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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : The tusker's mud-bath : The Sunday Statesman : 26 April 2015
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THE TUSKER'S MUD-BATH

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On 30 March we went to Benne, 15 miles away, in a last, optimistic attempt to photograph Wild Elephants. Usually I was told, elephants were all over the place with the first rains, but this year we had had no rains, and no khubber of elephant except from lorry drivers passing Benne. We arrived at our destination, smothered in the orange dust that permeated our clothing, precisely at noon, but there was no time to wait for less unfavourable lighting. The tracker awaiting us informed me that there was a small party of elephants in the incredibly fresh-leaved forest on the hill beyond the road; they were there, at a patch of wet mud, barely a furlong away, and if I was quick I could get my picture before they moved uphill to denser shade.

Hastily dusting the cameras, we went up an ascending track which had once been a ghat-road and now merely a rutted path overgrown with tough flat weeds, with a wall of tangled, dry lantana on the side from which the hill fell steeply away. The elephants were still there, at that wallow, a bull, three cows and two calves. They were a light brown from the dust and drying mud, with the adherent leaves and bits of clay giving their skin a very rough texture. The tusker stood in the foreground. Two cows and a calf moved uphill and melted into the jungles as we came upon the scene. The third cow, which had just had a good wallow, stood besides the patch of mire, in which her calf laid half buried. The silence was uncanny --- no sound, not even the semblance of a plop, came from the wallow below us, and the ponderous beasts moved without cracking a twig or rustling, a dry leaf.

They were 180 feet away, below us, as per my trustworthy rangefinder, looking more like pigs than elephants, in that top view, with the midday sun illuminating only the tops of their heads and backs. This was the nearest I have been able to get to wild elephants and I was eager, even anxious, to seize the opportunity, but there were difficulties in the way. Apart from unfortunate lighting and view, the lantana lining the track we were on was right in the way and could not be cleared without alarming the entire jungle.

By sheer and painful physical effort I achieved a stance overlooking the hedge of lantana, though the top twigs still blurred the foreground in the groundglass. Then, as if to reward my effort the TUSKER sat down deliberately on the mire. The calf was still in it, and there was no room for the two. As the big bull sank down on his knees, and rolled over on his right side, , with the trunk and limbs towards me, the calf scrambled out of the wallow and went and stood beside its mother, and a miracle was staged before my eyes.

The vertical lighting was now flush on the tusker's face and flank, though the lantana a yard from my lens still blurred his stretched limbs so that the disadvantages of the view and noonday sun was nullified, and every detail was clear. Slowly he rolled right over on his side, visibly revelling in the cool feeling of the wet mud against his flank, and curled up his trunk.

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Four photographs not reproduced here.The descriptive part has, however, been quoted in the next two lines.
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He sat down in the wallow, then rolled over on his side, evicting the calf; he curled up his trunk like a mainspring, stretching himself on the wet mud and revelling on its coolth; then he got up reluctantly and followed the cow and calf into the jungles.

There was a pain like a toothache in my left leg, the leg which sustained the weight of my leaned-out body, and I was wretchedly conscious of camera wobble while squeezing the trigger, but I remember these were not the things that were uppermost in me then. I was filled with a sense of envy as the great beast relaxed and luxuriated in the cool mud, while I stood there acutely uncomfortable and cramped, feeling the dust and heat in every pore.

He spent good five minutes at the wallow, then got up unhurriedly and followed the cow and calf into the jungles. By going ahead in a semicircle we were able to sight him again, while he drank deeply at a waterhole; he saw us too then and we were able to notice more clearly the dark exudation staining his cheek, which showed he was in 'musth'. Afterwards, he sauntered up the hill towards a clump of bamboo, rounded the clump and was suddenly gone, the silence and completeness of vanishing of his huge bulk leaving everyone of us with a feeling of unreality, as if we had not witnessed only minutes previously such a vivid scene of domestic ease and contentment in the life of an elephant."

-M. Krishnan

This was first published on 14 June 1959 in The Sunday Statesman