Having played for over an hour, the mahouts instruct her to head back home. And no, they neither beat her nor use any crude means to get her to act. “It is all about how you train them. Elephants are just like children, and since she has been with us since was two years old, she understands what we say” they explain. But the language felt unfamiliar, and that is when they said that it was a conscious choice to train the elephant in a language that is not that used commonly by locals and common visitors. So what language does Yashaswini understand? “Malayalam. Indumathi was spoken to in a mix of Coorgi and Hindi. But Yashaswini has been trained in Malayalam.” This is to ensure that all that the visitors say is not processed by her, either to her liking or irritation.

“Any new task she takes around one week to learn but since she has been with us for so long, she is easier to train. And like what is portrayed, we can’t train her with violence.” Be it directions or temple rituals like ringing the bell and fanning, the mahouts hold her trunk and do the said task with her for over a week along with instructions till she is able to do it on her own. “It is just like a human child,” they say, adding that she loved playing with a ball, standing on two limbs and the like.



But animal activists and the like call it torture. “Such activity, yoga and the exercises kept her fit and happy. But we cannot make her do those exercises anymore,” they regret.

While elephant health is an oft-debated issue, with most complaints about having to walk on tar roads, most of the pathway that she walks on is a forest route and her walks, they say, have never hurt her foot. The vet visits her at least five times a month but then “the best doctor for an elephant is a mahout” they muse, describing how they ensure that any tiny injury is tended too with herbal concoctions. “We apply a mixture of neem oil, charcoal and some herbs if she bruises herself or the like. We know when something is hurting her.”

Temple elephants are taken to the various camps if they are to breed but the domesticated ones generally do not breed easily. But they are not loners.”Yashaswini loved to play with Indumathi when she was here. This one would run between her legs and if we didn’t let her play she would scream just like a child,” they reminisce.