BENGALURU: ‘Agat mull’, says the mahout and the elephant head forward. And when he shouts ‘Dalai’, the elephant salutes. These instructions reverberate round the Sakrebailu camp with mahouts telling their charges what to do during the training sessions. Amid the dense rain forests of Western Ghats, a traditional community of elephant trainers — the mahouts — reside in Sakrebailu. Three generations of the mahout families have dedicated their lives and nurtured many a captive and wild elephant and their young ones.
A group of about 30 mahouts and kavadis start their day early in the morning as they embark on a journey of a few hours to search for the elephants. Sensing the voice of their mahouts, they respond when their names are called individually. Anwar Pasha, a senior mahout who has spent his lifetime serving the elephants says, “These elephants are familiar with our voice and they understand a language which is a mix of Bengali, Arabic and Urdu.”
The mahouts came to Sakarebailu from across the country and were recruited by the Karnataka Forest Department in the state’s elephant camps, only after they cleared a written exam, informs one of the mahouts. However, Fayaz, another mahout, asserts, “Training the elephants, living with them and understanding them does not come from any exam or degree.”
Fayaz has spent over a decade in Sakarebailu. He adds, “Most of us have seen our fathers and grandfathers train the elephants. I used to go deep inside the jungles when I was a kid, with my father on the elephant.”
Meanwhile, Anwar explains that from the elephant’s diet to their bathing to health issues, the mahout is the first person who understands their needs in the camp. The visitors to the camp are amazed how the mahouts connect with the trained elephants, as they take a ride in the park and listen to the various commands a mahout quietly utters to the elephants.
Like ‘Barshap Dalai’ which means Salute spraying water, ‘Dabppiche’- go back, ‘Chaii’- let me down, ‘Som baith’- sit right, ‘Thire’- lie down— and many other Bengali and Urdu words are used and communication has evolved with time. But this is the language which connects the mahouts to the elephants in Sakrebailu unlike Dubare or Mathigodu.
As per historical documents, four mahouts were sent from West Bengal to the erstwhile Mysore kingdom during the reign of Raja Wodeyar. These mahouts were the first to train elephants in their own mother tongue and so till date, the animals understand the languages of the mahouts. It has been over 75 years that many generations of mahouts have inherited the ways and means and of course, skills to train these large mammals.
Of the seven females in the camp, there are four mother elephants whose calves have been nurtured by the mahouts day and night. A mahout says, “One of the elephants by name Ganesha has polio in two of his legs and was left by his owner in the camp as he said that the elephant has grown wild. It’s not the animal’s fault. Ganesha was kept chained for long hours and lacked movement. Now he moves around and is pretty jolly but cannot give any rides to the visitors.”
Over the years, the mahouts have trained many elephants and made them to be friendly with their surroundings and human beings what with thousands of visitors descending on the camp from various districts of the state. While the mammals follow only their mahout’s instructions, they tend to be wild sometimes, adds a mahout. While we are wonderstruck at the unique relationship between the man and the animal, the mahouts and their families have a tough task each and every day. Yet, they live as a family, knowing and understanding each other.