Category: Blog

I’m delighted to say that the Mis-Guide is now online and can be read in both English and Malayalam here.

The NIAS/Exeter collaboration, ‘Performing the Periphery’ would like to invite you to an exhibition of artwork towards ‘A Kochi Mis-Guide’, and to meet some of the artists, in the Foyer of the Tata Auditorium, Thursday 11^th April, from 4.00-5.30 pm.

 

A Mis-Guide is not a guide. It is an incitement to look again, to rub your eyes and see the city that is hiding in plain sight. It is an invitation to think about the city in ways that might have escaped notice.

 

This one has been made for Fort Kochi and Mattancherry by five young artists from RLV College of Music and Fine Arts, with texts by Cathy Turner, and with guidance from Keralan artist Vipin Dhanurdhuran and curator Sumitra Sunder.

 

We welcome artists Kunji Kuttan Narayanan, Manu Mohan Pallivathukkal, Smija Vijayan and Rithun Manohar, and are delighted to show further work by Amal Pailly.

 

The exhibition comprises the English text, which is being translated into Malayalam; some prints of the artworks; some original sketchbooks; and a video in Malayalam. Four of the five artists have joined us from Kerala. Their first language is Malayalam and they would welcome conversation about their work in this language. There will be bilingual speakers present who can assist in asking questions, if needed.

 

We eventually intend the work to be available online, and in hard copy, to be distributed in Fort Kochi and Mattancherry.

 

Please do come along to this informal viewing.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDIES Indian Institute of Science Campus Bengaluru 560012

and

The NIAS – Exeter University Research Network on The Politics of Performance on the Urban Periphery

present

The Song of the Mahout: Performances, Interactions, Lives

J K Dobi

J K Jagadeesh

J C Annaiah

Dubare Elephant Camp, Kodagu District, Karnataka

Date and Time:Wednesday, 10 April 2019, 3:30 PM Venue: Lecture Hall, NIAS

Chair: Nishant M Srinivasaiah Animal Behaviour and Cognition Programme, NIAS

Abstract

Every once in a while, a free-ranging elephant finds its way into captivity in one of the elephant camps in southern India. This wild-caught elephant, which probably viewed human beings as a threat for all good reasons, is then handed over to a very unique set of people, the mahouts, to be tamed and kept. The elephant and the mahout now embark on one of the most interesting journeys of building a relationship, one of trust, but filled with pain and pride, between a human and a nonhuman species that seldom can be explained but only experienced. What is it like to be living with elephants in elephant forests? And how does one express this experience?

In this interaction with elephant caretakers, JK Dobi, JK Jagadeesh and JC Annaiah, we learn about their lives in elephant forests, their bonding with elephants, both captive and wild, and the role of music in expressing their relationship with the untamed wilderness, which continues to live within them.

JK Dobi, JK Jagadeesh and JC Annaiah belong to the Jeenu Kuruba community and are senior mahouts with the Karnataka State Forest Department. They have spent many years looking after elephants, who they consider their family, and wandering the forests, their home.

Jerri and I are off again tomorrow (5th), to visit our colleagues at NIAS, Bengaluru.

We’ll be co-hosting several events – one with mahouts from Karnataka sharing their experiences and songs, and one with music TM Krishna and the Jogappas, plus an exhibition of work towards the Kochi Mis-Guide, with the young artists who made it on hand to talk about their work. More about each of these later, as I’ve got to get packed!

An elephant never forgets. But as Bill Murray jokes, you don’t forget an elephant. Tripunithura then, is full of memories.

Ritual, blurring into performance, can knit a community together, and that community can, to an extent, include the elephant.

This, at least, is the vivid picture of the past described by the Varma family (Anujan, Prasana, Prashant). This family has lived with and alongside elephants since childhood. While acknowledging the exploitation of the animals, they tell us a story of a relationship that has been eroded, where familial ties with the elephant have been replaced by commercial transactions, to the detriment of animal welfare.

The elephant ritual at the temple in Tripunithura, itself central to the community, is not merely a festival occurrence. On a daily basis, a single elephant circumnavigates the temple – and this also happens during and aside from the festival line-up of elephants (we observed it at 4.30 am, singly circling the shrine). This means that there is permanently at least one elephant in the neighbourhood, and previously, the temple elephants would reside there, or nearby, all year round, many sleeping in the temple grounds (this happened up to the 1960s). In wealthy times, there were many elephants; in lean times, their numbers dwindled. They were chosen, not for their height, or for facebook followers (as now), but for docility. Rather than have fodder brought to the temple, they would walk from house to house, gathering a little at each, and spending time with the families. This walking, and as elephant rituals increased, walking between temples, helped keep the elephants fit, and bonded them with the community. Of course, the changes in road conditions and traffic make this undesirable.

