Elephants are such content beings, relishing every morsel, making a difference to every inch of the jungle they trudge through… flummox the blind they might, get agitated by the unceasing fragmentation of their wide expanses they do, but for a creature sharing human lifespan, the tolerance and wisdom in their sombre gait goes way beyond…

There’s that aggressive teenage in the musth, but apart from that, their unhurried way of life, and the benevolence they exude – the kind that subdues the bitter taste in the mouth one gets while contemplating the myriad ways in which is life is ambushed, cannibalized, impaled or parasitized beneath those tranquil canopies – is sobering to say the least…

‘Twas an incessant October rain, one that’d go on unabated for three days… driving towards one of those countless Corbett resorts, this one near Mohan, we were waiting for the traffic on the other side to come through a causeway when the two pachyderms were spotted at a distance, gaily munching away the moisture-soaked grass, the extended proboscis seeming as if one of them was smiling… and all one could do was watch, an act of subsistence and an expression of contentment…

Considering that elephants have no natural predators – no fear of the striped feline in this case – their humility humbles even more…. like an ascetic that has renounced worldly spires, they don’t aspire to become kings or queens of the forest, yet the forest bows down to them as they shape its tapestry, slow and unceasing, and cultures around the world weave parables on morality and virtue… for a couple of minutes though, I just relished imagining these elephants smiling, the biggest of creatures reveling in the smallest of pleasures… letting life come to them rather than rushing out to get it…

Musing on elephants, Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand