KARI GOES TO TOWN
When Kari was about five years old, another adventure befell him.
We took him to see the town, but before we had started, we tried
to train him to like dogs and monkeys. Elephants are proverbially
irritated by dogs. When an elephant goes through a village, every
dog barks at him, and while most elephants are too dignified to
pay any attention, there are some who get extremely annoyed and
try to chase the dogs. Sometimes, in fact, an elephant will chase
a dog so hard that he will lose his way in the village.
Knowing that there were many unknown little hamlets between our
village and the city, we thought we would train Kari to like
dogs before we started, for we did not want to be led astray
into all sorts of little alleys while he chased the dogs who had
annoyed him.
But as all the dogs of our village had seen Kari grow up they
never paid any attention to him, and that made it all the more
difficult to train Kari to like other dogs. He always thought the
dogs in our little village were the right kind since they did not
bark at him. Whenever a strange dog barked at him, he would chase
the poor creature through the whole village and waste hours in
finding his way back to the road.
We tried to train Kari by taking him to villages that he had not
yet seen. There were no dogs in the first village we came to. We
went through it without any trouble. In the second village we
came across one or two dogs that barked a few times, then
disappeared in the distance. Then, as we were leaving this
village we heard terrible snorts and growls all around us and
were suddenly surrounded by a pack of angry mongrels, curs and
wild dogs. It was terrible to see Kari trying to chase them with
his trunk. Sometimes he would try to step right on the back of a
dog, but the dog would slip away from under him. Little by little
as the dogs began to bark all around him, he started to go round
and round in a circle, faster and faster till he was spinning
like a top.
We had a hard time sitting on his back because we felt terribly
dizzy. We were almost falling off, when we heard a piercing yell
and saw the whole pack of tormentors running away. Kari had
stepped on one of the dogs and killed it and that frightened the
others away.
We then brought Kari home, gave him his bath in the river and
offered him nice saplings and twigs, but he would eat none of
them.
From that day on, Kari was never upset by the barking of dogs,
but went through strange villages without paying any attention to
them, no matter how hard they barked at his heels.
Now that he had become immune to dogs, we tried to make him like
monkeys. Monkeys, as you know, are very annoying little
creatures. I had a pet monkey of my own named Kopee, who was
red-faced and tawny-coated. He never came near the elephant, and
Kari never thought of going near him. Whenever we went out, this
monkey used to sit on my shoulder, and if we passed through
bazaars where mangoes and other fruits were sold, it was very
difficult to keep Kopee from getting into mischief. In India
everything is shown in the open, and the mangoes lie in baskets
piled up one above the other like little hills. There were places
where oranges were heaped up like big burning rocks. Here and
there you could see brown men robed in white sitting near these
mountains of fruit, bargaining about the prices.
Now it is very good to smell the fragrance of fruit, and one day
while going through the lane of a village, as the fragrance of
the fruit grew stronger, I forgot all about Kopee, and did not
realize that I was carrying him on my shoulder.
Somehow the little monkey always knew when I was not thinking of
him. At such moments he would invariably jump off my shoulder and
run straight for the oranges or mangoes, take one or two of them
and then make a dive for a sheltered spot. This upset the whole
bazaar. Hundreds of men would pursue him from tree to tree,
yelling and throwing stones till he vanished out of sight.
Of course, I used to get terribly frightened, fearing that the
men would attack me for carrying such a mischievous monkey. I
would hurry out of the bazaar and make for home as fast as I
could go. Then in an hour or two I would find Kopee on the house
top, looking perfectly innocent and scratching himself. No one
could ever tell by his face that he had stolen fruit a short
while before.
When the time came for me to go to town, I was anxious to take
Kopee and Kari with me, and I wanted the elephant to like the
monkey and the monkey to behave like a gentleman toward the
elephant. One day I brought the monkey on my shoulder and held
him tight with both hands in front of the pavilion where the
elephant was busy eating all kinds of saplings. Sometimes he
would take a strong twig and unravel the top into a soft, fluffy
tuft; then he would seize the other end of it with his trunk and
brush himself. The moment he saw the monkey, he snorted and
raised his trunk to grab him. With one wild scream the monkey
jumped off my shoulder, climbed up the pavilion post and
disappeared on the roof.
