I had heard so much about him and his boyish charm that when it was time for me to finally meet him, I felt jittery.
During the jeep ride to his temporary home, my mind kept replaying things people had said about him: his little quirks, his love for food, and his intelligence.
Chinna Thambi’s mahout offered him large balls of ragi from outside. I took a step closer to the enclosure for a better look. It was the first time I was seeing a wild elephant from such close quarters. Then, he put out his trunk for food. I jerked back.
The mahout said jokingly, “All he wants is food,” adding, “He’s almost broken; it’s just a matter of a few days.”
To me, the best part about being a journalist is gaining access to places that I cannot even dream of visiting otherwise. The Varagaliyar elephant camp for instance, is not open to the public. Once I got the nod from Mr. V. Ganesan, the then Field Director of ATR, I joined him during an official visit to the camp one evening, an hour before dusk set in. The skies opened up when I visited the same camp one afternoon for a story on mahouts and their bond with elephants. It was mealtime and the men were mixing cooked ragi, rice, horse gram, and salt into mammoth balls to be fed to the elephants. From where I stood, I could almost taste those chocolate-coloured balls. Had I been a regular tourist, I would have been standing far away, beyond a long wooden fence.
