Annone the Elephant

In a spark of artistic inspiration, or delirious sensory short circuitry, possibly one and the same, or at least intimately intertwined, I see the face of Moira Orfei in the campaign posters of Sonia Gandhi. Along a road that leads from Cochin to Rome, the defacto Queen of India and the Queen of the Elephants fuse to become dual avatars, twin brides of Shiva, daughters of Dionysus. Two Italian women with the same coiffure who strike the same pose, flash the same perfect, ivory teeth; two famous beauties whose faces of dynastic durability are instantly recognizable and ubiquitous in their respective realms; one rules an ancient land where an elephant-headed boy is God, the other a fading world of fluorescent pink and yellow circus dreams.

The path that links the two is there because it has been followed, a quantum photon, a vector of red silk, black pepper and white light; a line that can be touched but not held, tasted but not described, seen but not drawn. Created by inquiry, energy and experience, it is a thread that connects, breaks then re-forms in order to dissolve again; it is Lord Shiva who dances the universe into existence and then destroys it, Lord Ganesha who blesses beginnings and removes all obstacles, allowing me to glimpse the line that runs from Cochin through Lisbon to Rome. This, then, is my reward; to feel the thread pass over my fingers like water, to see in the flash of an instant the whole story of Annone’s journey; the epic, elephantine exegesis of Shiva’s emissary, Manuel’s trophy, Leo’s pet.

If you believe, oh elephant, that you serve a lion of Libya,
You are deceiving yourself,
This lion has fallen from the sky.
This is your master, the chief glory of the earth,
With the triple tiara crowning his head.
Among the mortals he is held to be more than mortal,
It is him that has been given to open and close the heavens.
If to serve god is indeed to reign,
You will reign serving Leo
For he is god on earth…

Giovanni Capitone Arentino; written on the arrival of Annone and the Portuguese delegation in Rome, March, 1514.

March 19, 1514
“Finally when all was in readiness Cunha gave the signal and the mission began to wind its way through the Porta Flaminia. At that moment, a furious thunderstorm broke and raged all about them. Drenched, confused, and frightened by the violence of the wind and the downpour, the marchers covered themselves as best they could while frantically seeking shelter, which was nowhere available. No sooner had they passed through the ruined gate in the Aurelian wall, however, than the storm ceased as abruptly as it had begun, and the sun emerged suddenly in all its earlier brightness and splendor. The day remained clear and mild thereafter, and the Roman populace took it as a sign from on high that God looked favorably upon the Portuguese king and his undertakings…
…the first contingent consisted of members of the families of the pope and cardinals mounted on mules draped in purple. Next came the papal lighthorsemen without lances and the footmen of the cardinals mounted on mules covered with scarlet saddlecloths, bearing the ceremonial hats of their masters suspended around their necks… The Portuguese courtiers (were) dressed in long robes of crimson velvet with scarlet hoods and superb gold collars around their necks. They came mounted on horses and mules, each of which was draped with a saddlecloth of silk fabric decorated with gold and silver lame’. Then followed the family of the Portuguese ambassador-in-residence, Joao de Farina, the families of the visiting ambassadors, Tristao de Cunha and Diego Pacheco, each mounted on horses draped in velvet, the pope’s mounted horse guard and his archers, members of the pope’s family, the halberdiers of the Swiss guard marching in formation, succeeded by the pope’s trumpeters and pipers.

The next segment was led by Nichoau de Faria mounted on a Spanish jennet, preceding the gifts to Manuel I from the King of Hormuz- a black man riding a prized white Persian horse to the haunches of which clung the sleek spotted cheetah. Captured wild in the Asian forests and trained for the hunt in Lisbon, it was a beast such as had never been seen in Rome. Walking proudly behind it came a young Saracen, guiding the young elephant plodding along at a turtle’s pace. Its other attendant, the richly dressed Moorish mahout, rode astride its neck, and the beast’s back was covered with a saddlecloth of crimson velvet and its head masked in a caparison of gold brocade. Supported in the center of its back was a great silver coffer, artfully disposed under a handsome brocaded covering which fell almost to the ground and was ornamented in the finest workmanship with the arms of the Portuguese king. Above the coffer rose a silver tower with many turrets….
Of all the dazzling and unusual elements of the great procession, it was the elephant that excited the greatest public interest, not only because of its large size but also its antics in immediate response to commands. It would lift its trunk, turn and salute from one side to the other, and from time to time it would drink from the great barrels of water situated along the route, always in docile response to the voice of the Saracen guiding it.
The silver tower balanced on the beast’s back also brought gasps of surprise from the crowds. The castle-like structure with its numerous turrets featured under the canopy at its center a large rock containing a gold tabernacle which was executed with such artistry that it was said the workmanship excelled the material of which it was made. A gold chalice was displayed in one of its turrets, and the others contained silver cases displaying holy vestments of gold and silver cloth adorned with embroideries of pearls and unpolished rubies…
A they approached the bridge leading to Castel Sant’Angelo, the ground was shaking from the castle’s artillery with which the pope greeted the mission. As these cannonades merged with the sound of the Portuguese and papal musicians and the outcries of the crowd, the sound swelled into a great roar… The birds and beasts in their travelling cages plaintively reacted with alarmed chattering and low roars of concern as a consequence of the disturbing ground tremors combined with the assault of sound.
The procession was scheduled to pass in front of Castel Sant’Angelo and then continue back over the bridge into the city once more. The brilliant cavalcade moved slowly along until the young elephant approached the open window from which the pope and his party were watching. It stopped in its tracks, folded its knees and knelt to the ground, inclining its head devoutly. Then, as the beast arose, it saluted the pope with three great barks, trumpeting ‘Bar, Bar, Bar!’ according to contemporary chroniclers. The pope watching from his vantage point laughed like a child at the performance… The great beast next plunged its trunk into a nearby trough and filled it with water. Then, raising its trunk, the elephant sprayed water sufficiently high to reach the pontiff and other nearby watchers, drenching them, to the even greater amusement of Leo X.”

from The Pope’s Elephant, Silvio Bedini

Modern Lisbon is a different planet, a universe away from urban India. The streets are calm and uncrowded, cars stop for pedestrians, no one honks, no one appears to be in a hurry, no one is living on the sidewalk. God is contained in churches, trees are just trees, niches contain gas valves instead of sacred statues.

