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A few tuskers are ambling around the small pond at Haathi Gaon (elephant village) on the outskirts of Jaipur. Some others are being soaped and scrubbed by their keepers. The animals playfully nudge each other, warring for space inside the pond, the water a source of much relief from the searing May heat. The animals seem to be in no hurry to leave the pond.
The Covid-19 lockdown has had, much like everywhere else, a crippling effect on the lives of elephant owners and mahouts in the village. Elephant rides at the Amber Fort and weddings, which used to be their primary source of earnings, have come to a halt ever since the lockdown began.
For Munna (37), a mahout, the situation is dire. "My livelihood is under threat for the last three months. I have not earned a single penny since March 25. There is no hope either as my work is linked with tourism and I think it will be the last thing to resume,” he says. The mahout has a 27-year-old elephant who he has named Vrinda.
He begins the day by feeding Vrinda, the first of her two daily meals. Twice a day, he takes her for a bath – she gets one with fresh water in early morning and a long dip in the pond during late afternoon where she also meets her friends Laxmi, Gopi and Shakuntala.
Photo by Tabeenah Anjum
"The elephant owner used to give us a basic salary. But our main income used to be the tips, totaling between Rs 15,000-18,000 a month, which the foreigners would give us. We would usually make about Rs 20,000 but now, in absence of work, we are only scraping through,” says Munna, who has four kids and is the only earner in the family. Besides Munna'a, there are 64 other mahout families living in the village and all of them have their backs against the wall in this lockdown.
Most of the elephant rearers have inherited the job from their fathers. Hathi Gaon was officially christened so by the state government in 2010. Spread over 305 hectares and close to the famous Amber Fort, the village hosts more than 65 elephants and as many mahout families. In the village, each elephant is put under a separate thaan (shelter) and the house of mahout is built next to it. There are 103 elephants in Jaipur, including those of Hathi Gaon, and the remaining too, live in the vicinity of the fort.
The Economy of Food
Munna’s wife, Parveen, says that the family has cut down on food by 50 per cent and her kids are becoming frail and weak. She also treats Vrinda like one of her kids. "Earlier, I used to wake up at 5 in the morning and make thick chapatis from 8 kg flour everyday. But now we don't serve her rotis anymore,” she says.
Even though the basic food requirement of elephants is broadly being met, the nutritional profile of the diet has shrunk because of fruits being absent from it. Praveen adds, “We just serve them sugarcane, fodder and water. It’s for the first time that they are not being served fruits such as watermelon, jawar kakdi, etc. in summers.”
