Old Balarama was not a man, but an elephant. A tusker of immense size and gentle disposition, he had been the pride of the Suryanar Temple for over fifty years. His skin was the color of weathered granite, crisscrossed with scars and wrinkles that told tales of a thousand festivals. One tusk was shorter than the other, broken in a long-forgotten skirmish, and his eyes, though clouded with age, held a deep, knowing calm.
The younger elephants in the temple shed were restless, swaying, chafing at their shackles. But not Balarama. He stood like a living statue, his breath the only sign of life. Children who came to the temple were afraid of his size until he would gently lift his trunk and, with the delicacy of a surgeon, pluck a single jasmine flower from a girl’s hair, then offer it back, dripping with a moist, perfumed blessing. old balarama
And when the procession stopped for ten minutes at the village well, no one complained. The head priest himself brought a bucket of cool water, and as Balarama drank, the old elephant’s eye caught the priest’s. In that cloudy, ancient gaze, Suresh saw something he had never learned from his books: that the oldest paths are not the slowest; they are simply the ones that have learned to carry the weight of the world without breaking. Old Balarama was not a man, but an elephant
On the day of the Pooram, the sun blazed, the drums thundered, and a hundred elephants lined the avenue. But at the very center, carrying the golden howdah with the swaying grace of a ship on a calm sea, walked Old Balarama. Kuttan walked beside him, not with a prod, but with a hand on his old friend’s flank. One tusk was shorter than the other, broken
The temple committee debated for three nights. They made charts and graphs of speed and endurance. Balarama’s name was crossed out. The duty of carrying the sacred idol of Lord Shiva—a role Balarama had performed for forty-two years—was given to Gajendra.
“He is too slow,” Suresh said, gesturing at Balarama as the elephant stood under a jackfruit tree. “Last year, during the procession, he stopped for ten minutes to drink water. He upsets the schedule. The new elephant, Gajendra, is young, fast, and tall.”
Every morning at dawn, his mahout, a wiry old man named Kuttan, would lead him from the shed. “Balarama, ezhunnallu,” Kuttan would whisper. Arise. And the elephant would, with a sigh that sounded like the wind through a casuarina grove.