It was clearly Arjuna’s “day out” at the Jamboo Savari that brought the curtain down on the nine-day Mysore Dasara here on Wednesday.
Picked up as a replacement for Balarama who at 54 years was found to be physically unfit, Arjuna emerged as the front runner for the coveted task and was vested with the responsibility of carrying the 750-kg golden howdah.
There were apprehensions about Arjuna’s choice as he was temperamentally given to throwing tantrums and was “accused” of killing his mahout in the late 1990s when he was selected as a replacement for the venerable Drona who was electrocuted in the forests.
Arjuna carried the howdah once in the late 1990s, but after the incident involving his mahout, Arjuna was banished from the Dasara scene for several years. Over the years, Arjuna has mellowed down to a great extent and people heaved a sigh of relief once he completed the procession from the Amba Vilas Palace to Bannimantap Grounds. Having redeemed himself, Arjuna has clearly emerged as a new star of Mysore Dasara.
But Balarama remains the grand pachyderm who has the distinction of carrying the golden howdah 13 times. Though relieved of the responsibility of carrying the golden howdah this year, Balarama did not play second fiddle to Arjuna and was appointed the “navigator” or the “naupat” elephant along with Gajendra, Vikrama and Vijaya.
While Arjuna may have hogged the limelight this year, there are other stars among the Dasara elephants with some of them having figured in renowned documentaries.
Gajendra, Vikrama, Abhimanyu and Srirama, for instance, are known to be tough task masters and their names send a shiver down the spine of rogue elephants in the jungles.
For, these elephants were commissioned by the government of the undivided Madhya Pradesh to subdue a herd of wild tuskers in Ambikpura district (now in Chhattisgarh) in the mid-1990s. The man-elephant conflict in that region had claimed many lives and Gajendra, Vikrama and Abhimanyu not only helped capture the rogue elephants but played an important role in taming them. Mission accomplished in less than 45 days, these elephants returned triumphant with their record of capturing or taming wild elephants unblemished.
Incidentally, the operation of capturing the elephants in Madhya Pradesh was filmed by Mike Pandey, a wildlife film and documentary maker. This film, Last Migration: Wild Elephant Capture in Sarguja, went on to become Asia’s first film to win the prestigious Panda award, popularly known as Green Oscars, and these elephants played an important role in it. In more recent years, these elephants have played an important role in subduing stray elephants in different parts of the State and are stars in their own right.
