Elephant Tamer The elephant
was lying heavily on its side, fast asleep. A few dogs started barking at it.
The elephant woke up in a terrible anger: it chased the dogs into the village’
where they ran for safety. That didn’t stop the elephant. It
destroyed a dozen houses and injured several people. The villagers were scared
and angry. Then someone suggested calling Parbati, the elephant
princess. Parbati Barua’s father was a hunter of tigers and an
elephant tamer. He taught Parbati to ride an elephant before she could even
walk. He also taught her the dangerous art of the elephant roundup-how to catch
wild elephants. Parhati hasn’t always lived in the jungle.
After a happy childhood hunting with her father, she was sent to hoarding school
in the city. But Parhati never got used to being there and many years later she
went hack to her old life. "Life in the city is too dull. Catching elephants is
an adventure and the excitement lasts for days after the chase," she
says. But Parbati doesn’t catch elephants just for fun. "My
work," she says, "is to rescue man from the elephants, and to keep the elephants
safe from man." And this is exactly what Parhati has been doing for many
years. Increasingly, the Indian elephant is angry: for many
years, illegal hunters have attacked it and its home in the jungle has been
reduced to small pieces of land. It is now fighting back. Whenever wild
elephants enter a tea garden or a village, Parbati is called to guide the
animals back to the jungle before they can kill. The work of an
elephant tamer also involves love and devotion. A good elephant tamer will spend
hours a day singing love songs to a newly captured elephant. "Eventually they
grow to love their tamers and never forget them. They are also more loyal than
humans," she said, as she climbed up one of her elephants and sat on the giant,
happy animal. An elephant princess indeed! Parbati catches elephants just for fun.______