BackLife without Krishnankutty
For a mahout in Kerala, losing his elephant was like losing his son
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When 9ft-tall Krishnankutty was struck by lightning, all a helpless Sashidharan Nair could do was watch the elephant die.
Sixty-year-old Nair sat near the elephant he had looked after for close to four decades. The April rain hid his tears. Krishnankutty’s toenails gleamed; the mahout would chip and polish them to perfection ahead of the temple festival in Kerala’s Kottayam district, where the tusker was among the richly caparisoned ceremonial elephants.
Nair’s mind wandered back to the day when his father, who was also a mahout (pappan in Malayalam), had taken the 18-year-old to see Krishnankutty—a six-year-old rescued from an elephant trap and bought by a wealthy Kottayam family from the state’s Kodanad Elephant Training Centre.
Even then, it was clear that Krishnankutty had a mild disposition. On his part, Nair had inherited the virtues of patience and understanding from his father. Krishnankutty and Nair took to each other and two years later, he officially took charge as the sole pappan for Krishnankutty. It was the beginning of a man-animal relationship that lasted a few months short of 40 years. A relationship that ended in a flash on 8 April at the Kadappatoor Sree Mahadeva Temple.
For an outsider it is hard to fathom the bond between a mahout and his elephant. Even more so if one is also a newcomer to Kerala’s deep-rooted cultural ties with elephants, especially tuskers. In this state where religion and ritualistic practice are well entrenched, elephants act as emissaries to God—in many districts, almost no temple festival is considered complete without the presence of caparisoned elephants. Some temples have their own elephants; Guruvayur Temple in Thrissur district has around 57.
The busy roster of Hindu religious festivals sees elephants moving around from temple to temple; at some festivals, like Thrissur Pooram and Arattupuzha Pooram, the number of elephants in attendance sometimes crosses the 100 mark. The high demand for ceremonial elephants means the owners of celebrity elephants can ask for—and get— ₹ 2-3 lakh for an appearance.
At the festivals, two of which I witnessed last year, ornately decorated elephants stand in a semi-circle as a frenzied crowd of thousands dances before them to the boisterous sounds of hundreds of chenda (drums), kombu (horn), kuzhal (pipe) and ilathalam (cymbals), which are part of what is known as the symphonic melam.
The mini-industry that Kerala’s temple elephants have spawned has bred its own star system. The famous elephants—a class apart because they meet criteria ranging from height, forehead bump, eye and tusk colour and trunk and tail size, to behaviour, even the quality of toenails—have their own fan clubs, statues, feature films, television series and Facebook pages.
Animal rights activists have complained about the torture that these elephants suffer in life-long captivity, in chains. P. Balan’s unremittingly alarming documentary film, The 18th Elephant, has shocking footage and narratives of torture, and festivals where the firecrackers are so loud that the ground vibrates. Some of the elephants bear injury marks from the spears that the mahouts use to discipline them, while the chains on ankles have cut through the skin of some others.
For Nair, a typical day at work would begin at 8am. It would involve feeding the elephant, cleaning his nails and feet, giving a bath and a scrub with copra—Krishnankutty would squeak gently in delight, sometimes weaving his trunk languorously around Nair.
“Krishnankutty was used to seeing me from when he was a child and I was a youngster. We grew up together and he knew my every mood like I knew his. Even during musth, he would invariably calm down somewhat on seeing me. He would know that this is a person who cared for him dearly," says Nair.
On hearing the news of Krishnankutty’s death, I rushed from Idukki district to the village, wanting to witness the burial. I was a few hours late—the burial had taken place at dawn on the same patch of land where Krishnankutty had stayed. A large circular area had been dug up and trees felled to allow the crane carrying the elephant to enter, and floodlights installed.
From there, the story of the 40-year relationship led me to the home of the mahout. But not before I visited the house of Krishnankutty’s businessmen-owners, the Thiruvappallils. They are among the diminishing community of private owners in Kerala who use the animals in factories, for logging, or hire them out for temple festivals. The Hindu god-inspired names of captive elephants, once considered a symbol of social status, are often prefixed by the family name of the owners.
Indeed, Krishnankutty had multiple first names, indicative of his various owners—maintaining an elephant is an expensive proposition. Though he garnered fame as Chaappamattom Krishnankutty, from the well-known family that owned him, at the time of his death he was known as Thiruvappallil Krishnankutty— famous still as the elephant with “clear, honey-coloured eyes", “butter or sandalwood" coloured tusk, “long trunk that trails into the ground even if its head is held high" and “clear nails without cracks", as the Kerala elephants compendium website, Starelephants.com, notes.
When we meet a day after Krishnankutty’s death, Nair is distraught. He quickly arranges his hair, there’s a whiff of alcohol on his breath. He says he never missed a day in tending to Krishnankutty.
The youngest daughter of the Thiruvappallil family confirms that he was always there, a point reinforced by the mahout’s wife. “My father would usually walk to his workplace, but once when he was feeling really sick he hailed an autorickshaw to be with Krishnankutty. The elephant would only be fed by him," says Amruta, Nair’s daughter, who was in class X at the time.
Nair himself had yet to come to terms with the loss. “I don’t want to be pappan to any other elephant. It won’t be the same," said the man who won the award for best pappan in the state in 2010; Krishnankutty had won the coveted Gajarajapattom in 2008.
Before the burial, Nair draped the elephant in a red silk cloth and scattered flowers at the grave while prayers were chanted. “Krishnankutty was my only son and now I’ve lost him."
The sound of thunder that accompanied our conversation had made way for rain, again.
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