Bringing Home the Elephant

In the last twenty-odd years, to the western world, India has been that low-cost country that has snatched away their jobs. But prior to that, for most part of modern history, the elephant has been one of the key identifiers of that faraway exotic land called India (snake charmers, spices, and hunters with bows and arrows being the others). And it was a mix of ironic justice and an old-guard inertia that an Indian film with an Indian (not African, mind you) elephant as the central character should win the Oscar this year at a destination halfway around the globe.

Elephants and Bollywood. Illustrated by Anupama: Visual Storyteller at ThisDay

While we rejoice and justifiably celebrate The Elephant Whisperers (2022) winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short), it is in the fitness of things to look at a few Indian films with a pachyderm (or two) who were much more than mere circus props. They were not even the supporting cast. They were the stories.

1. Manickam in the Tamil film Kumki (2012): Manickam the young elephant is the ‘brother’ of Bomman. They have grown up together in a village and Bomman leases out Manickam for festivals. In another village far away, a rogue elephant Komban is something of a Gabbar Singh who tramples to death people and property when he shows up every season. Quite by accident Manickam and Bomman land up in that village and Manickam plays the friendly observer of the romance between Bomman and Alli, a local belle. Komban the rogue elephant is the villain of the story and the director Prabu Solomon uses his character to blur the line between humans and animals—there are good and bad elephants just as there are good and bad human beings. Manickam fights with Komban and kills him but, much like Jai in Sholay, Manickam himself succumbs to his injuries and dies a hero’s death. Kumki won critical acclaim, was a box office superhit, and bagged a clutch of awards. Incidentally, The Elephant Whisperers is a Tamil film too, making it the second ‘elephantine’ Tamil success in the last ten years.

2. Ramu, Shamu, Ganesh, and Mahesh in the Hindi film Haathi Mere Saathi (1971): Raju, born to wealthy parents, is orphaned at a young age and grows up in the loving care of a group of four elephants. They become his companions, friends, and siblings, living together in the bungalow. Why, they even assist a now grown-up Raju to woo his lady love! And when Raju loses all his wealth to a property dispute and is reduced to pennilessness, the four of them team up with Raju to perform street acts and help him get rich again. But life’s twists and turns are not unique to human beings alone. The elephant Ramu unintentionally causes a misunderstanding between Raju and his wife but in the end, sacrifices his life to save his Raju’s. The elephant, we discover, was more human than the animal on two legs.

3. Ganesh in the Hindi film Maa (1976): Like humans, elephants can get furious too—especially if their little ones are snatched away from them. Ganesh the baby elephant is separated from his mother by the hunter Vijay who sources animals from the jungle and sells them to circuses. Ganesh’s mother runs amok and tramples to death Vijay’s mother, while Ganesh is forcibly taken away to the city to a circus there. A heartbroken Vijay seeks out Ganesh to reunite him with his mother. Elephants, they say, have great memories, but in Maa, we learn that they are forgiving too. After heckling Vijay and making him chase him all over the town, Ganesh sort of forgives Vijay. But he remains distrustful and evasive till Vijay saves Ganesh from death on a railway track and brings him back to the jungle to reunite Ganesh with his mother. For any mother, regardless of species, her child is her child. Both Haathi Mere Saathi and Maa were Devar (Madras) Productions.

4. Airawat in the Hindi film Safed Haathi (1977): In a fairy-tale-like story, little Shibu, ill-treated by his uncle and aunt, finds an unlikely friend in a white elephant who rescues Shibu from a tiger in the jungle. Shibu names him Airawat, which was the name of the white elephant on which, according to Hindu mythology, Indra Deva and his consort Sachi used to ride. Airawat leads Shibu to a treasure of gold coins. This discovery of Airawat and the treasure immediately triggers that predictable greed among humans. The uncle and aunt lust for the treasure and a hunter Maharaja wants to snare Airawat just for adventure. That Airawat and the other animals rescue Shibu from the Maharaja’s captivity was predictable. But the big lesson for human beings was that, unlike the Maharaja for whom hunting dumb animals satiated his thirst for adventure, animals do not kill for fun.

5. Bhola and Didi in the Hindi film Junglee (2019): Wildlife is our wealth, we all agree. But certain businessmen interpret the term ‘wealth’ differently. For instance, in Kartavya (1979), poachers in the Madhuban jungle destroy the ecological balance by killing elephants, tigers, and rhinos and selling elephant tusks, tiger skin, and rhino’s teeth illegally abroad. In a more recent film Junglee (2019), we see an international poachers’ gang killing the elephant Bhola for his huge tusks and framing an innocent young man Raj for the crime. Sadly, even the police official turns out to be an accomplice of a cabal that smuggles animal tusks. Junglee has a happy ending not merely because of the gang predictably getting apprehended but because the female elephant Didi is ready to deliver a baby at the end, a metaphor for the hope that our ecosystem may yet be preserved if humans spared a thought for their grandchildren.