Through the Eyes of an Elephant!

My interpretation of the phrase “The silent letter “ is a heartfelt actual letter from an elephant mother to us bipedal. We perceive this immense world within a bubble. It is a sensory bubble. This sensory bubble has a beautiful name called the — Umwelt. Thomas Nagel In his classic 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” argued that Bats perceive the world through sonar and since this is the sense that the majority of humans lack, “there is no reason to suppose that is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine”. In some sense, we are all trapped in our own perceptual reality, something like our own parallel realities. Where one person’s reality varies from another but also he/she/they are unable to perceive the reality of any other animal, bird or insect. The other animals also have conscious experiences that are inherently subjective and very hard to describe. Today, I attempt to do this difficult task of putting myself into an elephant’s shoes literally. I am about 31-year-old female roaming in a mosaic of grasslands and forests by the banks of River Brahmaputra living peacefully in a herd of 15 including my extended family as well we are about 30 females and 10 juveniles. I mated about 21 months back with a big bull with a long tusk who we ladies fondly call Kandoro. The fresh sprouts of grass are growing and the calf is on the way any day now. Hence I am roaming along with my extended family as they can sense my pain and excitement in my loud trumpet calls. As the evening sets, I am standing by the roadside, and the young bulls are following me relentlessly as I guess they are getting confused if I am estrus or not. I am starting to feel uncomfortable and have the urge to bend my lower legs. I am stretching my hind legs until the vula almost touches the ground. A scorching pain is building up in my whole body, my mind keeps saying you have done this before 5 years back and you can do this again. My family is all around me touching me back and rumbling back to me to provide the strength and support I need. I can’t see them clearly as the sun is almost down but I can smell their presence all around me. I stretch my hind legs and push with all my strength, the embryotic sac is almost here. I bend my legs and keep pushing and within seconds my calf falls onto the ground. All 40 of them are trumpeting, rumbling, roaring or chirping all together, it is like an orchestra and I am overenjoyed. I back to the job of being a mom, clearing the baby of the sac and then cleaning the floor with my front feet so that the furious tiger can’t smell fresh blood anywhere. The old females are overjoyed and they are helping me lift the baby up. He is trying to stand up but he is falling again and again. We all decide to call him Sahel. I am rolling my trunk over baby Sahel’s trunk and lifting his head. He is trying to stand up and finally, he stood up for a second and then down again. Again I roll my trunk over his trunk and lift him and he is up again, now I am placing my trunk on the back of his body and supporting his body with my trunk so that he stands for a little longer. In a couple of seconds, he goes down again. Finally, after maybe 15–20 repeated attempts he finally stands without any support. He is starting to lift his front leg and walk forward. I am rumbling all this time and motivating him to try again and again, finally, Sahel takes the first step which is extremely wobbly and falls down immediately. But he is up again in no time and as I am very tired and I need some self-care, my elder daughter who is 5 years old helps in lifting the Sahel on his feet and rumbles him to keep learning. After 3 more attempts, Sahel learns to walk and I am jubilant about it. We all decide to leave this area soon, however, Sahel still hasn’t started to suckle but my family members assure me that he will learn soon and we should move away from this area. We walk about 500 meters away and just then Sahel makes the first attempt to suckle but as he can’t see clearly, he is confused about where my mammary glands are. The oldest matriarch helps me to hold him in one place just behind my front legs and she caresses him by touching his lower jaw to open his mouth above and just then he opens and starts suckling. I am standing on the side of one of the largest waterbody in this area. My herd is in the water feeding on my favourite Water hyacinth. By the side of the waterbody, I am on babysitting duty because out of all the calves and juveniles who aren’t old enough to enter the water, mine is the youngest. Sahel is just 1 month old and he needs to suckle almost every half-hour. He is also a very curious kid, just a few minutes back he was busy chasing an egret with his floppy trunk. He still can’t control his trunk and keeps stepping on it. I need to teach him to drink water with that trunk. I am overwhelmed with the thought of how much I need to teach him. But most importantly, I need to teach him to be away from bipedal animals and sometimes bipedal animals in big objects as well. For the safety of Sahel from furious tigers, this evening we are all gathered around a waterbody as we can easily smell him out in the open and charge him as soon as he gets too close to us. I stood on the hard surface (road) which my feet don’t like at all leading to the waterbody, sniffing the air of a familiar smell. Maybe someone I know or maybe not, unsure of my footing and unsure to trust or not, I walk a couple of steps towards the familiar smell but halt. My elder one has already crossed to the other side and is playing along with her friends. I am scared and call out a Let’s go rumble to my young one right away, as I don’t want these bipedal animals to scare or harm him in any way. Within minutes, he came running towards me. I calm him by placing my trunk on his back and touching his mouth. Once he is calm, he grows more curious and walks towards the big object from where that smell is coming. I trumpet out loud as he