The Fall of a Giant 

By: Jack Ivie 

India, 1850 

It has been several years since Hathi​1​ has talked to another member of his family. He left 

when he was 15, he wasn’t sure why then. Now he knows with age he has grown powerful and 

occasionally violent,​2​ not a good mix to be near his younger siblings. The years of a close family 

of aunts, grandmothers, sisters and his mother are long over. Hathi used to have cousins and 

siblings to play and run through the river with, but now he wanders the jungles of India alone. 

Whenever he passes by a wallowing buffalo herd or group of grazing samba deer they always 

give him a wide berth. Macaques above mock Hathi with incessant chattering and sometimes 

pelt him with fruits. He does not fear tigers or leopards, elephants are much too strong for any 

predator in the jungle. Hathi fears nothing. 

It is a cool summer night and Hathi has found a particularly delicious tree of kumbhi 

fruit. It has been a particularly dry summer and finding juicy plants has been difficult. Yesterday 

Haith saw several troops of macaques all headed in the same direction, his curiosity got the best 

of him and he followed their scent with his trunk held high once they were out of sight. For the 

whole day and night and next day he followed. He pushed through the jungle, swam through 

rivers and trudged through a swamp. By the end of his journey he was hungry, tired and angry. 

Hathi came to the edge of a clearing and saw the bounty of food on the other side, being ravaged 

by dozens of macaques. Hathi was not about to let his journey be in vain, he wanted that kumbhi 

fruit. 
 Hathi trumpeted as loudly as he could, began to charge across the clearing, and was 

suddenly weightless and then slammed into the ground. 

Hathi stood up and dazed, he stumbled into a tree. He changed directions and ran into 

something else. He shook himself and his mind clear realizing he had not bumped into trees, but 

walls. He had fallen into a pit that had been covered with sticks and leaves. It was deeper than he 

is tall, and twice as wide as he is long. Hathi bellowed with fury, the rage that had forced him 

away from his family had surfaced. He stomped his tree-like legs and shook his massive tusked 

head and turned in circles searching for something, anything to unleash his rage onto. There was 

nothing in the pit. Unable to control himself Hathi threw his body at the walls of the pit, 

attempting to scramble to freedom. He found no foothold in the dirt walls and could only manage 

to reach his trunk out of the surface of the hole. He paused in this position, feeling the nearby 

freedom, slightly calmer. Then smelled the sweet kumbhi fruit and the foul scent of the 

macaques.  

His rage resurfaced and all Hathi could do is scream and bellow and trumpet to the sky 

and the unconcerned macaques.  

Hathi raged for the day, only stopping to eat what he could find in the pit and on the edge 

of the hole, the need for water feeded his rage. Every moment, as the sun beat down on him was 

agony. Hathi may have been frustrated but he was not a mindless brute. Realizing his bellowing 

was going unheard he began a different kind of call, he sent a silent call through his feet that will 

travel farther than his other louder calls.​3​ Hathi stood in the pit, seemingly calm and silent, 

hoping for someone to hear his calls. 

 As the day came to an end Hathi felt through his trunk, a response. A predator warning 

call from a female, not directed at him but projected to anyone in the area. He then heard a 

multitude of other warning calls, all from males. This didn’t make any sense, there should be 

many females with one or no males. Hathi was frightened, ​female ​herds don’t welcome adult 

bulls but don’t attack him either. Groups of only males are usually aggressive and unwilling to 

accept stranger males. Weak from hunger and thirst he would be in no position to defend 

himself. For the first time since he left his family, Hathi was scared of the unknown future.  

  Ankunda Jha​4​ has always been a bit of an outsider. His father was a mahout​5​ like he is 

now, a very well respected mahout with a strong elephant. He never understood why Ankunda 

chose a ​female​ elephant as his mount. His father was so confounded at the time.  

“They may look the same size now” he said, “but the bulls will be much larger and 

stronger, you won’t have worry about pregnancy or babies.”  

“I also will not have to leave my mount chained up for weeks,” Ankunda shot back. 

“Where was your elephant when the construction job was available? The musth made him 

unrideable and we barely had enough money to buy food for a week.”  

Ankunda didn’t even care that Mona was female, she was just the friendliest calf he had 

been presented with. After his father and elephant died in the monsoon floods​6​ while helping to 

clear a blocked road, Ankunda has no more family. His mother died in childbirth and he has no 

other siblings. Mahouts spend so much time with their elephants that Ankunda has realized that 

Mona is far past the age of motherhood, now that they are both 22 years old, and she is lonely. 

Ankunda used his father's goodwill to recruit five other mahouts and their bull mounts to help 
him capture a wild bull for him to train and hopefully father a calf. A week ago Ankunda and the 

other mahouts dug a few large pits in the jungle and covered them with a bamboo platform and 

leaves, the platforms are strong enough to hold buffalo and rhinos but not an elephant.​7  

The first pit they visited was empty and there were audible sounds of relief from most of 

the mahouts. As they headed toward the second pit many of the elephants and Mona started to 

show excitement and make quiet calls in the direction of the pit.  

“There must be one in this trap,” a mahout said down to Ankunda. “I bet you’ll be glad to 

be able to sit a few feet taller.”  

