Swaying his trunk playfully to catch the steady stream of water during bath time, Venkanna rejoices uttering mild grunts of joy. Moments later, a shrill audible - Dhilo Par - pierces the air instructing him to grab the water pipe and bathe himself. Venkanna then fills the massive trunk with water and sprays it all over his body, covering the inaccessible areas.
Emerging from the background, Sivaiah, a mahout at Sri Venkateswara Zoological Park, shouts out a few more instructions urging Venkanna to complete his chores. “He is a bit stubborn at times and needs a push for everything, like an unwilling child going to school,” he says, smiling at the pachyderm.
Their relationship spans more than a decade, since the inception of the famed elephant enclosure at the S.V. Zoological Park. “Venkanna (40) is our first animal at the zoo. Later, three others - Rani (55), Ganesh (35) and Padmavati (15) joined the team,” says Sivaiah, relating the special bond between the handlers and elephants.
Elucidating about the lesser known mode of communication between elephants and their handlers, Sivaiah maintains that most of the exchange happens with thirty-six trained words and the remaining with regular language. Words like baith (sit/sleep), uth (get up), drey (see), drey par (take), jukh (kneel down), vari (leave/come) and much more are used to communicate with the elephant. “Through these words, derived from various languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu etc., we instruct the elephants to perform regular tasks. This training was imparted to us by a team of mahouts from Tamil Nadu during 1990-91,” he adds.
Personal rapport“Besides the training,” Sivaiah says, whilst feeding a nutritious mixture of ragi sangati, jaggery and salt to Venkanna, “personal rapport with the animal takes a long time after which it becomes an inseparable part of a mahout’s life.” Elephants captured from the wild are trained and tamed with the help of Kumki elephants (already trained animals) and are generally isolated for two-three months before bringing them out. That specific period is important to a mahout/elephant trainer to get accustomed with the animal, which in turn registers the person.
At S.V. Zoological Park, a team of eight handlers take care of the elephants (two for each animal), including the night shift to attend to the needs of the animals after dusk. “In these long years of association, they have become like our family members,” they maintain, in awe of the magnificent creatures.