Elephants used to be part of the triumvirate of owner, mahout and animal, each possessing respect, if not equal status. The familial network of elephant ownership was sustained by the intermarriage of Nambudiri (Malayali Brahmins, the temple owners), with the land-owning, matrilineal Nairs. We were told a story of a Cochin king, who, on recognising the family mahout in a visit to a prison, demanded that he be released, since the elephant was now alone. The mahouts would stay with their elephants as a lifelong commitment, often handing over the elephant’s care to sons who had trained under them. Although the relationship was based on dominance, it was also based on a deep bond, with the mahout often sleeping next to the elephant, and spending most of his time alongside the animal. We heard of a mahout, Gopalan Nair, whose relationship with the elephant was so strong that in his old age, he was able to walk partly supported by the elephant’s tusk; on his deathbed, he asked that the elephant be taken away, as otherwise he would be unlikely to obey another mahout.

Another narrative tells of a mahout whose elephant trusted him so completely, that when the mahout lay down to sleep by the road, the elephant lay down and slept beside him, to the confusion of passers-by (this is not what elephants normally do!)

Prasana Varma emphasised the sense of community around the temple, the likelihood of knowing nearly everyone at the festival. As a child, she not only remembered the continuous presence of elephants in the back garden, or visiting the house, but also being happily left in the temple all night, to sleep on the floor in front of the Kathakali performers, or to hang around the grounds, near the elephants themselves. The elephants are remembered as family members.

Of course, this may be a romantic picture and even to advocate for learning from the best aspects of the past can result in accusations of endorsing animal cruelty. Yet all of the family take care not to deny the problems of keeping a wild animal within a domestic setting, and indeed they are passionate about the need for change from the current situation (and listening, too, to elephant biologist nephew, Sreedhar). However, when the relationship between human and animal is so closely interwoven, there is less need for cruelty and distrust, and less suffering all round, than in present circumstances.

These days, elephants are brought to the festival in trucks from across the state. The mahout’s profession has become much more short-term, so that the elephant might have a constant change of mahout, with consequent stress and more aggressive methods of training. The use of chains when walking, while understandable as a safety precaution, has itself caused all kinds of health problems. As mentioned in a previous post, standards of care have fallen, including poor feeding that results in impaction. The keeping of elephants has become commercial, and profitable. Mahout rivalry is similar to that of the Kathakali performers, or the drummers, mirroring similar concerns about profit and status. The elephant ritual, while it is still a ritual here, rather than simply a display (as at Thrissur), has become less embedded in the community. The status of the mahout is low, and little concern is shown for the men (or very occasionally women) who share the elephant’s experience in so many respects; there is a high level of substance abuse among them. When logging was banned, a number of elephants and mahouts migrated from the North to Kerala, in search of work, often forced to beg by the roadside. The logging ban, however necessary, also has negative effects on animal fitness, and on the mahout’s ability to earn money all year round.

While there is recognition that change needs to happen, there is also a need to capture the knowledge of such families as well as that of the mahouts, because they have lived so closely to these animals, without fear, and with a high degree of exchange between them. They, above all, understand what is at stake for the elephant in his treatment at the hands of human beings. At the same time, there is a sense of loss: ‘What I get from the elephant is something very special,’ says Prasana. ‘I can’t put my finger on it. I get a lot from the elephant… but it doesn’t from me.’

 

 

 

Today we were able to interview Mr Anujan Varma, one of the festival organisers, and Mr Bhaskaran Nair, who is a retired mahout.

We asked both of them about the future of elephants in the festival. Mr Varma felt it was hard to predict. Although it is illegal to capture elephants, when numbers rise, the Forest Department may itself have to capture some elephants due to  human-elephant conflict (as has happened recently in Karnataka) and these elephants may be cared for by individuals in agreements with that department (officially all captive elephants are owned by the Forestry Department). This could feasibly continue the temple supply. The popularity of the festivals might also prove politically persuasive, and for other reasons, there could be many ways of continuing.

In contrast, Mr Nair considered that the festival will not last for another fifteen years, since new guidelines for caring for elephants stipulate that they need so much land, their maintenance cannot be logistically managed.

Many other things were said about the experience of the Vrishchikotsavam – too much for this one post, but more another time.

We also asked Mr Nair, who has a long experience as a mahout, about his impression of how things are changing, and some of the questions I asked yesterday about the elephants’ experiences.

