Elephant Gone Wild

This elephant was calm as it passed us. But can't say that about all the elephants that day.

Halfway to the nercha, Rafi got a call on his mobile phone. As he was talking to the caller, he waved me and the rest of our small group over to the dusty curb of the narrow asphalt road on which we were walking—me, Rafi’s younger brother Salwar, and their friends Anshawd and Shafik.

He said a few things in Malayalam and then hung up and looked at the group.

“Angry elephant. We must wait here,” he said. The others nodded matter-of-factly, but I held up my hand.

“Angry elephant? Uh, how angry?” I asked.

“No big deal. Just showing anger. Emotion. We wait until it is calm,” Rafi said.

“Yes, elephants are dangerous,” Salwar added. “And big.”

“Very dangerous,” Anshawd chimed in helpfully. The boys had an odd mixture of stoicism and apprehension.

“Not to worry. Over soon,” Rafi said conclusively.

So we waited as other pedestrians—groups of adolescent boys, families, couples—walked past us in the direction we had been headed before we heard of the angry elephant. Apparently, the other nercha-goers had not gotten the news.

It is common practice in Kerala for elephants to be used in parades during street festivals (or nerchas). In my time living in Tirur, I have seen elephant processions a half-dozen times or so. And every once in a while, I read an ‘elephant-gone-wild’ story in The Hindu, the local English-language newspaper. An elephant trampling his kumki—or handler—in Kottayam. An elephant charging a group of Hindu pilgrims in Palakkad. An elephant ripping away from its chains and running into the jungle in Periyar.

Not that I could blame them. Every time I had seen a ponderous procession of elephants in Tirur, I was struck by equally potent senses of wonder and empathy. For the lumbering beasts were extraordinary up-close, majestic and almost human-seeming in their slow gait and trembling head bobs. Yet, the rattle of the chains that enclosed their thick ankles and the apathetic blankness of their eyes made their denuded power achingly obvious. These animals were a Keralan symbol—as well-known around India as kathakali and the houseboats. But they had unwillingly sacrificed their natural ambitions for this notoriety, and a viewer could see that clearly expressed in any local festival.

A coffee-table book I perused in Fort Cochin about the plight of captured elephants used to serve as parade vehicles and temple workers summed it up succintly in its title: Gods in Chains.

It was possibly its powerlessness—its pain at a life lost—that made this particular elephant go mad on this night in Tirur.

“Does this happen much?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” Shafik said. “Sometimes elephants get no food during festivals. They walk all day. They get tired. Anger: natural.” Shafik was showing a presence of mind towards the elephant rare for the Indians I had met.

“I would get angry, too,” I said, but only Anshawd seemed to understand for he broke out in peals of high-pitched laughter.

Rafi received another call about five minutes after we had stopped. He nodded into his phone and hung up.

“It is okay. Let’s go.”

We continued walking and quickly fell into the variegated streams of people walking towards the heart of the nercha, where there were a few carnival rides and food stalls. In the distance, the circular outline of the Ferris wheel loomed over the palm trees, now silhouetted in the growing dusk.

As we got closer to the Ferris wheel, the crowds increased and I noticed many people milling around in the middle of the road, or lined up along the curbs all staring in the same direction.

“Elephant here,” Rafi said, pointing to a vaguely defined shadow in a stand of palm trees on the opposite side of the road.

“Still?” I asked. “I thought you said it was okay?”

Police officers and young men with plastic festival badges strung around their necks formed a protective circle around the palm tree grove, creating a circle of clear space maybe thirty feet in diameter. They waved their arms and the police disinteresedly brandished their lathi sticks.

“Go! Go! No stop! Move! No stop!”

We shuffled past the guardians and were able to make out the silhouette of a large male elephant, his ivory tusks gleaming in the moonlight, huffing on the side of the road. He swayed from side to side and he stared fixedly away from the road towards an empty rice paddy.

“That’s it?” I asked, stopping momentarily.

Salwar—Rafi’s younger brother—pushed me gently from behind. “We must move. There is danger.”

The stewing elephant—his intake of breath audible even over the hubbub of the crowd—and the nervous energy of the onlookers reminded me of the times when fights had broken out between students in the hallways of Hogg Middle School. The students who were fighting would get broken up either by teachers or friends and then, still wild with adrenaline and anger, would spend a few harrowing seconds pacing in a small square or staring at a nearby wall before they calmed down enough to be taken to the office. That is what the elephant reminded me of, and the onlookers were just like the passive students who watched the fight—too anxious to get involved but too entranced to stop from watching.

Luckily, the guys I was with had no need to pay witness. They walked on calmly not looking back and I dutifully followed. With the angry elephant behind us, we set our sights on more benevolent pursuits—eating fried food and daring each other to get on the Ferris wheel.