Have You Seen My Elephant?

Elephant was bought somewhere on a grand tour of India when I was six; December 1993 to be precise. Elephant remained Elephant because, I didn’t get sentimentally attached enough to my material objects to name them. An ornamental breed resembling a perahera atha embedded decoratively with sparkly diamond shaped mirrors and coloured glass was made of a ambiguous material. Ambiguity aside it was beautiful- a delicate piece of irreplaceable art handmade by a patient artisan in the rural plains of the subcontinent. Or so I like to think. Purchased at a street market from a handicrafts vendor, Elephant toured India with us before it settled into the idyllic existence on an island bookshelf next to an ancient china cat for nearly thirteen years watching the titles morphing from Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl to Jeffrey Archer and Paul Doherty (standard Vijitha Yapa fare if you ask me). Of course Elephant became a part of the immovable furniture of my life and there was no question of leaving him behind when the move to Britain became imminent. Packed up in an already overweight suitcase, Elephant travelled to a drab dorm room in the wilds of Scotland where he settled into a comfortable position on the desk right next to the tropical warmth of the laptop sandwiched between a kindred elephant pencil holder and a photo frame.

Fast-forward two years, and Elephant decided to peek over the side of the table to see if the carpet was greener (or bluer in reality) on the other side. Fate unkindly pushed Elephant over the edge and he broke a leg. A messy snap in two. Nearly fifteen years of stillness and watching changing book titles Elephant was incapacitated, so he had to journey back to the island for a traditional remedy because new-fangled western medications of super glue were of little help. Promptly upon his return, Elephant was placed in the hands of our trusted Baas to do the necessary and fix the broken leg. In true Sri Lankan fashion, Baas hands the Elephant over to his carpenter for initial treatment because the little that gets done island-style always gets done by the hands of others. In truer Sri Lankan fashion the Elephant was nicked by some wretched moron who was drawn to it quicker than a jackdaw to silver (in true Enid Blyton fashion). So for several weeks, everyone has been informed of Elephant’s unpleasant abduction, right from the floor of the house which he would have moved to in less than a month. About as nice, as stealing a baby from the maternity ward and I am not pleased. Understatement, I am so frickin’ mad right now, I could just about wring someone’s neck- someone namely the asinine coward who stole reposing Elephant.

Childish, as the post is- Elephant (despite me never being sentimentally attached enough to to name him) was mine, each diamond shard of mirror reflecting a fond childhood memory of a fifteen year past. From that extra sparkly piece of mirror on his side, to his beady intelligent eyes, the red glass flower on his rounded form and that quite presence which has become indispensable to my own quirky cosmology and dense network of personal superstitions, Elephant perhaps was destined for greater tales. Stories more exciting than the those contained in the titles he saw morph in his long shelf-life. But, like all those years of childhood which seem so long ago, Elephant too is now gone and waiting to be rescued from the den of a cruel thief. Perhaps, Elephant will by some cosmic miracle may find his way home, but until then all I can do is wait and hope that he and all the memories he carries remain safe and unbroken.

Perhaps, nothing is permanent.

But to me, Elephant is. Was.