Gentle touch to lonely giants

Kottoor provides succour to abandoned and ill-treated elephants

54-elephant Jumbo effort: An elephant’s tusk being cleaned with sand and mud | R.S. Gopan

AMMU, 17, is prim and proper. Covid or not, she performs the handwashing ritual every time she is offered water. And, she drinks only freshly drawn water from wells. She is one of the inmates at the Kottoor Elephant Rehabilitation Centre in Thiruvananthapuram district, the first such facility in India.

One of her companions, Soman, 82, is the oldest elephant in the country. Though healthy for his age, Soman gets extra care in the time of coronavirus.

The youngest elephant here, Sreekutty, is barely six months old. She is on a diet of baby food, glucose, ragi, jaggery and rice, and will start on cow’s milk after two months. She was found abandoned near a riverbank as a 15-day-old calf and was kept in observation for a few days. When no one came looking for her, the rehabilitation centre adopted her.

The she-elephant Poorna, who is eight years old, looks after Sreekutty with almost motherly affection, and teaches her how to eat and drink by herself and how to splash water on her body while bathing. Poorna also fans away the flies with her ears and wards off other unwanted things that come near Sreekutty. A four-year-old elephant, Kannan, tags along with Poorna and never leaves her side.

Like everyone else, the elephants at the rehabilitation centre, too, are under lockdown. “Though elephants are said to be least prone to Covid owing to the absence of certain receptors, we did not want to take any risk,” said Dr E.K. Easwaran, a key figure behind the Kottoor centre who recently retired as the chief veterinary officer of the Kerala forest department. “We followed all the Covid protocols and gave the mahouts special instructions.” As with humans, the little ones and the elderly here get special attention.

“We declared lockdown long before the rest of the country went into one,” said range officer N.V. Satheeshan. “We stopped having visitors and our mahouts have not stepped out of the centre for the last three months.”

The centre, set up in 2005, got a facelift last year and is now home to 18 abandoned and rescued elephants. Spread over 56 hectares in the Agasthyavanam Biological Park Range, it also has a mahout training centre.

Soman, 82, is the oldest elephant in India | R.S. Gopan Soman, 82, is the oldest elephant in India | R.S. Gopan

“Like Sreekutty, most of the elephants were found abandoned in the forests at a very young age,” said Easwaran. “We still do not know the exact reason for the abandonment.”

Most of the foundlings had some physical deformity. Sreekutty, for instance, has a slight bend on her foot. Perhaps she could not keep pace with the herd and was left behind. Sometimes a calf would refuse to leave her dead mother’s side and the herd would pass on. Some calves fall in rapid rivers during the rains and are carried away by the currents.

Some elephants at the Kottoor centre were tamed elephants whom their owners had deserted in sickness. A few others were rescued from their cruel owners. Three of the elephants here have gone to Wayanad district to be trained as kungki elephants that assist in rescuing or giving medical treatment to injured or trapped wild elephants. Of the remaining 15 elephants, 11 are female.

Sreekutty is yet to meet any outsiders. Two mahouts take care of her 24/7, and they say she is too young to be exposed to the outside world.

“Most of our mahouts are tribals and they follow here every custom that they observe for their own children. We don’t interfere with those practices as they are like mothers to the young ones,” said Satheeshan. If the mahout is not within sight, Sreekutty panics; such is their bonding, he said.

The elephants take bath twice a day in the nearby river. The bath in the morning is elaborate but in the evening it is quick. After breakfast, the elephants are allowed to roam around in groups. But not all are friendly and caring like Poorna or Sunitha, 47, the oldest female here. Raja is “haughty”, said Satheeshan. “He does not like to be touched or caressed.”

Kerala has 521 captive elephants, according to a 2018 survey. While most of them are with temples, a few are owned by individuals. The state government has allocated funds for elephant care during the lockdown as many owners had found it difficult to meet the huge expense.

Though the lockdown is being lifted, the Kottoor centre is not going to open anytime soon. “Our topmost priority is the health of the elephants,” said Satheeshan. “So we will be the last to open.”

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