The Elephant’s Religion

Fiction

“How can a Muslim elephant enter a Hindu temple?” Surendran fulminated.

An elephant named Ibrahim Koya was part of the parade of elephants that was held as a traditional part of the temple festival. Ibrahim Koya belonged to Mohamad Koya who had named the elephant after one of his legendary ancestors who was said to have brought to control a mammoth tusker that was in heat just by standing in front of it and holding its trunk with one of his hands. The other hand gestured to the elephant to kneel down obediently. The elephant in heat obeyed very faithfully. Mohamad Koya bought an elephant in honour of that legendary ancestor and named it after him too.

“What’s wrong with this fellow?” Murali wondered to Sukumaran. Yesterday only the three of them were sitting in the restaurant eating paratha with beef roast. How did Surendran become such a fervent Hindu today?

“Maybe, he wants to become the Governor of Mizoram or something,” said Sukumaran. Surendran had joined the local shakha of RSS recently and was becoming more and more active in it.

“Do elephants have religion?” Someone asked.

“With a name like Ibrahim Koya, what do you think this creature’s religion is?” Surendran’s religious sentiments were obviously deeply hurt.

Someone had called the police in the meanwhile.

“It’s not a Muslim elephant, sir,” said Velu, the mahout. “It’s a Hindu elephant. All elephants in India are Hindus just as all cows in India are Hindus.” Velu was afraid he would lose his job unless he defended his elephant. Temple festivals are the only sources of income left now for owners of elephants.

“How do you prove that it’s a Hindu elephant, with a name like that?” The sub-inspector asked.

“Look at his dick, sir,” Velu said, “it’s not circumcised. How can any male be Muslim unless he is circumcised?” Velu sounded smart.

“That’s true,” mused the SI.

“Sir,” Velu was encouraged to add more.

“Yes,” the SI turned to him.

“Sir, now even trains are Hindus in India.”

“What!”

“Yes, sir. Just yesterday only our prime minister flagged off the Kashi Mahakal Express with a temple for Lord Shiva built into a compartment. The train will have Hindu bhajans playing all through the journey. What an idea, Sirji! We now have Hindu trains. Soon every Tom and Dick in India will be Hindu, Sir…”

The SI wiggled out of the crowd. He was not sure whether he was a Hindu. His name was Tom Jose. It was pinned on his shirt pocket too. But Surendran could not read, thankfully.

PS. Another similar story: Halley's Fishes

Comments

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below. Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai . ...

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog