Mangalam loved Ganeshan. He
hardly remembers his parents for it was Ganeshan who found him as a boy lying
alone in the forest with no one to take care. From then onwards, Ganeshan made
sure Mangalam got his timely feed of milk when young and then later the best of
fresh greens as he grew up. And Mangalam sure grew up very fast. In no time he
became the tallest creature in the vicinity. Ganeshan, initially, kept him
inside his small hut when Mangalam was a baby but soon he moved him outside or
else the man would have had to sleep in a house without a roof. Even though the
other temple elephants always had chains round their feet, Mangalam was allowed
to roam free. He had the liberty to go anywhere, anytime. He would sleep
outside Ganeshan’s hut and wait for his loving master to come out at sunrise
when the two of them would go for a long walk to the river-front. Mangalam
always found this phase of the day to be the happiest for he could bathe for
long in the cool waters and also play with Ganeshan. He would often shower the
man with his trunk after he had changed into fresh, dry clothes. This was the
daily fun the master and his loving pet had.
Ganeshan was one of the many mahouts who managed the elephants in the big temple. There were five other elephants attached to the temple, each with a separate mahout. The routine for the elephants was pretty boring. On a few auspicious days, the elephants would be decorated all over and made to stand in a formation as the band would play devotional music while the crowd cheered seeing the resplendent animals. Idols of gods and goddesses were placed atop them and they were then made to march through the streets for hours together with the devotees thronging on all sides. These were pretty strenuous days for both the elephants and the mahouts as even a small chaos anywhere could have caused many a death. On rest of the days, the work included a morning visit to the temple, breaking a few coconuts, waving and blessing people who would visit the temple. It was the same routine in the evenings when earthen lamps illuminated the temple complex. Lately, there had been a lot of requests from the people wanting to be pictured with the elephants and quite often they were willing to pay the mahouts some extra money for making the elephants do some simple stunts. Ganeshan was very strict and a no-nonsense man. He never permitted anyone any such liberty with Mangalam. He treated the elephant like his own child and never liked it to be photographed by others. He feared the excessive visibility would lead to some negative impact on his little one. At midday, the mahouts and the elephants had some time to themselves to get some rest or else to move around and feed on the vegetation nearby.
Having lived a large part of
their lives together, Mangalam and Ganeshan could communicate well with each other. Ganeshan spoke
only Malayalam, and over the years, the big animal could comprehend much beyond
simple commands of sit, stand and eat. Mangalam and his mahout understood each
other beyond words. They could understand the feelings and thoughts of the
other. A look into the eyes of the other or a change in facial expression was
enough for the other to make out if the other person was happy or sad, in pain
or in good health. Ganeshan was excessively possessive of his child and even if
a thorn were to prick Mangalam, he would not rest till he had taken it out and
applied oil on the affected part. Having lost his wife early during childbirth,
Ganeshan lived all alone for some time till he found his mission in life,
bringing up Mangalam as the child he never had.
The temple’s chief purohit,
Srikrishna, was a good man. He not only kept the temple administration and the
employees in good order; he was also friendly to the others including the
mahouts. He even took time to reach out to the elephants and knew each one of
them well by their names. They, too, reciprocated to his calls. However, in
this place of peace and tranquillity there lay a problem. It was none other
than Srikrishna’s son Kumaraswamy. He was quite the opposite of his father and
from his school-days he would indulge in cheating in the classrooms, stealing
animals, bullying and terrorising one and all. Over a period of time, Kumar had
built up a formidable army of goons who had been close to him since school and
now ran an illegal trade in cutting timber from the forest and transporting
them outside. While many people knew about the dark trade going on in the
vicinity, no one ever had the courage to complain to either the police or to
his father and he became bolder by the day.
Kumar’s greed grew with time and one day, Ravi, one of the mahouts, came to Ganeshan and said that he had seen big tusks hidden behind rows of chopped tree trunks in a storehouse deep inside the jungle. He was unable to get close to the place as it was guarded from all sides by men who looked like Kumar’s goons. Felling of trees was something Ganeshan had accepted but chopping of tusks meant that someone was killing elephants for their selfish gains. For some months, there were stories of deaths of elephants doing the rounds but people said they were caused by a fatal disease. Ganeshan now was able to connect the deaths to Ravi’s findings. He asked Ravi to take him at night to the spot where he had seen the store. Reluctantly the man agreed for he, too, loved the elephants. That night, Ganeshan whispered something into the ears of Mangalam and carrying a lamp and a big stick, walked into the jungle with Ravi under a moonlit sky.
