All Work & No Rest Hurt Gentle Giants

High mortality rate, growing festival frenzy, and stress-related diseases are adding to the sufferings of captive elephants in Kerala.

- MANOJ VISWANATHAN @Kochi

High mortality rate, growing festival frenzy, and stress-related diseases are adding to the sufferings of captive elephants in Kerala. Though the gentle giants have a huge fanbase on social media, they rarely get any rest as they are made to crisscross the state for jumbo pageantries.

The death of two celebrity elephants—Erattupetta Ayyappan, 55, on August 19, and Kiran Narayanankutty, 60, on August 22—forced temple committees to book elephants in advance for the festival season starting in November. The owners say there are only 380 captive elephants in Kerala, 42 of them female. Of the 338 tuskers, over 50% are in musth during the festival season. This means the nearly 150 remaining are overstressed as they have to attend over 1,500 festivals.