Bathing With Elephants

Knee deep in river water, scrubbing a baby elephant with a coconut
husk, I paused to pull out my camera. One of the other elephants was
making a run for it, and his trainer was trailing behind him, holding
on to his tail to no avail, as it is much like trying to stop a moving
vehicle with a thread. Eva, the four year old female, won this tug of
war, but she didn't stray far. It seems she just wanted to have a bit
of freedom before returning to having her body scrubbed. I'd liken it
to a child objecting to having her ears excavated with a
washcloth...the baby had reached her limit for the moment.

I returned to splashing Ammu, my three year old charge. She lay
quietly in foot deep water as her trainer and I gave her a good wash.
Every couple of minutes the little "finger" on the end of her wormy
trunk would snake out of the water like the hose of a vacuum cleaner,
and find my hand. The end of an elephant's trunk is so far removed
from the main event that it seems like it's a creature all its own, a
hollow snake with an enormous craw. When her exploring gets out of
hand, her trainer speaks to her in Malayalam, and tells her to keep it
to herself--and she does, doubling it up and submerging it in the
water.

I'm less interested in brillo-ing the dung from Ammu's rump than I am
in revelling in her size, touching her hair and skin--it feels like a
cross between leather and soft rubber. I run my palm along the ends
of her hair: inch long quills that are stiff enough not to tickle, but
soft enough not to hurt.

I have so many questions about the babies, who truly look prehistoric
and not of this world. Unfortunately, none of the trainers speak
English--this evidenced by the response I get when I ask about the
runaway elephant. "Is she mad?" I asked while I pointed to Eva. The
reply was, "No, female."...on second thought, maybe he knew English
perfectly well. After all, any female I know who was ordered to sit
down and be quiet would go running downstream as well.

To my ear, Malayalam words all sound similar...and many people
speaking Malayalam all at once is the equivalent of many radios tuned
to different stations playing in your ear. Not so for the elephants,
who can discern their own trainer's voice from others, and who can
tell the difference between, "Put your legs straight out," and "Pull
your legs together like you're balancing on a ball," or "Head up,
trunk up." At three years old, I doubt I minded as well.

By the time the bathing session was over, we had washed EVERYTHING:
under trunk, under belly, under tail. It's amazing that's animals so
enormous can be trained to behave so well, although, it was a bit
eerie finding a story in the local paper when I returned back to town
detailing the killing of a muhoot (trainer) by an angry elephan
yesterday. Would Ammu ever do such a thing? It didn't seem possible
when I was hugging her head today, reaching across her torso, or
squeezing her trunk. Let's hope not.