Mangoes and Ivory or The Boy and the Elephant

Stories for Another Day

This is a story about a boy and an elephant who didn’t forget.

Setti lived in a small house with a large family in a village with a lot of other small houses full of large families. What made Setti’s house special was that there was a huge mango tree in the back yard. It grew the very best mangoes in the whole village. The tree had been planted by Setti’s great-grandfather and the mangoes were so good that Setti’s grandfather had had to build a very high fence around the yard to stop the other villagers from coming and helping themselves to the mangoes as soon as they were ripe.

It was Setti’s job to water the tree twice a day when the hot weather came. Setti was happy to have an excuse to be out of his small, crowded house, and besides, he simply loved mangoes. He liked nothing better than to lie under the tree, watching the fruit ripen and smelling their beautiful fragrance.

Every year his father would say to him, “I don’t think there are as many mangoes on the tree as last year. Have you been eating them?”

Setti would answer truthfully that he only ate two or three a day. He didn’t tell his father that many of the mangoes disappeared at night, when the long trunks of elephants would reach over the fence and pick the mangoes. Setti never tried to chase the elephants away – he knew that elephants loved mangoes as much as he did, and besides, he was a small boy and they were elephants, after all.

In fact, the only person in the whole village that didn’t love mangoes was Setti’s cousin, Siddu. In everything else, the two boys were very much the same, the same size, with the same dark curly hair. People often mixed them up, until they got closer and could smell the fragrance of mangoes that always hung around Setti.

Early one morning Setti went down to the river to fill his bucket to water the mango tree. Close to the bank he found a very young elephant, whimpering and squealing.

“What’s the matter, little one?” he said, rubbing the elephant calf’s head and fondling her trunk. She didn’t get up or try to run away, so Setti looked carefully at her legs. One of them was torn and bleeding. “I bet the nasty old hippopotamus took a snap at you, didn’t he?” Setti said. “I’d better take you home with me. We’ll put some of my mother’s best ointment on your leg and you’ll feel better.”

With some encouragement, he got the little elephant to her feet and led her back to his house. He washed the wound and his mother gave him some calendula and turmeric ointment to rub on it.

“I don’t know what your mother calls you,” Setti said to the elephant, “but I’ll call you Chanddra. A few days’ rest and your leg should be fine again.”

For three days Chanddra lay stretched out under the mango tree. Setti would come and visit her throughout the day and lie with his head on her side and tell her stories about the old mango tree. On the fourth day as he was bringing water for the mango tree and for Chanddra, he saw his cousin Siddu feeding Chanddra a green mango. Chanddra was swinging her trunk and making unhappy noises.

“What are you doing?” Setti said, running up. He pulled the half-eaten mango out of Chanddra’s mouth. Siddu had pressed long sharp thorns into it before he fed it to the little elephant. He was holding his sides laughing. “Stupid elephant!” he chortled.

Setti was bursting with anger. “You’ve hurt her! Her mouth is bleeding!” He threw himself at Siddu, but Siddu knocked him down. He kicked Setti several times, and then he strolled away, laughing. Chanddra picked up the half-chewed mango with her trunk, and threw it at Siddu’s back.

“Ow!” Siddu yelled. “Ow! Help! Setti’s elephant is attacking me!”

People came running from everywhere, crowding around Siddu. “Look, I’m bleeding!” he said. He started crying noisily.

Setti tried to tell them what had happened, but no-one would listen to him. They picked up sticks and stones and came running towards the elephant, yelling.

Setti threw himself over Chanddra, protecting her with his body. “No! Don’t touch her! I’ll take her away, back to the river, just don’t hurt her.”

The crowd stopped, and Setti pulled Chanddra away, and took her back to the river. No-one followed them. He had almost reached the river when he heard a huge trumpeting and the thunder of stampeding feet. He stood still, terrified, for he knew that no-one can survive an elephant stampede. The elephants came pounding towards him in a cloud of dust, but Chanddra squealed and wrapped her trunk around him.

The stampede slowed and stopped. Setti found himself surrounded by grey legs like walking trees. Long trunks sniffed him and touched him with their sensitive tips. The elephants rumbled to each other, and Chanddra gambolled among them, squealing and trumpeting with happiness.

