What happend to the elephant the one whose head Shiva stole to bring his son Ganesh back to life? This is child's curiosity, The rosy imagination that continues probing, looking for a way to believe the fantasy a way to prolong the story. If Ganesh could still be Ganesh With an elephant's head, Then couldn't the body of that elephant find another life with a horse's head-for example? And if we found a horse's head to revive the elephant's body- who is the true elephant? And what shall we do about the horse's body? Still the child refuses to accept Shiva's carelessness and searches for a solution without death. But now when I gaze at the framed postcard of Ganesh on my wall, I also picture a rotting carcass of a beheaded elephant lying crumpled up on its side, covered with bird shit, vulture shit- Oh, that elephant whose head survived for Ganesh, he dies, of course, but the others in his heard, the hundreds in his family must have found him. They stared at him for hours with their slow swaying sadness... How they turned and turned in a circle, with their trunks facing outwards and then inwards toward the headless one. This is a dance, a group dance no one talks about. ( From 'Point no point' by Sujata Bhatt) |