I went to Kari and spoke to him. I said, "Kari, in order to like
dogs you killed one, now don't kill my monkey in order to like
monkeys." He was very displeased that I should ever want him to
like monkeys, because elephants are very much like some people
who don't like to associate with others who have come from
nowhere and whom they consider their inferiors. Elephants don't
like to associate with monkeys, for they came from nowhere. You
must remember, too, that elephants rarely see monkeys because
monkeys are above the elephants most of the time, jumping and
squealing among the trees in a manner most annoying to a quiet
and sedate creature like an elephant.
It did not take more than a week, however, to bring Kari and
Kopee together. One day there was a pile of fruit lying in the
open, and the elephant stood at one end eating and the monkey at
the other, both enjoying the feast. Of course, the elephant ate
faster than the monkey, and realizing this, Kopee began to eat
more quickly and soon had enormous pouches on each side of his
face. Before long all the fruit was gone and the two animals were
left facing each other. The monkey trembled with fear. He was
almost on the point of running away to a tree-top, but, no one
knows why, the elephant turned away from him and went into his
pavilion. This gave the monkey great courage, so he went straight
up to the roof of the pavilion, and peering down through the
eaves, found out that the elephant lived on twigs and fruits and
saplings just like himself. Having watched all this, I then got
up on Kari's back and whistled to the monkey. He leaped down from
the tree onto my shoulder. The elephant shivered for a moment and
then was absolutely still. When I ordered him "mali," he walked
on.
One day I took them to the bazaar, I on the elephant and the
monkey on my shoulder. When we had reached a mountain of mangoes
round the corner of a lane, the monkey jumped off and climbed up
to the top of the pile. At this the owner of the fruit chased him
away, yelling and shouting. The monkey climbed up the roof of a
house, followed by a crowd. Kari, however, put out his trunk and
helped himself to whatever fruits he liked, eating them with
great relish. The moment he heard the people coming back from the
monkey chase, he ran away--and you may be surprised to know that
when an elephant runs, he can go more than ten miles an hour. By
the time we reached home, Kopee had buried his face in an
enormous mango and was covered with the juice. And you know
that mangoes taste very much like strawberries and cream with
sugar on them.
[Illustration: ONE DAY I TOOK THEM TO THE BAZAAR]
At last we set off for the city, Kari, and Kopee now the best of
friends. It was very interesting at night going through the
jungle country. The moonlight was intense, falling like white
waters on the land. You could see the tree-tops, and at midnight
almost clear down to the very floor of the jungle where the
shadows were thick like packs of wolves crouching in sleep. The
elephant went through these regions perfectly care-free. He did
not care who came or went or what happened.
But not so the monkey. Monkeys, you know, are always afraid of
snakes, and do you know why? Snakes go up trees and eat birds and
their younglings. Monkeys also live by stealing eggs from
different birds' nests. Now it sometimes happens that the snake
eats all the birds' eggs in the nest and is resting there when
the monkey puts his hands in to grab the eggs, so the monkey
instead of getting the eggs is stung to death. As this sort of
thing has been happening for thousands of years, it is natural
that they fear snakes.
Monkeys also get punished for using their hands too much. Now, if
you come across a snake, the best thing to do is not to touch it.
Monkeys, however, accustomed to using their hands continually,
grab a snake whenever they see one with the result that the snake
usually stings them to death. I have never seen a snake do this,
but I have seen dead snakes with marks on their bodies showing
that monkeys had twisted them like ropes, broken their backs and
thrown them down before the snakes could use their fangs. This,
however, is very rare.
As we were going through the jungle that night, Kopee would
shiver with terror whenever there was a swish of a snake's body
in the grass below or in the leaves above, and I had to put my
hand on his back and whisper, "Don't be afraid, you are on the
elephant's back and nothing can touch you."