Very slowly Setti backed out of the crowd of elephants and ran for home.

Many years passed, five, fifteen, twenty years, and Setti never forgot the elephants. When he was old enough he went away to the city and studied hard and became a ranger, so he could look after all the animals and the lands in his country. In his new uniform, with his shiny new jeep with the ranger’s logo on the side, he came to his old village. Many of the old people had died and the young people had moved away to the city. His old house was empty and run down. The mango tree in the back yard was shrivelled and almost leafless.

Setti got to work. He repaired and cleaned the old house to make it fit to be his home and the ranger station. Every day, twice a day, he watered the mango tree. After a week it was looking better. In a month it was covered in leaves, and new fruit was starting to grow.

One day, a couple of months after he had moved into his old home, he was out in his jeep, checking the waterholes, and looking out for animals that might be hurt or injured. He heard a great commotion, so loud he could hear it from miles away. He drove towards it, and found a herd of elephants crowded around something on the ground. They were flapping their ears and trumpeting wildly. When Setti got close enough, he could see an injured elephant on the ground. A man was bending over the elephant, about to cut off its tusks.

“A poacher!” Setti thought angrily. Poachers would not hesitate to kill an adult elephant to steal the tusks and sell the valuable ivory for a lot of money.

Setti jumped out of his jeep and ran over. “Stop!” he yelled.

The man looked up. “Setti, is that you?” he laughed. “So you’re the new ranger!” It was his cousin, Siddu.

“What are you doing?” Setti shouted. He knelt by the elephant. She was still alive, but she was bleeding from a bullet wound in her shoulder. She stirred at the sound of his voice and opened her eyes. She touched him with the tip of her trunk and the smell of mangoes came back to her strongly. A low gentle rumble came from deep inside her.

Siddu caught at his arm. “This ivory will bring more money that you can make in a year, two years, at your puny job. Help me and we can share the money,” he wheedled.

“Don’t touch her!” Setti said fiercely. “As soon as I’ve taken care of her, I’m taking you straight to the authorities!”

“I don’t think so,” Siddu snarled. He swung his rifle at Setti, and knocked him out. He loaded Setti into the jeep and drove off. The wounded elephant got heavily to her feet, and stumbled after them.

When Siddu reached the ranger station, he dragged Setti’s unconscious body inside. Then he took off Setti’s uniform and put it on himself. “All I have to do is get rid of you, cousin, and I can take your place as the ranger. When I drive up in your jeep, no-one will know the difference. I’ll be able to steal as much ivory as I want!”

Leaving Setti lying inside the house, Siddu ran outside and tied strong ropes to the verandah posts. Then he tied the ropes to the back of the jeep, and accelerated away, pulling the posts down and the roof with it. With a roaring crash, the whole house collapsed, with Setti underneath. Laughing to himself, Siddu drove back to the waterhole to finish the job he had started.

Not far away, the wounded elephant was walking along slowly, following the scent of mangoes that Setti left behind. When the ranger station fell to the ground, the elephant felt the vibration of the crash in the soles of her sensitive feet. She moved towards it as quickly as she could. When she reached the ranger station, the mango tree she remembered was still there, but the house was a pile of rubble. Rumbling in her chest, flapping and snorting, she sniffed through the rubble, turning stones and planks over with her trunk. There! The familiar smell of mangoes came to her. Brick by careful brick, she lifted the broken walls and the pieces of roofing aside. Lying underneath was Setti, pinned down by a heavy beam. She wrapped her trunk around it and heaved it out of the way.

She squealed and huffed, touching Setti tenderly with the tip of her trunk. Setti stirred and laughed softly, “Chanddra, stop it, you’re tickling!” Then he opened his eyes. “Chanddra, is it you?” He looked at her back leg and saw the scar left by the hippo’s teeth. “Chanddra, it is you!” he cried. He threw his arms around her.

He bandaged the wound that Siddu’s bullet had made in her shoulder, and then the two of them made their way back to the waterhole. He found his jeep standing there empty, and in the dirt, the remains of Siddu’s rifle, pounded into splinters. Of Siddu himself, no sign was ever found.