In my last write up I had made a reference to presence of Elphi in our heart and mind that prevent us from shedding the fears inherited by our past misfortunes and negative experiences. The fear of losing gets steeped into our inner psyche and inhibits us from acting boldly. I had actually met Elphi in my city while it was walking on the roads. The huge pachyderm with its massive built and bulk had been ridden by a frail and emaciated looking mahout, who would once in a while poke the animal with his ankus as he prodded him to behave in the midst of chaotic traffic on the road.
More recently, these same methods were also witnessed by me in a circus where the trainer had traumatized the captured big wild predator lion to perform certain acts, which otherwise this Panthera Leo would have made a man to perform before it actually ate him up. Any how we were discussing about the Elphi, our dear friend and representative of the great lord. My animal lovers’ instinct told me to speak to Elphi and ask him as to what he had been doing in a town and why he was not in a jungle uprooting trees with his trunk or getting into any other kind of elephantine game to entertain himself because that is what a young elephant is supposed to do .
The massive mammal stopped by for a while, looked at me as if he had been sizing me up and then he glanced at the mahout who had been riding him. The elephant assured that the mahout did not have the ankus in his hands, spoke in a conspiratorial tone to me, “you seem to be a man with a very low wisdom. Do you not see that this man who is sitting on top of me carries a weapon that is mighty powerful than my entire bulk. Will he not kill me if I try to save myself and run away to jungle? Please do not ask me to do anything that could be detrimental to my health”.
“But you are so powerful, strongly built and muscular looking. This man who is riding you is only a small creature. you can throw him off your back with one little push of your trunk and may be crush him if he tries to stop you from running away to the jungle”‘, I had told the elephant while at the same time I had been motivating him to get free from the slavery of labor and toil in the town. I had wanted him to regain his lost freedom and respectability. The elephant who had been behaving in a very meek fashion under the mahout looked at me very apologetically as if he had been trying to feel sorry for his own condition.
“You can share your story with me if you want to”, I told him, and “it is possible I may be able to help you”.
“Well if you are keen to “, said the elephant to me, “but you will have to crawl along with me through this grueling traffic. I find it difficult to raise my voice for the fear of the punishment that will be awarded to me for blowing my natural trumpet in this town inhabited by humans”.
“Of course I will walk along “, I encouraged him.
“you see when I was a very small and innocent baby elephant I used to be a free bird oops sorry ….a free elephant like any other of my brethren in a jungle. I used to enjoy my pranks and baby elephant games with mud and water. I would sprinkle water over my body and then lie down into mud to again cover myself with dust so that my mother could shower more water on me with her trunk. I just loved all such mischiefs as it gave me a chance to listen to sweet admonishments of my elephant parents. But life had not been such kind to me for long. One day some friends of this mahout had come to jungle hunting for the ivory teeth and trunks of elephants. They killed lots of my relatives to gather huge catch of ivory and elephant bones. I really do not know why you humans like the bones and teeth of dead animals. Any how I really never will never understand. Perhaps someday my bones will also be ……” he left the sentence midway.
“but we were discussing about your parents “, I had wanted him to continue.
“Yes, yes, let me speak”, “My parents were also amongst those killed by the gun tottering friends of this mahout. My life however had been spared by them as I did not carry enough bones in my body and teeth in my mouth. They just bundled me into a van, after they had put me into strong iron chains, and brought me to your town. Thereafter whenever I had raised my trumpet to tell them that I wanted to go back to, my own home in the forest, they would beat me with this ankus on my forehead. This thing really hurts. Even the thought reminds me of the pain that this ankus can inflict. In addition the iron fetters that these people had tied to my tiny elephantine feet would hurt me whenever I had tried to free myself from the pole to which I had been secured.
‘Yes that happened when you were very young. Today when you have grown so big and you have a massive body and built, you can certainly get yourself freed from this slavery and go back to the place where you belong”, I talked to him in a very sympathetic mode.
“My friends from jungle also say so. But you have to understand that the fear of the ankus and the iron fetters hurting my ankles had settled deep into my heart and mind during my childhood days. The horror so settled in my brain has altered my very basic personality. I am no more an elephant even though I do look like one to you. I am happy with the state in which I had been forced to live from my enslaved childhood. Please do not disturb me any further ‘, Elphi had been trying to hide his tears of pain and sufferings.
“But let me share a secret with you”, he brought his trunk closer to my ears, as if he did not want anyone else to become privy to this secret. “I am not alone in this town. I find many of my creeds living into the very heart and minds of all the human beings in this town”.
“Well but that is impossible. I do not see any other of your creed in here and then how is it possible that such enormous living beings can get into the hearts and minds of us humans without anyone ever noticing them. You must be just befooling me”, I laughed aloud at the statement recently uttered by Elphi.
“NO I am serious. You humans carry the symbolic self created Elphis in your minds, the same way I have adopted my terror of fetters and ankus from my childhood. You get befuddled by one negative experience in your life and give up trying the same thing further. You too have taken to all kinds of negativity and self denial from the early childhood. The ghosts of past bad experiences always haunt your mankind with the result that the humans are never able to disassociate themselves from the fearful complexes .These apprehensions and doubts on your own capability given to you during your childhood and parentage, become colossal Elphis when you grow up physically , though mentally you still remain steeped in your self- woven anxieties . I think you should first try to emancipate your own creed from the massive elephants that occupy their thinking and doing faculty and then possibly I should also move out of this town and go back to my forest abode, till then let me enjoy the company of the Elphis living within all of you’.
I obviously had no reason to further cajole the biggest mammal living on the land. I knew the urgency was to ask my fellow beings to throw away the elephants of self doubt, the elephants of past bad baggage’s, the elephants of some negativity experienced in life earlier and get up and get goingwith a renewed vigor and self determination to follow and realize the dreams of their lifetimes.
Alka Mansik Pramarsh Foundation Clinical Psychologists-Family therapists Indore 0731-4263087,9179383554 