One of the few animals that make me feel like a five-year-old boy again is an elephant. My love for this gentle and majestic creation of God started when I was introduced to it for the first time at the Kanchipuram Varadaraja Perumal Temple. He was not big like the elephants of Guruvayurappan. He was medium-sized. He had, to give him company, a milk-white mare named Komala. Her greatest asset was her blazing tail.
Sudharshan was so gentle and docile that children were allowed, by his mahout, to offer him bananas directly. We used to watch with amazement when he would crush full coconuts offered under his pillar-like foot. He was so indulgent with children that they could even shake his trunk. A toddler once strayed into his path while he was on his weekly trip to collect coconut fronds through the streets of the town. Onlookers’ hearts skipped a beat when he picked up the child gently and placed the child aside.
Sudharshan and Komala preceded the procession in festivals. Sudharshan would come in first with his swinging trunk, his back covered with a big ornamental cloth made from silk, followed by well-groomed Komala the Sun-white horse.
When they were off duty, Komala would stand like a surgeon at an operation table, wearing a nose bag, Sudharshan would stand in his enclosure, twitching his trunk's tip, swinging softly and sweetly, ogling at Komala. It looked like they were in love like the giraffe and hippo pair in the film 'Madagascar'.
Even gentle Sudharshan once ran amok. People who happened to be inside the temple when it happened took shelter within the hundred-pillared complex. When his anger subsided, he returned to his enclosure and stood there at a corner ruefully, looking as if he was ashamed of his unbecoming behaviour.
One day, during my half-yearly exam, I received a postcard from a cousin of mine who lived in Kanchipuram, informing me that Sudharshan was critically ill. “He may go at any time. Why don’t you come and see him?” he asked in the letter. I wanted to go to Kanchipuram to see my ailing friend but my father said, “are you going to absent yourself from the exam? No.” In a week’s time, Sudharshan passed away. Sudharshan and Komala, as far as I was concerned, were not just animals but a part of Lord Varadaraja Perumal’s priceless jewels.