The Tuskless Elephant
The Tuskless Elephant
Itwas a quiet afternoon that thickened slowly like coconut milk left too long on fire. Outside, the street shimmered in the heat. A solitary crow cawed from the jack tree next door, and a pressure cooker gave its final whistle somewhere in the distance. Silence had settled over the living room inside the house like a tired shawl, broken only by the soft whir of the air through an open window and the occasional rustle of a newspaper page turning.
Denzil sat cross-legged on the cemented and cool red floor, eyes fixed on the little black elephant he had just set down. It was a thing of quiet beauty — carved from solid ebony, polished to a soft sheen, and just heavy enough in the hand to command a kind of reverence. Its tusks — two fine slivers of ivory or bone, he could never be sure — protruded on either side like tiny matchsticks, each perfectly shaped, glinting faintly in the light that fell in slats through the half-closed windows.
The figurine had constantly reminded him of processions — those grand Peraheras, where real enormous and slow-moving elephants lumbered down their street with tree trunks chained to their sides. He remembered the deep, earthy smell of the beasts, the clinking of the iron chains, and the silence that preceded them. Neighbours would come out onto verandahs, some barefoot, some with children in their arms, and watch as the beasts passed with an unhurried majesty. One of the elephants had turned its head slightly as it passed his gate — just a glance, but to Denzil it had felt like an acknowledgment.
And now, this tiny, mute replica. The same grandeur, shrunk into few inches of carved wood. He adored it for what it conjured — memory, scale, silence.
Then came the crash.
A sudden sharp sound shattered the afternoon stillness like glass breaking on tile.
Rekha gasped. Susan dropped the spoon she was holding in the kitchen. Denzil looked down at his hands in disbelief, as though the object had leapt from them of its own volition.
The elephant lay on its side, its tusks splintered, one a few inches away, the other hidden somewhere beneath the settee.
“You — did you fall asleep?” Susan’s voice came from the doorway, tight with exasperation.
Denzil opened his mouth but said nothing.
“Oh, it’s broken!” wailed Rekha, rushing forward, her face contorted in disbelief.
“Make him fix it, Mother!” she demanded.
Susan knelt slowly beside the broken carving, brushing away the splinters with a quiet resignation. The elephant had been a gift from her father years ago, brought back from one of his rare trips to Anuradhapura. It had never been meant for small fingers or curious eyes, and certainly not for the floor. It had lived, until today, safely behind the glass pane of the old wooden cabinet. But children had a way of taking possession without permission, and now here it was — violated, fractured.
Denzil picked it up gently and turned it over in his palm.
“Oh, Amma,” he said with forced cheer, “only the tusks are gone.”
Susan looked at him with tired eyes. “What is left of an elephant when its tusks are gone?”
Denzil shrugged. “It looks like an elephant without tusks,” he said, as though that were explanation enough.
“Fool,” she muttered. “Stop your jokes.”
“He doesn’t care a bit,” Rekha snapped, folding her arms. “You don’t care about anything, Ayya.”
He turned to her. “Now I know how elephants lose their tusks,” he said. “Maybe this is how they make the ones they sell in shops.”
No one laughed.
He sat on the floor, legs splayed out, examining the broken figurine with a craftsman’s curiosity. “Can we use it as a toy now?” he asked, half to himself, half to anyone still listening.
Rekha stared at him in horror.
“I mean,” he continued, voice lighter now, “we could tie a string around its head. Drag it around and call it our elephant.”
For a moment, no one spoke. The house held its breath. The elephant sat on Denzil’s lap, mute and mutilated. Its tusks — its pride, its history — gone. Only its shape remained, and the hollow suggestion of what it once meant.
Susan stood up slowly, brushed her hands against her skirt, and returned to the kitchen.
Rekha sat cross-legged beside her brother, not speaking, just watching.
Denzil leaned down and began searching under the settee for the missing tusk. He hummed to himself as he did, something aimless and tuneless — the kind of humming that children do when trying not to feel guilty or when trying to bring something broken back to life.
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