly not too far away.
Suddenly, without any warning, he charged straight towards the camp shed. The
reason was even more surprising. He had charged at the vibrations caused by a
phone kept in silent mode inside the shed! Who knows how many more secrets the
wildlife has in store for us?
It is in front of these creatures with such sensitive
hearing capacities that we beat the drums wildly for hours, burst never-ending
rows of firecrackers and scream and shout in festive exhilaration. It is not
obedience. It is the torture they fear.
Wild elephants cover a distance of up to 40 kilometers a
day. When activists accused people of making elephants walk on hot, tarred
roads, there were cases and discussions. It resulted in elephants being whizzed
from one place to another in trucks and lorries. This gave elephant owners the
opportunity to take their elephants to multiple festivals and hike their earnings.
This is destroying this gentle creature’s health system. Remember that there
were reports of elephants being forced to participate in running races.
Elephants are known to take many naps while travelling long
distances through forests, especially when the summer sun is ripe. I remember
seeing a female elephant standing guard to three sleeping ones – a tusker,
another female and a baby elephant. She stood facing the open end of the forest
with acute alertness. Makes me wonder how long ago it must’ve been that the
elephants in town slept as well.
The sight of elephants drinking tap water with their trunks
reminds me of the ecstasy the elephants must feel when spending hours lazing
around in open water bodies in the woods. Elephants just love rivers and lakes.
They just can’t have enough of them. It breaks my heart to see these shade-loving
creatures walk on hot roads uncomplainingly. The shadows of the forest have
probably receded to glimpses of memory.
Not that travelling in trucks is any less exhausting. Elephants
walking backwards to alight from the trucks, shaking and pausing with fright is
a common sight during festival times. Elephants falling off speeding trucks and
dying are mere newspaper articles for us.
I know someone who once touched a wild elephant. Wounded or
tired wild elephants usually end up outside this particular house in the
forest. It’s a refuge for elephants suffering from gun wounds, where they are
treated, fed and sent off back to the forest. One such wild elephant once
turned up with a mouth burnt with a firecracker. It took some time but was
nursed back to health. It has so happened that every elephant that comes that
way knows this person by his smell. If one can befriend elephants without aggressive
chidings and torturous instruments, why are the wild elephants in Kerala being
subjected to such inhumane grief?
There is no such thing as ‘Naat-aana’ (domestic elephant or
literally ‘village elephant’). Every elephant is a wild elephant. I wonder how
many more people are interested in forcing these wild elephants into become ‘village
elephants’. Why does such a cruel culture exist for Kerala alone?
Even in the forest, it is us humans who are cause for grief
for the elephants. Globally, 50 acres of rainforests are being felled by the
minute. When forests become sparse, wild creatures venture out to comparatively
denser outskirts. We have elephant ‘experts’ and wildlife officers who claim
that elephants will swim across inundated forest corridors when the dam on Chalakudi
River is raised. Another lucrative lure is the hefty insurance kitty that
owners will get when an elephant dies, hand in glove with unscrupulous
veterinarians. Everyone has their own benefits charted out.
An elderly gentleman, on seeing a picture of wild elephants,
once asked, “What will we do with the elephants that are now stuck here among
humans?” His friend, beside him said, “They’ll be sent home. Even if they die, they
will be better off dying in their own homes rather than here with all this
suffering.”
Why can’t we give them a free retirement home like they have
in Srilanka? Some place with an abundant water body? They are sick of putting
up with this act and can’t take it anymore.
What must an old tusker think when he walks on burning hot
tarred roads? Does he think of his past in the green forests where he grew up?
The tiny streams of water? Or the lazing around in water bodies and then the
dusting of black earth? Does he think of his lovers and his escapades with
them? Those rare medicinal herbs that grow just once a year in the forest? Yummy
fruits? The bright light of the full moon?
Where am I now?
Languages, I don’t comprehend, people I don’t understand, cities, sounds and
shrieks…I can’t take these any more. How much longer do I have to stand here? There’s
someone on my back…it hurts. I wish someone would remove this mask off my face.
I wish someone would let me move my legs freely or let me lean on something.
Every pain will have to be borne at the same time.
My friends…the ones I lost
in the forest that fateful day…I was distracted by the female elephant when the
ground suddenly gave way and I fell into some hole with quite an impact. My legs
were hurt, I wouldn’t stand up and get out. I could hear her shrieking outside
the hole along with other elephants.
