Kari the elephant

by Dhan Gopal Mukerji

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.