elephant prose 2

Elephants 

1.    Lord Ganesha is over my crib writing my path for me, notepad in hand. He looks down at my sleeping form over his tusk, and crosses out a line or two, adding a new detail here. Is my life headed as planned? May it be so, always so. Now he is holding my children when they are scared (and me too), holding us tight with his trunk.

2.    Elephants have long memories. How far back do they go? Can they remember the trumpeting of mammoths and mastodons in the ice age, can they remember the earth as a sprawling paradise that they once roamed and shaped? 

 3.    They live as long as human beings, they mourn their they care for their sick and aged,  they look out for youngsters. You don't mess with this vegetarian giant. They take revenge. 

4.    Baby elephants have no control over their trunks, like a baby boy's penis.  They flop here and there. With their too large ears, they mock charge ducks and geese and run back to hide under their mothers when the birds squawk at them. They have eyes that can see into our souls. They ask what have we done with their ancestors? What are we doing to them now?

 5.   I may have ridden one when I was seven, along the street outside my aunt's place in India. i'm not sure if it happened, but as a child, when i needed to lull myself to sleep, I'd call up that image. I felt so safe up there near the crown of his head, swaying side to side on his ambling walk, his hair prickling under me. Nothing could touch me. I rode again on my honeymoon -  Thailand. Then I learnt how elephants were trained - tamed, torn from their mothers as babies, beaten and starved till their spirits were broken. I could never ride an elephant again.

 6.    I love the sprawling stone temples in India, with elephants blessing us for bananas, in Mahapalipuram, Azhagar Kovil. Now I wonder how they were trained. The abject irony if temples tamed wild elephants with sticks and stones. Can we tie up Ganesha to seek his blessings? I hope not. I am scared to find out.

 7.    Elephants converse with earth and wind in a language beyond us. Born cartographers, they feel the earth's rumbles through their wrinkled skins.The earth dances in seismic vibrations when one greets the other across the miles. They trace the paths of ancient rivers to lead their herds to water. As we in turn shape the land with our crude tools, we have become crosstalk in their dialogue with earth. How do they maneuver the land? Their history? Their future? The dinosaur has become a bird.  What will the elephant become?

8.    They have have fought wars for us, ridden in royal games, crushed enemies skulls.

9. They uproot trees with their trunks, and pick up flowers by their stems. They wash their fruit before eating and roll in mud to cool off. They spray each other with abandon and face off in thundering battles.

10. They say earth teeters upon the their backs, as they balance on a tortoise. Earth quakes when they shrug their shoulders. if we push them too hard, they will slip and we will fall. 

11. Born from the churning of the milk ocean, Airvata is your name. Born to guard your mother, Ganesha is your name. Born to protect me, Love is your name.