ELEPHANTS IN KERALA

(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.