The Elephant is Slow to Mate
by D. H. Lawrence

The elephant, the huge old beast, is slow to mate; he finds a female, they show no haste they wait

for the sympathy in their vast shy hearts slowly, slowly to rouse as they loiter along the river-beds and drink and browse

and dash in panic through the brake of forest with the herd, and sleep in massive silence, and wake together, without a word.

So slowly the great hot elephant hearts grow full of desire, and the great beasts mate in secret at last, hiding their fire.

Oldest they are and the wisest of beasts so they know at last how to wait for the loneliest of feasts for the full repast.

They do not snatch, they do not tear; their massive blood moves as the moon-tides, near, more near till they touch in flood.

On a separate note, the Palani Mohan event at the Asia Society this week was very interesting. The hardest images to watch and hear him talk about are the ones taken in Burma, of some men ‘breaking’ a young elephant. They enclose the elephant in a wood frame and torture him for 3 days until he gives up. The last photo from that series is the one of the elephant’s eye and the solitary tear. One of the pictures on exhibit in the main entry hall is from the elephant orphanage at Pinnewala (SL).

Glad to see another anabrandhanmar (have to agree with UberMetroMallu, it does mean people who are elephant crazy)…Welcome sandhya…I have a small but growing collection of elephan related paraphernelia. I have a loving family that brings me back elephant treasures from over the world. My prized posession is a pair of toe rings with elephants on them

My favorite memory is of feeding the temple elephants in Madurai during summer visits to my grandparents…happy days before I realized the cruelty with which a lot of them are treated.

In sixth class when I was in boarding school close to the Annaimalai mountains of the western ghats and we were trekking there we had a ‘father’ elephant chase one of the guys in our group when they encountered the family of 3 around a bend across a huge rock. The guy ran like hell as the elephant chased after him, until he jumped off the heights on to a dry river bed.

Retirement beneifits was in the news some time back, although I am not sure if this applies to all the temple elephants in India.

I love the poem. The descriptive language used is very clever and “real”. And yet the final stanza is fanciful and employs mythology. Very nice.

I just love poetry. And you’re right, we desis are more critical of desi writers, perhaps rightly, because for too many centuries we have been exoticized, and we are wary of that. We want to be seen as “normal,” rather than exotic. Who wouldn’t?

And yet. And yet….our country is so unique that it is bloody hard to write about it sometimes without employing exotic metaphors.

It reminded me of something I saw at the Getty museum in LA once. An illustrated Flemish manuscript from 1475 titled “The Land of India”. It contains this drawing of what the artist thinks an elephant looks like. It’s clear he was working from other people’s descriptions of the animal.

Mohan would be saddened to know the South Africa has decided to start culling the booming African elephants.

They also have an elephant fundoshi. Or, maybe it’s a fundoshi made for an elephant. Either way, it fits me!

So long as we’re on elephants, one of my favorite quips when my big boss comes around, who used to be an options trader, is to remind him that options traders eat like chickens but go to the bathroom like elephants. Snort.

Anyhow, glad you’re here Sandhya!