Book Review | Elephant fable packs an environment message

Elephantam Misophantam was written in Malayalam by Vinoy Thomas; he is the recipient of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award 2021. It has been translated into English by Nandakumar K. The book starts with Lightning Tusker, a wild elephant full of mischief who has to be tranquilized. The forest department officials summon Dr Printu who arrives with his senior and tutor, armed with an array of darts and a blowgun to stop the elephant’s rampage.

Lightning Tusker is a tough one. Though he had a hard life, he still has some kind of elephant force looking after him. This same guardian force now helps him avoid the darts and all that the men do to capture him. But, finally he is subdued and carted off to be corralled.

In this scenario enters Granny Elephant, the queen of all elephants, bitten by wanderlust, moving around all the time. She returns to the forest to impart her gentle wisdom and narrate her cache of stories to the baby elephants in awe of her. Trotting behind her on their short legs, they quench their hunger for stories.

Granny Elephant tells them that Lightning Tusker has Elephantam in him, that’s why he cannot be subdued. She tells them a story. A long, long time back, in the beginning of time, in the beginning of the universe, there was nothing at all, save only dust. This dust turned into a vortex which spun like a top and coalesced into a massive universe. Even though the dust had cohered and turned into the universe, it didn’t stop spinning but it ended up gathering into two powers. One was Elephantam, the essence of everything that was good and noble in the world. The second power was Misophantam, full of wickedness and hatred, who wanted to destroy Elephantam and take over the world. The two started the mother of all wars which caused the explosion, Big Bang. This ended up breaking the universe into countless pieces, and this resulted in the sun, earth, stars, moon and the planets coming into existence.

The book is the story of the two brothers, Lightning Tusker the one with the beautiful tusks and Tuskless Tusker, a lost cause who becomes a rebel because he is a mozha (the elephant male without tusks). He befriends a tiger named Failcat who is an outcast in the tiger family. The two form an unlikely friendship. Can the two misfits prove that they aren’t losers? Can they show their strength and might in the jungle? Can they put a stop to human greed and safeguard the treasures of the jungle and its creatures?

Interspersed in this tale of two elephants is the tale of human greed, for tusks, for sandalwood and for whatever else the forest has to offer humans. The descriptions bring to life the elephant capturing scenes, as well as the sandalwood cutting scenes, transporting the readers smack into the jungle.

This story of good and evil is also the story of finding one’s hidden strength in the midst of trying times that threaten to wipe out everything. This modern fable, which heavily leans on the magic realism genre, will surely find lots of readers.

Elephantam Misophantam

By Vinoy Thomas

Translated by Nandakumar K.

Westland

pp. 120; Rs.250