A few of the other mahouts chuckled good naturedly. Mona is an often source of ridicule 

for Ankunda, but they all know that a good mahout always keeps their first mount as their main 

companion. The mahouts come to a clearing where they dug their pit and saw what they had 

come for. The bull is around three and a half meters at the shoulder and probably weighs five 

tonnes, he has nice sized tuskes maybe four feet long. The mahout dismounted from their 

elephants prepared to work quickly to get the bull out.  

Water brought in large containers is poured over the bull too cool off and it is given water 

through a bamboo tube. Three logs carried and pulled by some of the larger elephants are placed 

over the pit to allow for the mahouts to move above the bull. Ankunda and another mahout stood 

on the logs holding a bright white cloth while another mahout stood ready with noose. 

Hathi has never seen an elephant herd like this before. They smell wrong and they have 

the skins of cows on their back. The male's tusks are worn down, like they have been through 

three lifetimes of use. The worst thing is that there are ​people​ in the herd. Hathi has seen people 
but never on top of an elephant. It’s all wrong, how could such a small and weak creature control 

something so great? He began to worry, Hathi didn’t want to be part of this strange herd with 

only one female. He would never be be able to mate, he’d have to fight every bull to get to the 

female, he’d be killed. Then, he felt cool relief has the people threw water on him and gave him 

water through a bamboo tube. Then some of the people stood on logs and waved a white skin 

over his head. Hathi’s curiosity got the better of him and he reached up his trunk to grab the skin. 

As he did, a loop of vine was placed over his head around his neck. Hathi shook his head and 

stomped his feet to try in remove it but in the process somehow got two more loops stuck around 

his ankles. Hathi tried to use his trunk to pull off what should have been a weak vine but it was 

much too strong and smelled like hair. The people started to throw in bundles of sticks and grass 

which started to form a pile in front of Hathi half the height of the pit. The vine around his neck 

started to pull toward the pile. Haith initially resisted but the pain caused him to walk forward 

onto the pile and he used it to scramble out of the pit. The people ran out from Hathi’s way and 

some climbed onto elephants. The vine around his neck pulled again and Hathi moved forward 

with it.  

Ankunda followed on Mona behind the three bulls tied to the wild bull with the two other 

mahouts beside him. He made sure to get more bulls than necessary, if the wild bull escaped the 

ropes all the elephants would be needed to contain him to be tied up again. The elephant convoy 

marched for an hour. The bull struggled at first but eventually resigned to shambling along. They 

soon reached the edge of the jungle where they had constructed a large wooden fence around a 

circle area of around twelve square feet. Ankunda and the two mahouts not tied to the wild bull 
dismount and open the gate and the other three mahouts lead the wild bull into the corral where it 

is untied and the gate closed. 

Hathi is mortified at the state of his existence. His kin have been dragged down to to 

become simple beasts of burden, he has been trapped in a hole and forced to bend his knee or be 

choked into unconsciousness. Now he has been trapped in a wooden circle with barely enough 

room for another elephant. Hathi doesn’t know why the other elephants don’t free themselves or 

free him and he is terrified that what has been done to them will soon be done to him. He is 

scared that he will no longer have the freedom to go where he wishes, eat what he wants, be with 

you he wants to be. Will he be allowed a mate? Will he father a calf? Will he be killed because 

the people find him not as useful as he could be?  

Hathi did not know but a person riding a female elephant just entered the wooden circle 

with a bunch of bananas in one hand and a sharp hook in the other.​8  

Endnotes: 

1. The name ‘Hathi’ comes from the pronunciation of the Hindi word for elephant, हाथी or 
haathee. 
2. The anger the Hathi acquired with maturity is known as the musth. A period where the 
elephant, usually male secrets from the musth gland and become extremely violent. This 
is not a rut as the male do not experience a higher sex drive nor do females become more 
receptive to their advances. 
3. Elephants besides having a expanded audible vocabulary possess the ability to 
communicate at ultrasonic frequencies. These communications travel through the ground 
at extreme distances and are felt through the trunk and feet. 
4. The name ‘Ankunda’ comes from the pronunciation of the Hindi word for hook, अंकुड़ा or 
ankuda. Metal hooks are used by mahouts to control and steer their elephants. Ankunda’s 
last name Jha is a popular Indian name that is a shortened form of the Sanskrit word for 
teacher, ‘upadhaya’. 
5. The mahout is the title of a person whose profession is the training and riding of Asian 
Elephants. Elephants are used for construction, warfare and spiritual ceremonies. 
 Mahout’s make their income by selling their services as rider and mount to construction 
sites, lumber operations and in the modern day as tourist vehicles. 
6. The monsoon floods are an annual event that is accompanied with the extremely heavy 
rains that are the cause of death for many Indians every year. 
7. The method for capturing elephants using pits is called khedda and means ditch in Hindi. 
There are many other methods such as Mela Shikar, which is the lassosing of a wild 
elephant while riding a tame elephant. 
8. Mahouts hold a complex role in Indian society. The elephant is a vital part of the 
economy and a large part of various religious beliefs, however the animals they train are 
sometimes struck with weapons such a hooks and spears in their training. Especially in 
the modern day the mahout is under increased scrutiny from animal rights groups and 
conservationists. Even the mahouts that use positive reinforcement like food as their main 
training method often need to use cruel methods to control a extremely powerful animal 
that could kill them easily.