59-year-old Abhimanyu (centre), carried the 750 kg golden howdah housing the idol of Goddess Sri Chamundeshwari Devi.
Credit: DH Photo
Mysuru: Trained for 50 days, decked up with colourful designs, their nails coloured with golden paints, backs covered with colourful Joolas, necks adorned with bells, caparisoned 14 Dasara elephants indeed remained a prime attraction at the Dasara Jamboo Savari procession in Mysuru on Thursday.
Undeterred by about four lakh crowd who gathered on either side of the procession route, they walked majestically with all grace. The electrified crowd which waited for hours were thrilled to watch them.
Neither long wait nor sun or mild drizzle deterred the large crowd from watching the elephants. People took photographs, selfies and cheered them. The gentle giants often lifted their trunks with grace and greeted the crowd.
Flanked by Roopa and Cauvery, adorned with singoti on the tusks, chaamara on ears, hanepatti on forehead, dibba on legs with nails coloured in golden paint, 59-year-old Abhimanyu, carried the 750 kg golden howdah housing the idol of Goddess Sri Chamundeshwari Devi adorned in orange colour Mysore silk saree, for the sixth time with all grace.
He marched majestically to the tunes of 40 members of the Police Band, led by B Manjunath. He was accompanied by a company of Mounted Police, with 15 horses, led by parade commander, ACP of CAR Bengaluru South, Adugodi, K N Suresha with his horse King’s Power and second in command, RPI S D Sasanoor with his horse Janasikva.
Prior to this, member of erstwhile royal family Pramoda Devi Wadiyar handed over the golden howdah to district administration led by DC G Lakshmikanth Reddy near the residential portion of Mysuru Palace.
A team of special mahouts lifted the golden howdah and tied to Abhimanyu from a three meter stand. In order to ensure that weight did not hurt the gentle giant, Howdah was placed over the cushion of namda (made of coconut fiber), gaadi (made of hay straw) and chaapu (made of coconut fiber, thinner and smaller to match the size of wooden howdah), covered with a colouful joola.
Earlier, Dhananjaya proceeded as Nishaane elephant in the forefront of the procession after CM Siddaramaiah performed the Nandi Dhwaja pooja by 1.20pm, Gopi followed him as Nauphath elephant, Mahendra, Srikanta, Lakshmi, Kanjan, Bheema, Ekalavya, Prashantha, Sugreeva, and Hemavathi joined as saalaanes in three teams in a synchronised way. Except mahout of Nishaane Elephant, rest of the mahouts carried pink umbrellas.
Mahouts dressed up with red and black uniforms, Kaavadis in black were all excited and happy to perform the prime task on the big day. Vasantha mahout of Abhimanyu was all satisfied to complete his prime task successfully.
Team of forest department officials and veterinarians led by Conservator of Forest S S Ravishankar, man behind the show in-charge of elephants, DCF I B Prabhu Gowda, RFO Syed Nadeem, DCF Mysuru territorial division, K Paramesha, DCF of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, P A Seema, team of veterinarians, forest department staff accompanied Abhimanyu. The pachyderms were fed with special kusre to keep up their stamina.
An artist, a drawing teacher at Government High School, Panchuvalli, Periyapatna taluk, Nagalingappa R Badiger, decorated the Dasara elephants for 20th year along with his brothers Aruna, Narayana and friends Manjunath, Manish, Madhu, Pradeep, Prashanth, Raghavendra from around 10pm on Wednesday night to 10am on Thursday morning.
They drew designs of leaves around the eyes, parrot above tusks, shanka, chakra over ears, Soorya Chandra over forehead, gandaberunda over trunk, creepers and flowers at the edge of the trunk, legs and tail of elephants. They drew white outlines and filled them with yellow, red, orange and green natural water colours.
Mysuru district administration led by District in-charge minister H C Mahadevappa, DC G Lakshmikanth Reddy, Commissioner Seema Latkar, DCPs R N Bindu Mani, K S Sundar Raj, MCC Commissioner Shaikh Tanveer Asif, CEO S Ukesh Kumar and others made elaborate arrangements, barricades to ensure successful procession.
The procession at the Mysuru Palace premises was absolutely chaos free with neat arrangements.