A ride with Durga

Durga is 33 years old . She was born and brought up in a small town . She has been here for the past few years. She is well behaved , soft and calm. She took us for a ride in the forest. Except that she ll get mad anytime . And it gets really ugly when she gets out of control.  Last year , her friend mariappan got mad and killed his care taker .

Durga and mariappan are not alone . They are 25 totally now - (  Abinaya , Rohini , Saravanan , Kapil Dev , Saradha , Selvi , Vijiyalakshmi , Sivagami , Narasimha and others ; I can recollect only these names) . They are the elephants being taken care by the local tribals and the forest department in the elephant camp of top slip on western ghats . The famous ' chinnathambi' has arrived as the new guest , but we couldn't meet him .
The camp is run by small settlement of malasi, malamalasi and gadava tribes who are mahouts for generations . They live around 30 kilometers inside the forest and are totally cut off from the mainstream population.

Each elephant has his or her own mahout , like a guardian . They take care of them like a family member, being around them ,feed them and tame them. The elephants roam around the forest with them for the whole day and brought to the camps and tied at night. There is a huge kitchen to make  food for elephants . Rice, Ragi and other millets are made and they are given food every evening .

There are wild elephants as well. Our guide told their main concern is to protect these camp elephants from wild ones . Wild elephants are more aggressive and go upto killing the camp elephants if they refuse to mate with them .

When the elephants go berserk , they even kill their mahouts . Mostly , elephants in musth(term for mad state) discharge a thick tar-like secretion called temporin from the temporal ducts on the sides of the head . Once the secretion is noticed , they are isolated , kept from the others . And they are just fed from distance , tied to a tree. The time varies for every elephant to be in musth period , sometimes hours to even three to four months . The local tribal told , recently , one of those mad ones killed his own mahout . He pierced his mahout thorough and complete with his tusk .

But all these adventures don't scare the tribals . They continue to live isolated in their settlements caring for their elephants . The next generation usually takes over the job if they don't prefer to go outside for work . And there are more camps like this in deeper forest areas.

Kumki elephants are also trained here . It takes months to train them to actually go against their own wild elephants . They are taught to obey commands - both verbal and nonverbal .

There is a mix of wild elephants, temple elephants and domestic elephants who are born there itself. When I asked the difference between temple elephants and those that are born there , our guide told

"These temple elephants don't fit in anywhere . Once these elephants are tamed to live in the cities, they are lost. They can't go to the forest and they can't remain in the cities forever as well. Where do they  belong?They don't fit in anywhere. They are animals from inside . They are tamed from outside."

There are beings who are lost . It doesn't matter whether they are humans or animals !

Topslip Tiger reserve is near pollachi , the elephant camp is a part of the reserved forest in Western ghats .