It took the duo almost an hour to
reach the spot and from a distance, Ganeshan could see a place with barbed wires
on all sides. He could also see the chopped timber that was lying one on top of
another with the largest numbers at the base and gradually tapering on top to
prevent the heap from rolling off. Ganeshan gave the lamp to Ravi and asked him
to wait there while he went to take a closer look. Since it was late in the
night, there were no guards outside; Ganeshan slipped under the barbed wire
fence and tip- toed to the timber stack. Carefully he started crawling towards
the store which had electric lamps shinning inside. He slowly reached the
window from where he popped his head up to see what was going on inside. He saw
big pieces of tusks lying on the floor while the guards were busy playing cards
and enjoying their local drink. Ganeshan was shocked to see the sight and
wanted to do something to prevent loss of any more elephant lives. In his
excitement, he tripped over and alerted the guards who quickly came out. They caught
him while trying to slip out of the barbed fence. Ganeshan was dragged inside
and the five guards, armed with lathis, started beating him mercilessly.
Ganeshan shouted for help and mercy but none came. The guards suddenly stopped showering
the blows on hearing the sound of bells ringing violently and approaching the
place they stood. Ganeshan knew it was Mangalam coming. All the temple elephants
had bells hung on their necks and each made a distinct sound which their
mahouts could only make out. The men then heard a loud trumpet and in no time,
they saw a huge creature rushing madly at them. Mangalam crashed into the
barbed wire and dragged it along the way and stopped only when he reached the
spot where Ganeshan was lying down. The guards knew that their lathis were of
no use when it came to fighting a charging elephant and they fled the scene.
Ganeshan got up and slowly unwrapped the barbed wires around Mangalam’s bleeding
feet before walking back home where he applied some medicinal weeds on the animal’s
injuries before going to sleep.
At day break, seeing Ganeshan
asleep, Mangalam went to the river front for his bath alone. Around the same
time, Kumar arrived with his men armed with hunting guns, barged into Ganeshan’s
hut and dragged him out. Once again
Ganeshan was thrashed badly and before his elephant arrived, they had gone away
after threatening to kill Mangalam unless he was chained. On seeing Mangalam,
Ganeshan had tears in his eyes and he tied thick chains on both the hind legs
and secured them against a giant of a tree. Mangalam did not protest but
understood what might have happened during his brief absence, especially after the
incident of the night before. He went with Ganeshan to the temple for his usual
duties. Ganeshan went straight to the head priest and complained about Kumar
and what harm he was causing to the animals and the forest. The head priest immediately
called for his son and rebuked him in public. He ordered him to stop all his
illegal activities or else he would himself report the matter to the police.
Kumar was not one to listen to his father but threatened Ganeshan with dire
consequences. Ganeshan finished his activities at the temple and returned home.
In the evening, he went out alone to get something from the market but did not
return for long. Mangalam was beginning to feel uneasy at the long absence and
kept trumpeting and shaking his head to ring the bells after small intervals.
Ganeshan did not return home at all that night and the sun was about to rise.
The elephant knew something bad had happened to his master.
Mangalam stood up and, with all
the power he had, pulled hard at the chains. He did it a number of times. The
chain did not come off but the tree got uprooted. He started to push forward
and the chain came loose. He was free to move with all the speed he could
muster. He had gone just a little distance down the path leading to the market when
he saw Ganeshan’s body lying still on the ground with a number of people crying
while sitting beside him. Mangalam went close to Ganeshan’s body and touched it
with his trunk. He understood that his master, his friend was no more. He
turned around in anger and ran towards the place where the priests and their
families had their houses. Mangalam knew the chief priest’s house and went in
that direction. The ringing of his bells had alerted Kumar who quickly took out
his shot gun and took aim from the terrace. The moment he saw the rushing
elephant, Kumar started firing one shot after another. The bullets pierced
Mangalam’s thick skin but he kept running and crashed into Kumar’s house, a portion
of which fell like a house of cards with the killer himself falling over the
railing of the terrace. Mangalam lifted his right front foot as high as he
could and brought it down with all his strength on Kumar, crushing every bone
in his body. The badly injured Mangalam then fell down and breathed his last.
A few months later, the devotees
and the people of the temple pooled together their resources and installed a
small statue of Mangalam and Ganeshan just before the Gopuram and the story of
the man and his devoted animal became quite a folklore in the region and
beyond.
SS