Another thing that used to frighten him was the hooting of the
night owl. Any monkey that lives in the jungle is used to it, but
as Kopee was born among human beings and had always lived with
them, he had never heard jungle noises. When the owls beat their
wings and gave the mating call and hoot, it was like a foam of
noise rising over a river of silence. I, too, was alarmed when I
would suddenly hear the hooting in my sleep, but both Kopee and I
soon got used to it.
About four o'clock in the morning Kari stopped and refused to go
a step further. Though I was asleep, Kopee began to pull me by
the hand, and instantly after being aroused, I heard, or rather
felt, as if clouds were passing by. The monkey's eyes were all
eagerness and burning with excitement, and I looked down where he
was looking. The honey-colored moon was casting slanting rays
into the jungle through dark moving clouds. We did not know what
we saw. It seemed as though two or three hundred wild elephants
in a herd were going through the jungle, or perhaps the clouds
were feeding on the leaves that night. No one knows what it was,
but we did know Silence walked by, telling us of the mysteries of
the jungle, and we could not understand.
Then out of the stillness a bird's note fell through the jungle
and there was a gleam of whiteness. That instant Silence was
lifted, dawn began to sing through the jungle and you could hear
its flute-like call fading away in the distance, followed by a
momentary hush. Then the birds began to sing, and soon the sun
came leaping over the forest like a horse of flame. This must
have taken at least an hour and a half, but we did not even know
when the elephant resumed his walk.
We soon came to a river where we stopped. I gave the elephant his
bath. The monkey went off in search of food from tree to tree.
Then I bathed myself and stood facing the East, saying these
words of prayer:
"O Blossom of Eastern Silence,
Reveal to us the face of God,
Whose shadow is this day, and
Whose light is always within us.
Lead us from the unreal to the Real,
From sound into Silence,
From darkness unto Light, and
From death into Immortality."
In India every hour has its prayer and every prayer can be said
unconsciously anywhere. Nobody notices you if you kneel down on
the road to say your prayer, in spite of the fact that you are
blocking the traffic. Religion runs like singing waters by the
shores of every human life in India.
I went to the forest nearby and got the elephant his food, and as
he started to eat I began to cook my own meal. When traveling, it
is better to cook one's own meal so that it will be clean and
uncontaminated. Very soon I saw a caravan coming. Apparently
Kopee had seen it from the tree-top as he was chattering with
great excitement to tell me it was coming. I told him to hold his
tongue because the elephant was getting restless.
I decided to go with the caravan into the town because the
caravan people knew the shortest way. I also preferred to travel
in human company rather than alone. No sooner had the caravan
reached us than our attention was drawn to the faces of the
camels probing the distance. You know how a camel examines the
air as he goes along--he is continually stretching forth his head
and smelling the air, and he can do this easily with his long
neck. As camels live in the desert they must keep smelling the
air to find out its humidity. Every time the air is very humid
they know that water is nearby. That is why we call camels the
examiners of space; in your country you would call them animal
barometers.
The moment Kari saw the camels he snorted in anger, though the
monkey was excited and thrilled. You see, elephants are the
aristocrats of animals, while camels are snobs. You can easily
tell a snob, he holds his head in a very supercilious way, always
looking down on everyone, and don't you think if you put a
monocle on a camel's eye he would look like any snob that walks
down the avenue? Nevertheless, I made my elephant join the
camels. That is to say, we kept about one hundred yards behind
them because I could not let the monkey bound from camel hump to
camel hump, and it would not do to let the elephant put his trunk
about the camels' necks and twist them.
Toward midday the whole caravan stopped and all the animals were
tied under different trees for two or three hours to rest. As we
knew we could easily reach the city by sun-down, we all enjoyed
our siesta. About half-past three, the doves began to coo, and
that made the monkey sit up and listen. Being a dweller of the
trees by birth, Kopee was always sensitive to tree sounds. Soon a
cuckoo called from the distance and in a few moments the caravan
was ready to move on. Nothing exciting happened the rest of the
journey.