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Agrawal’s Elephant Safari

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Sonal Agrawal, Managing Partner, Accord Group India, was born in East Africa where her earliest memories are of elephant herds on safari. They have since remained a constant theme in her life — the wooden lamp, the pen holder and a bell on her table are all elephant-shaped. In her study, there is a tattered out-of-print Andy Warhol Greenpeace poster of a pink elephant that Agrawal had bought as a student in London in the 1990s. Next to it is another pink elephant painting, an acrylic by Babu Xavier. Over 200 elephant prints and figurines now adorn various shelves in her home and office in brass, glass, ceramics, wood, silver, enamel, mud, paper, leather, clay, cloth, and even one fashioned out of a coconut. Most of those were bought during her travels in India, Africa, China, South East Asia, while some have been gifted. “Wherever I went, an elephant caught my eye,” she says. Her elephant artefacts include a hand-blown glass bell from the Czech Republic, a colourful mosaic one from Spain, a Portugese one in leather, and even an ancient opium pipe from a flea market in France. Her favourites are a murano glass elephant from Venice, bought on one of her first holidays with her life partner, and a tiny postage stamp-sized origami (pink) elephant made by her nephew.

– SONAL KHETARPAL

Nair, The Part-Time Farmer