Gentle Touch To Lonely Giants

Kottoor provides succour to abandoned and ill-treated elephants

- Cithara Paul

AMMU, 17, is prim and proper. Covid or not, she performs the handwashing ritual every time she is offered water. And, she drinks only freshly drawn water from wells. She is one of the inmates at the Kottoor Elephant Rehabilitation Centre in Thiruvananthapuram district, the first such facility in India.

One of her companions, Soman, 82, is the oldest elephant in the country. Though healthy for his age, Soman gets extra care in the time of coronavirus.

The youngest elephant here, Sreekutty, is barely six months old. She is on a diet of baby food, glucose, ragi, jaggery and rice, and will start on cow’s milk after two months. She was found abandoned near a riverbank as a 15-day-old calf and was kept in observation for a few days. When no one came looking for her, the rehabilitation centre adopted her.

The she-elephant Poorna, who is eight years old, looks after Sreekutty with almost motherly affection, and teaches her how to eat and drink by herself and how to splash water on her body while bathing. Poorna also fans away the flies with her ears and wards off other unwanted things that come near Sreekutty. A four-year-old elephant, Kannan, tags along with Poorna and never leaves her side.