In terms of change, while some of the regulations for the elephants’ treatment are improvements, what has deteriorated is the training of the mahouts, with a shortage of those who have bonded with the elephants over time, and who take time to train these animals, too. Some mahouts now use punishment as a starting point, rather than a last resort. They take short cuts, for example they do not take time to scrub the animals all over, in running water, a process the elephant enjoys, and often sleeps through; instead they are casually scrubbed with a brush (not coconut shell or stone) in a still pond, which provides no such pleasure and leaves folds uncared for and susceptible to infection. The details of the elephants’ needs can often be lost, to the detriment of the elephants’ wellbeing.

In answer to our questions about whether the elephants respond to the music, he was quite positive, however, that they do. They do recognise it as different from other sounds, and they do respond differently from each other. His own former elephant used to sway as the drums built up to a climax. Another elephant used to sway even upon entering the temple here, but no other temples. This implies a recognition of place, though whether this was ‘dancing’ is unclear (it could be an emotional response of some sort). He also thought that some elephants are aware of being watched, and some enjoy it (though not all). Some hope to be fed, and some seem to like attention. On the other hand, when asked what the elephant thinks of the Vrishchikotsavam, he laughs and says that an elephant never chooses the festival.

These examples and other stories served to illustrate the significance of individuality and suggest that gathering the mahouts’ knowledge could be really significant for our understanding of animals, where scientific findings can often be generalized, if clearly evidenced, rather than individualised, through careful, longterm observation.

After the interviews, we met the elephant in the back garden. Of course, we did not really interview him, but we were glad to meet him. He stood quietly, while Jerri fed him some bananas.

It is illegal to capture elephants from the wild, and for this and other humane reasons, the Keralan temple festival, with its array of performing elephants, may be a dying form.

These elephants are already captive. Might they be better off without performing? Sreedhar tells us of a number of measures that have been taken to mitigate negative effects on these elephants: bringing in double the numbers to allow for rest; evaluating levels of stress in individual elephants to make the best selection each day; arranging them, not in order of height, but in terms of their relative friendliness towards each other; looking for signs of injury or physical ailment, and not forcing an elephant to process during musth or in other sub-optimal circumstances. He works together with the vet, on hand throughout the festival, to advise on the choice of the fifteen elephants that form the daily procession during the Vrishchikotsavam at the Sree Poornathrayeesa Temple in Tripunithura.

We watched the various groups of people under, on and around the elephants, and thought about the various small economies that are sustained by their appearance. The mahouts, of course – these do not perform, but sit behind the elephant’s front legs, or place a restraining hand on the tusk. But also the laughing, show-off accoutrement-bearers sitting on their backs, twirling parasols. Then the makers of the parasols, head-dresses and other objects. The elephant owners, I suppose. The traffic controllers and drivers. The vendors selling nuts, toys, chilli snacks and water outside. How would this event change, without its star attractions? Without the elephants, would all these crowds come to hear the drumming?

Are the elephants performing? Is it anthropomorphic to say so? On the way back, Jerri, Anindya and I discuss whether there is also a risk of assuming that the animals understand too little. When they walk, are they aware of being looked at? What does it mean to them? How do they experience the pancharimelam (percussion ensemble)? To wonder whether an animal in chains enjoys any part of the experience seems risky, and one can’t deny that the relationship between the mahout and the creature is one of dominance. However, elephants do respond to rhythmic sounds. Is the clamour of horns, clash of cymbals and crescendo of Chenda drums unbearable? Or was that elephant deliberately flapping his ears in time? The effect on humans could go either way, and the hours of percussive sound can feel tortuous or hypnotic, possibly both. Should we assume all elephants experience them in identical ways?

Outside the temple, people crowded around a small, plastic elephant, a model of a deceased star. When one sees photographs of decorated elephants in rows, it becomes too easy to think of these creatures as objects, like so many paperweights in a novelty shop. Thinking of them, and treating them as individuals, seems part of an ethical approach to their experience.

We are pleased to present an exhibition of our fieldwork in February as part of the annual conference of the British Association of South Asian Studies, hosted by the Exeter South Asian Centre and College of Humanities at the University of Exeter, April 18-20, 2018.

The exhibition is entitled ‘Performing the Periphery: The Urur-Olcott Kuppam Vizha, Chennai 2018 and Maha Shivaratri, Bengaluru, 2018.’ This exhibition documents initial fieldwork to look at the politics of performance on the peripheries of growing South Indian cities. It shows the Urur-Olcott festival as social, environmental and aesthetic intervention, and the Maha Shivaratri festival as manifested in remarkably varied ritual performance within and on the periphery of a modern metropolis. The exhibition will be in the Forum building on the afternoon and evening of the 18th, then moved to the XFi corridor for the 19th and 20th. All welcome.