Beside the Hindu monastery in Bodh Gaya, India, there is a small open-faced shack supported by worn wooden beams and topped by a corrugated metal roof. Around the shack’s perimeter, people try and look past a tall wooden fence punched with gaping holes. The curious faces attempt to catch a glimpse of the magnificent creature held within its boundaries.
Her name is Rajni, and she is the Maht’s traditional ceremonial elephant. Long before I came to India, I had learned of her presence. In preparation for my trip, I messaged a former student about her favorite activities in Bodh Gaya. She informed me about two elephants: Morti and Rajni, male and female. I could sense her fondness of them through her writing. She mentioned a rumor that the elephants were to be married. She encouraged me to try and find out when the wedding was so that I could take advantage of that once in a lifetime experience.
Once I got to India, it took me a long time to get around to finding the elephants. I didn’t know where to start looking. Bodh Gaya isn’t very big, but it has many alleyways and side roads. I would probably have never found it by myself if it hadn’t been for a fellow student. She came back from exploring and told me that she found the elephant. My friend gave me a vague description of how to get there.
One day, after an afternoon of running errands in town, I decided I wanted to take a different route home. I cut through the monastery grounds and followed a path along the river. It was a lovely day and the passage was lined by thousand-year-old ruins. It was nice to traverse in a space where the blaring horns of the rickshaws couldn’t joggle my brain. While making my way along the path I saw a large group of local people peeking past a fence. Curious, I strode over and tried to see past their heads. Through the small gap between the slats, I saw an elephant standing very still, looking out towards the river. Two local children ambled up behind me and asked if I wanted to see her up close. I excitedly agreed. They led me on a short dirt path around the side of the fence and past a crooked gate. The children herded me until I was right beside her massive head, shaded by the sun thanks to the shack. She was beautiful. As an Indian elephant she was smaller than any elephant I had grown up seeing. Her skin was wrinkled like a tree trunk and gray like dried mud. Coarse hair stippled across her body. She was two times taller than me.
She wasn’t in the best shape. Over her left leg she had a sore the size of a saucer. Someone had painted a pink and yellow flower in chalk around it, perhaps to ritually heal it. If anything the flower only drew attention to it. It was bright red and swollen. She had thick chains wrapped around each of her legs so she wasn’t allowed to move very far. Four chains connected to a point and attached to the wall behind her. There were old scars circling her legs from when she tried to fight the chains long ago. Now, having lived so long in captivity, all she could do was look out towards the river. She was resigned to her fate. I could feel her withdrawal when I looked in her ochre eyes.
The caretaker, a lanky middle aged man with a white turban wrapped around his head, hovered around the elephant. I began asking him questions, but he only spoke Hindi. How old was she? How long had she been here? What was her name? Where did she come from? The little boys, understanding that I didn’t speak Hindi, began to translate my questions for me. Rajni was thirty-five, still quite young for an elephant and she arrived in Bodh Gaya the summer before. I asked why she had come, and the caretaker didn’t have an answer. I remembered Morti, the other elephant, and wondered where he was. Was he nearby in a similar shack that I had missed? Why was Rajni all alone?
I asked the caretaker about him. At the mention of Morti’s name, Rajni turned her head away from the river for the first time and carefully looked at me with her massive brown eyes. I looked at her as words were translated around me. The caretaker was surprised that I knew about Morti, and he looked uncomfortable. He said something in Hindi and the little boys translated for me. “Morti was sent away to a bigger city that needed an elephant,” the children said, wide-eyed. Somehow I didn’t fully believe them. The girl I had spoken to over the summer had mentioned something about how Morti had begun getting violent ever since Rajni showed up because they tried to keep the elephants separated from each other. I had a hard time believing Morti was still participating in holy ceremonies in another city. In Bihar, if something was impractical, they didn’t bother with it, and Morti had become difficult to take care of.
I looked at the caretaker, instantly saddened by the realization. “But weren’t they supposed to get married? Weren’t they going to start a family?” I inquired. The caretaker had nothing to say. I looked at Rajni, who was still looking at me with pain in her eyes. “She must miss him a lot,” I whispered.
If an elephant could look surprised, I would say that Rajni did. As soon as the words escaped my lips, she took one lumbering step in my direction and rested her whole trunk against my chest -- an elephant hug. I looked in her eyes and I saw that she knew that I knew she missed him. I wrapped my arms around her nose and squeezed, hugging back. Her skin was abrasive and her nose bristles were prickly, but I loved her so much. She pushed her trunk into my chest very firmly and tried to get as close to me as she could. She was so solid I was afraid of falling back but her force was very controlled. With my arms still around her, I looked up at her face. She looked at me with as much awareness as any human I ever met. It was so obvious that she had a consciousness. Knowing that, her imprisonment and treatment seemed even more barbaric.
The caretaker, surprised, kept repeating to that she must like me a lot. Rajni had never shown such an affinity for a stranger before. He didn’t have to tell me that she loved me because I already knew. She knew so much and she felt so much. She was stuck here, out of control of her own circumstances. She was chained to the ground and not allowed to exercise her legs. She lived her life so long like this that she was no longer angry, but I think she knew that she could have had a better life if she was luckier. She was wiser than people around her believed her to be.
Eventually, Rajni took a step away from me. She left the tip of her trunk extended towards me so that I could hold it in my hands. She continued to look at me and I think she was smiling. I looked back and smiled at her too. I didn’t need to ask the caretaker any more questions to know who she was.
I didn’t want to leave her, but I was about to be late for tea and my class mates would start worrying about me. I took one last look at her, and she gave me one last nudge with her trunk. She looked back up at the river in the same way she had when I first met her. She seemed less embittered now. I felt okay saying goodbye. I went on my way.
I promised myself I would go back to visit her and bring her apples, but I never did. I aspired to be a person who gave her a little bit more happiness than most. That wasn’t the case. I never got around to seeing her again. I don’t think she expected me to do any different. She was used to seeing people she loved come and go. She knew how to survive on her own.
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