BackBook Review: The Tusk That Did The Damage
Tania James tells a quiet and powerful story in her second novel
Premium
Tania James has a quiet and powerful writing voice. The story of her second novel, The Tusk That Did The Damage, is one that we’ve read in newspapers time and again. So often do elephants suffer or die because of human greed and insensitivity that we tend to become inured to such tragedies. That feeling never really goes away through the course of the novel. Yet, and even knowing that there is no big climax, it is with growing admiration for James’ writing—lucid and evocative—that this reader kept going till the end.
“He would come to be called the Gravedigger…. In his earliest days, his name was a sound only his kin could make in the hollows of their throats, and somewhere in his head, fathoms deep, he kept it close." And so James introduces us to the elephant at the centre of this tale, who was just a calf when his mother was mutilated by poachers and he was taken away to live with humans and dark memories.
In the novel, man is clearly responsible for the sufferings of this majestic creature. But the poacher, Jayan, is not a completely reprehensible character; it is his poverty that James blames for turning him into a monster. Because we are told about Jayan’s life—of his alcoholic father, of him marrying the beautiful Leela despite knowing “what" she is, of his brother’s loyalty towards him—we know he is capable of tenderness, guilt, sadness, anger. And this makes him human in our eyes.
Less so are his companions in this unsavoury business, of whom we know little other than their physical grotesqueness and the filth that emerges from their traitorous mouths. And just so, by getting to know Jayan, we consider a defence for Jayan’s actions that could never be allowed him in court.
There are several voices in the book, all narrating their part in this interlinked whole: The poacher’s brother, who had intended to go to college and rewrite his life; the pappan or mahout, both gentle and stern towards the elephant; and a white documentary film-maker, whose account is as tiresome as it is utterly unnecessary to the story.
And in the chapters where we hear the voice of the Gravedigger—fearsome when he kills, merciful in the way he wraps his victims’ bodies in a shroud of leaves, a disturbed child otherwise—James poetically creates pauses between thoughts. With this alone, time is suspended, and the long memories of elephants evoked—memories not just from the Gravedigger’s own life but of all the elephants before him, from the time before the curse, when elephants had wings, when they were free.
In this novel that moves exquisitely between events taking place in the now and fable-like elements, the Gravedigger is then both real and a myth.
To read an excerpt from the book click here
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
