Country notebook:m.krishnan

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M.Krishnan: Adapting Well from Crippling Despair: The Sunday Statesman:
09 August 2015
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ADAPTING WELL FROM CRIPPLING DESPAIR

" THE idea that nature tolerates only perfection, or at least an able bodied efficiency, and that creatures incapacitated by illness or injury soon find merciful release in death is largely the product of man's Spartan logic, and untrue. In nature, too, there are plenty of crocks, and though these are more liable to succumb to predators and stresses of adversity, often they adapt themselves so successfully to a life within their diminished capacities that they have little trouble in carrying on the "Struggle for Existence". A bit of a crock myself, I observe these disabled animals with special interest when I come across them in the jungles.

I remember an old Gaur cow with one eye blind, brilliantly green and opalescent, and the other not too clear-sighted, that seemed to find no difficulty in keeping with the herd; a one-footed Crow that I knew for years; an Antelope with three effective legs; and other such creatures. Some of them were only slightly incapacitated and, of course, many permanent injuries, such as the loss of a part or the whole of an ear or tail, are no real handicaps. In South India, it is rare to come across a big bull Elephant (especially a lone bull) that still retains the tuft of hair at the end of the tail, the tail-tip being bitten off in the course of the many battles the great beast fights with the rivals -- I have even seen Tuskers with their tails docked as briefly as the tails of show fox terriers used to be in in the old days! The wild Elephant , I think, is more prone to carry the marks of injuries than most of other animals.I claim that 90 per cent of "rouges" in South India, in any rate, turn rouges because of the crippling, or else enduringly painful injuries inflicted on them by men seeking to kill or drive them away with firearms. Again, in many parts of India, the humane Kheddah system of capturing of wild elephants is not practiced -- the barbarous camouflaged pit is much in vogue and has to see the mutilations that this method can inflict on the unfortunate captives to realise how horribly cruel it can be. Last summer I was in Periyar Sanctuary of Kerala for a day and followed a herd of cow Elephants on foot with a friend. It was impossible to observe individual animals in that close-packed herd, especially as the beasts were in six-foot high reeds but soon they look to the water, swimming easily across (elephants are powerful and skillful swimmers) to the farther bank of the canal, 150 yards away, and as they climb up the bare bank I noticed that one of the grown cows was lame, with one foreleg permanently bent in a crook and limping badly. Her gait was peculiar, a slow, stoop-backed hobble, but before I could get a good look at her through my glasses, the other elephants closed in around her and the herd moved into the cover. However I got a distant picture of that cow, with my longest lens.

This summer again I was in the Periyar Sanctuary and came across the lame cow near Salt Creek on 10 April. She was with two other cows, one of which had a young calf, grazing near the water on a steep bank. As our boat drew closely in, the wind which was blowing right across, shifted momentarily and the Elephants threw up their trunks, trumpeted and scrambled up the bank to the tree cover beyond. The lame cow, however, stayed on -- that bank was too steep for her to negotiate in a hurry. We drew closer and stopped, and after a while both the other cows came back; and one with the young calf stayed on the top of the bank, behind some bushy trees, but the other cow climbed down to rejoin the lame comrade.

Keeping stock-still, I was able to observe that crippled beast from only 20 yards away, for almost a quarter of an hour. The left foreleg was permanently crooked and inflexible; the "elbow" was stiff, and just above it there was a great mass of rounded callus tissue -- apparently the humerus had snapped there and been reset in a balled callus. The right foreleg, whether from injury (much the more likely explanation) or from having to bear the weight of the forepart of the body unaided, was bowed -- it did not exhibit any extraordinary muscular development, such as one might expect in a limb that has to do double duty. As the result of this lowering of the forequarters by injury, the backbone was humped and high behind the shoulder -- even on level ground this unnatural humping of the back was obvious, and when the animal was climbing down the malformation was grotesquely exaggerated. She was still a young elephant, though full-grown -- I thought she was from 20 to 25 years old. The "serivellous", the tushes the cow elephants normally lose with maturity, were protrusively noticeable beneath the base of the trunk.

People at the sanctuary pointed out that it was well known that occasionally elephants met with accidental injuries. The elephant-pit is quite a feature of the Kerala forests, and she must have fallen into one of these devilish contraptions. She moved slowly, in a humpbacked hobble, but munched the fresh grass with patent relish, supremely indifferent to our near presence. No doubt she had come to know that in the sanctuary men were harmless. Her companion kept pace with her, and both animals slowly grazed their way up a gently sloping ledge that led to the top of the bank and disappeared into a hollow beyond.

A week later, I came across three elephants bathing in the canal miles from Salt Creek. As our boat approached, one of the three cows walked out of the water on the bare, shingly bank, but soon plunged in again to rejoin her frolicking companions. What a high old time the huge beasts were having! They waded up the canal bed, towards the bank, then turned and plunged impetuously into the deep water again, diving right in and coming up with a buoyant roll, only the boss of the heads or the highest point of the back showing above the surface, hugging one another with their trunks and swishing their tails around, sucking water up their trunks and then squirting it out at one another in great jets! The most active of the three, I noticed, dived with a curious, porpoise-like roll, a high humped back alone showing above the water before the animal plunged right in, to come up right beside one of her companions in a tumbling huddle -- then all at once I recalled where I had seen this before.

That hump-backed lame cow was very much the life and soul of the party -- only if you have watched the way she gambolled with her companions, swimming into them, drenching them with jets of water from her trunk, would you know that this is a factual record; untinctured with sentiment. For long minutes the elephants continued their aquatic play, then a party of French tourists arrived in another boat, went in too fast and too close and shouted at the animals to make them get on to the land so they could take pictures with their snapshot cameras as the leviathans went scrambling up the bank. The last to go up the bank was the lame cow, her slow stumbling passage up the slope and into the jungles beyond contrasting so painfully with her zestful, fluid grace in the water.

Afterwards I learned that this lame cow was rarely to be found away from the canal, and that she was always accompanied by other cows from her herd. In her own ponderous, empirical way she had discovered the secret that cost ARCHIMEDES such sustained mental effort, and found out that in the water her crippled limbs were NO LONGER burdened with her body weight."

- M. Krishnan

This was first published on 22 May 1960 in The Sunday Statesman

# One sketch has not been reproduced here.