Jumbos as Friends

From my own experience, elephants are one of the most loving animals, if handled and cared for properly and carefully.

We were in possession of 8 elephants for 17 years. Due to certain reasons beyond our control, we were forced to dispose of all of them one by one. That too with tears.

Though these elephants were used for festivals and in forest work, we used to give them rejuvenation treatment every year. Each of them used to be in our house compound once or twice a year either before or after treatment. While in the house we never chained them up. They used to obey commands even from the small children in our house. Though one of the elephants had a history of turning violent against children, such a behaviour was never seen in our house.

We cannot forget the tears in the eyes of most of the elephants when we handed them over to their new owners. We had the experience of three sold elephants refusing food for a few days at the new owner's place. One of the owners even asked us to take back the elephant. If we happened to learn that any of 'our' elephants was nearby we used to visit them and give them jaggery (molasses) and plantains.

Since we never chained our elephants whenever they were in our house, they used to go to the kitchen area to eat any food given by my mother in the kitchen. I have had a number of pleasant, funny as well as surprising experiences connected with elephants that can even fill up a book.

E M Jabir