Pooram 2013
While my photographer friends would click the decorate
fronts of elephants, I would spend most of my time behind them. I would cringe
at every infected wound on the hind legs…
Every attempt at beautifying the front of the elephant will
have a wound on its hind legs that will tell its story.
The bling on the front didn’t attract me at all. I kept thinking
how uncomfortable those must be in this heat. The elephants were just standing
there lifelessly, silently bearing wounds seeping blood, wounds with pus oozing
out, deep wounds that were tried to camouflaged with turmeric or ash, wounds
that would expose flesh and iron chains eating into fleshy wounds that would
never heal.
It is merciless people that I saw there. How else do you
explain how they tolerate such cruelty meted out to a living creature? I have a
name for this pitiful sight. ‘Áana chandam’ or elephantine beauty.
They were standing in extreme heat while I wrote this. People
cheering away merrily. I wandered about looking for a shade to stand under and
felt exhausted and thirsty. I was after the elephants all day since 6 in the
morning up to 3 in the afternoon without having even a drop of water. My clothes
and camera felt burning hot. When finally, I would reach the room and collapse
in my bed, friends would arrive saying, ‘Look they are delivering the elephants
in trucks.’ I would run again, with camera in hand, ready to click.
That night, every time I shut my eyes, their wounds flashed
in front of me. Pained unbearably, I walked towards them at night alone,
without my camera.
It is only when you see them in their own habitat that you
realize that they can’t stand in the sun for more than ten minutes, let alone
six or twelve hours.
We have laws. But we continue to prove all of them to be
useless with every celebration when we exhibit these creatures in linked
chains.
This is the land of all cultures, it is the land where
leaders of all cultures get together every now and then and this is the ‘çulture’
they help sustain.
A little child who watched the elephant walking in linked
chains was heard asking his father, “Dad, won’t that hurt him?”
The wooden platforms tied to the backs of the elephants add
to their misfortune. An elephant that is made to carry three persons normally
is made to carry four persons when he’s fitted with the platform, the fourth
person to hold the platform in place. The elephant will only be thankful if the
platform is not placed, it will be less uncomfortable.
Thiruvambadi Ramachandran, the elephant who was under
treatment for his satiated trunk apparently wanted to participate in this
pooram and wanted to seat people on his back. His body, tired from the exertion
of the last three festivals had in fact aggravated after this festival. People
said, the 52 year old just wanted to have the wooden machan on his back.
The elephant Thiruvambadi Sivasundar has to his claim ‘Lord
of Beauty’ a biography complete with song and dance sequences. This DVD was published
and distributed among other elephants. Someone commented saying, “So the
elephants will take the DVD home and watch it, right?”
Like many others, Sivasundar too was trapped in a hole when
he walked in the forest as a calf with his mother.
An elephant was allegedly offended that he was not at the centre
of the procession and didn’t get enough attention. The mahout took him away and
made him stand in a corner, away from the celebrations. That’s a lucky
elephant! He didn’t have to bear the loud noises and heat like the others.
These are all manifestations of seeing an elephant not as a
wild creature but as a personification of itself. Why poke all our thoughts and
wishes into a helpless animal is what I find myself wondering about. When will
we learn to see an elephant as an elephant? The wild elephants in Kerala might
have just one thought – satisfying food, freedom from the linked chains, mating
calls and the never ending forest that had held him close.
After arranging them in rows for the pooram, the mahouts rest
with the stick and the whip in front of the elephant. These are apparently the
naughty trouble-making types. It hurts to hear things like this. Can we bear to
think of our children or even relatives standing in the hot sun with their feet
bound? If they move it bit, would you call it ‘trouble-making’?
I saw two elephants made to stand in the sun. Mahouts, some
barefoot, skipped, stood on one leg and pranced about the hot road in the
elephants’ shadows. Some put up their feet on the elephant’s leg one by one to
escape from the heat. Yet another one folded a newspaper manifold and stood on
it. Imagine the situation of the elephants. I heard someone saying, “Move these
elephants. There’ll be trouble.”
So then they were made to walk towards Paramekaavu on
scorching tarred roads. They were then hosed down with water. They should’ve at
least let them stand in shade for some time before they did that. With no shade
whatsoever, these huge creatures where then made to stand still, lifelessly in
the sun.
Sheltered by umbrellas, caps and towels, the crowd admired
the ‘Gaja-veeras’ (elephant heroes) standing in the heat. Yet again, my clothes
and camera burned making me want to seek solace in shade.