is about to touch the big object. Once we have crossed the road, he starts suckling immediately and I feel relieved. The smell in the air is sweet. This smell only means one thing the grasses that the bipedal grow are ripped now. Right now we are all rumbling back to one another and deciding the safest place to go eat those grasses outside our homes. We finally decide on a safe place just next to our home, we select that place as my baby Sahel is only 2 months old and if any mischief by bipedal animals, we can easily run back to our homes. The sun is slowly setting, it is a cold winter night up ahead but the anticipation of eating a tasty meal tonight is already making me drool. This will be Sahel’s first step into the bipedal’s world. I am nervous and excited so are all the others. As the night sets in, it’s a beautiful full moon silent night, a notso-perfect setting because the bipedal can see us very easily. But we can wait anymore, we rush into the grass right next to our home and start to devour it right away. Sahel is still suckling and hasn’t tasted grass yet, so he looks not so interested and decides to lay down next to me while with my trunk I break the grass and start feeding on it. They are even tastier than I had thought. The silent night is starting to get loud and an unfamiliar smell is building up in the air. My aunt rumbles back to me and I know she means we have been spotted and we know now any moment the bipedal will be close to us. I eat as fast as I can ask much grass as I can stuff in my mouth as quickly as possible. I lift Sahel’s head and ask him to get up as well. Just as he gets up, a very loud noise with a bit of fire bursts right next to us. The bipedal throw something like strong sunlight on our eyes which is painful and very distorting. Sahel is very scared and starts trumpeting loudly. I assure him that we are safe by softly rumbling but for the safety of my son, I and Sahel started quickly walking back to my home. As I look back from my home, my family members including my elder daughter are still feeding on the grasses, they seem to be least bothered and content. But in a few minutes, things change again, bipedal are getting closer and closer, and they all start to anxious and slowly move back to their home. With the Sahel by my side, a few months pass by without any disturbances, it’s all play and fun. He is becoming boisterous by the day and he has already started climbing on other siblings when they lay down on the ground for rest. He gives me such immense joy and happiness. However, my milk is drying up as fresh grass to feed in this dry season is difficult to find. We are all desperately looking for the rain to come. 8 months have passed by and the rains are here finally. The smell of rain is overwhelming but we are all anxious at the same time because it means in a couple of months we all have to make the hard journey away from the safety of our homes. But today we all enjoy, mud bathing in the fresh mud that rain brings. The water level is rising and we need to move high up in the hills, but it is a tough decision to leave the safety of this home. It will be Sahel’s first journey, I am very nervous, lifting my trunk up in a periscope view and smelling fresh water everywhere. I start rumbling and I know these calls reach kilometres away, I want my Sahel to be a part of a huge group before we leave the home as safety is much higher in numbers. My and families rumbling has brought 120 elephants into the area, we are all waiting by a side of a very hard surface and it’s very noisy as these large objects keep passing by at an exhilarating speed. We are waiting for the sun to set and as soon as these large objects disappear we will run to the other side. We run for our life as the evening sets and move to higher ground where flood water won’t reach. We are high up in the hills, we can smell the air, there is no more smell of stagnant water but the smell of fresh mud deposits everywhere. We sensed this is the time to go back to our home, we rumble to one another to ask other family members to join us on this journey back home. Within hours we are a group of 86, an old female made a let’s go rumble and we all start marching down to the hill. Only a couple of steps later, I realize the Sahel is not on my side. I trumpet for him and then rumble again and then a trumpet but there is no response. We climb our steps back to the hill looking for him. I smell him somewhere close and now I can even see him lying down near a shiny pole. I rush to the place where he is lying down. I touch him but he doesn’t move. He isn’t moving, I can’t sense his heartbeat when I place my trunk on his body. I let out a loud growling roar and all my group members came rushing to my side. They are touching the body and then touching me. Some even comfort me by placing their trunk in my mouth but I don’t feel like touching anyone except my Sahel. The eldest in the group picks up the wire which is near Sahel’s trunk. He would have touched a live wire is what everyone knows. I am devasted and with all my strength I lift his left leg and lifeless body down the hill. A few elders in my group are assuring me to leave the body back, but I can’t leave him yet. A part of me doesn’t believe he is no more. We cross the same busy very hard surface (highway) and reach back to the safety of home, however, a part of me doesn’t feel safe yet. Sahel’s body is still with me, I walk a couple of steps and put the body and lift it again. It’s been 3 days since Sahel’s body is with me. I think now it’s the time to let go. I place his body on the ground next to an elephant apple tree which I like to feed on and take a couple of steps forward with my trunk still pointing to his smell. I finally let go of him but his smell and memories will be with me forever. Dear Bipedal, the purpose of sharing a portion of my journey was to make you realize that all I require from you is space. A space on this planet that we both call our home.

Written by — Seema Lokhandwala