Humiliated and punished for no fault of theirs…this is 'aana
chandam'.
Special squads were employed to control the elephants, in
case any untoward incidents should arise. They were armed with tranquilizer
shots, chains, ropes and sticks. What an irony. What is this – a festival or a
war?
Why the false bravado if you know that the creature is this
dangerous? How much common sense does it take to see that an elephant is a wild
creature? Does it take more proof than the fact that it is still ‘troublesome’ after
spending 10 – 50 years with them?
While the heat is getting unbearable, while people seek
medical help for sunstrokes, while pets collapse out of sheer exhaustion, these
shade loving creatures are forcefully captured, beaten up badly and are being
made to dance to our tunes. Do we care to think of its mental state when we see
an elephant pass us by?
There’s a man in Thrissur who’s said to be sympathetic to
every wild elephant that arrives in town. V.K Venkatachalam is his name but is
fondly called ‘Venkdy Maash’. A teacher who protests against the way elephants
are treated and doesn’t fear to go to court to meet his demands. He doesn’t
step out much. Threats and attacks await him. He’s even banned from certain ‘pooram’
places.
When he expressed his concern about the elephants in
Palakkad’s Manampully kaavu in 1997, he was accosted by some men who threatened
him and demanded his camera. It was only after the police intervened that he
was let go. Maash’s fight to end cruelty towards elephants has now reached the
Supreme Court. His well-wishers from Thrissur and all over bring him news about
the whereabouts of captive elephants nearby. (Speaking to him in 2004, he told
me that he’s just received news of an unruly female elephant in Kollam that had
killed one and injured three.)
Venkdy Maash’s guts have inspired many more who are not
afraid to take elephant cruelty cases to court.
If people take a moment to ponder about the number of unruly
elephants and related incidents, they will begin to ask if it is all worth it? ‘Why
this cruelty?’ will be the question to ask.
YEAR
|
NO.
OF UNRULY ELEPHANTS
|
NO.
OF DEAD ELEPHANTS
|
2008-09
|
274
|
72
|
2009-10
|
310
|
79
|
2010-11
|
516
|
94
|
2011-12
|
816
|
96
|
2013
|
692
|
10
|
2013 hasn’t ended but 4 mahouts, 3 women and a passerby have
died. So many have been seriously injured or have died in these many years. What
hurts elephants doesn’t really hurt us. In all, 415 have died in Kerala so far.
We have 361 of them left. How long will these last the cruelty? How will we hold
up our ‘culture’ when Kerala’s elephants all die?
People used to talk about mahouts and their sorry life and
the love elephant owners have for their elephants. I was still on the elephants’
side. I kept thinking about their freedom and their current situation.
I spoke to a few young mahouts. They hadn’t become mahouts
because they didn’t get any other job. They loved to be known as the brave
young men who could control a mighty elephant.
I saw mahouts sleeping beside the elephant’s feet. People would
admire the mahout for making such a huge creature stand without moving. It would
take a small move to do away with the mahout but it wouldn’t move a bit. After all,
it went through a lot of grief to be this disciplined.
The elephant stands with its weight shifting between his
front legs and his hind legs, which can be seen if you observe it for some
time. That’s because of the years of torture we’ve brought down upon them. Elephants
made to stand in rows for the pooram can often be seen leaning on to the
elephant next to them, at least for some time.
Elephants that get hurt in the forest heal quickly whereas
the condition of elephants in cities is deplorable. It doesn’t take a wound to
get infected, thanks to the bad food, lack of its medicines herbs, unbearable
heat and lack of exercise.
No sooner does the mahout place the stick on the front leg
than the elephant quickly bows. This is not devotion but because of the fear
that has been instilled in it.
I’ve never seen an elephant in the forest eat palm leaves. We
don’t even have palms in our forests. It is only because of dire need that they
manage with palm leaves. How much paper would we need to write enough about
cruelty towards elephants? A lot of people raise their voices every day from
all parts of Kerala wanting to know if there will be an end to this. That is
something we need to decide.
Dear readers, we can now end this cruelty. Every elephant
that landed in Kerala will only have heartbreaking memories. We must tell our
kids that what we see in Kerala are grieving elephants and not ‘Aana Chandam’. We
need to show them elephants walking freely inside the forest. It is only then
that such cruel fashions will end. It will be pathetic to continue destroying
their homes and capturing their kind. Show them some mercy. Every elephant in
Kerala holds the memory of a forest close at heart.