The 16th century was Lisbon’s golden age when the city acquired great riches through trade in spices, slaves, sugar and textiles. King Manuel I left his mark on the city in art and architecture, though much of it was destroyed in a massive earthquake in 1755. A few monuments remain, such as Belém Tower and Jerónimos Monastery.

In the Museum of Decorative Arts, an enormous tapestry dated to 1510 shows a procession of exotic animals and people; the scene is thought to celebrate Portugal’s imperial project in East Africa. Clearly the image of the elephant that walks behind the giraffes was not informed by direct observation and most anatomical accuracy was lost in translation from flesh to stitches. Had the artist seen one of King Manuel’s Indian elephants, the likeness would no doubt have been better.

Alfonso de Albuquerque established the Portuguese colony at Fort Cochin and conquered Malacca, capturing from its King stores of arms, precious metals and seven trained war elephants equipped with battle towers. Albuquerque, Cunha and Almeida captured ports and fortified them for Portugal, effectively dominating the world spice trade and starting an unprecedented flow of wealth to Europe.

The European Age of Discovery gave rise to colonial empires and a wide transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases and culture between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. This represented one of the most significant global events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in history. King Manuel I sought to bolster Portugal’s credentials as defender of the faith and global trading powerhouse by sending delegations of noblemen and riches to Rome. Among the gifts sent to Pope Leo X in 1514 were “a finely wrought gold chalice valued at 12,000 ducats, a tabernacle to contain the Holy Sacrament executed in gold with exquisite workmanship valued at 54 marches, an altar frontal of the finest brocade sewn with countless pearls and precious stones valued at more than 60,000 ducats, and a collection of altar ornaments.” In addition, he sent exotic animals from his menagerie: a cheetah trained to hunt, two leopards, numerous parrots and other birds, rare dogs from India, a Persian horse and the most wonderful gift of all, a young white elephant trained to perform to the music of pipes and respond to commands in Mayalalam and Portuguese, accompanied by its “Moorish trainer or mahout and a Saracen guide.”

– from The Pope’s Elephant by Silvio Bedini

Jose Saramago, Lisbon’s Nobel Laureate, wrote a novel about an Asian elephant that also belonged to a Portuguese King and was gifted to a European head of state in 1551. A Viagem do Elefante tells the story of Solomon and his mahout, Subhro on their long walk from Lisbon to Austria, where they were renamed Suleiman and Fritz by border guards as they crossed the mountains from Italy.

In wood, brass, paintings, textiles, print and plastic, images of elephants are abundant in Fort Cochin. For live animals you have to go about 70 kilometers north to Guruvayur, the site of a huge Shiva temple visited annually by tens of thousands of devout Hindu pilgrims from all over India. On major festivals more than 50 elephants are decorated and paraded in front of huge crowds gathered to see them and their handlers compete in various ways. The rest of the year the elephants live at Guruvayur Devaswom at Punnathurkotta, a so-called elephant sanctuary. After the initial excitement of seeing more than 50 dark grey hulking bodies with white tusks gathered in one place, a much more disturbing shock sinks in; scattered across the sanctuary the animals are chained to trees and cement posts, rocking, swaying, straining their massive weight against their confinement, signs warn against getting too close or looking too long. Most of them are chained in place by all four legs, the few that have just one or two chains are restrained by a simple wooden pole leaned against their body, the light pressure of the stick enough to keep them still. Imagine the kind of training, the conditioning required to convince an animal to stand submissively for hours with the simple reminder of a light touch behind the ear.

Families stroll, a small child points excitedly and squeals aane. I know it is foolish to read human emotion into an animal’s facial expression, but the eyes of these elephants have a look of seething desperation. Standing in their own excrement, unable to interact with each other except through some kind of subsonic tapping on the prison plumbing, they must be passing coded signals of rage or conspiracy. To be fair, they are fed, given medical attention, washed and worshiped, but these are gods in chains and they look pissed off.

On my last day in Fort Cochin I decide to revisit the salt temple. Retracing my way through the back streets I pass a mill where men in bare feet are guiding hardwood logs through a long, rumbling band-saw blade in dust-thickened air, every surface flocked in dry, dull yellow. A crew is dismantling an old house, carefully unpegging, then unthreading stringers from rafters, stacking the wood for reuse. Inside a 4’X 8’X 6′ blacksmith’s shed beside the stinking green canal one man cranks a blower, another delicately arranges bits of coal with iron tongs, then strikes the red-orange iron billet to make a knife, a pile of blanks cooling beside his bare feet. He gestures me forward to take a closer look, but the heat drives me back from the door. A man walks his bicycle, selling small fish floating in bloody water from a blue plastic crate; chickens are confined in pens, goat families roam casually among lounging cats, one with a fish tail sticking out of its mouth. At the temple I am shocked to find the salt has disappeared and what had appeared to be a pedestal is a four foot deep well. The volume of salt in the cone now doubles, and where is it? I ask the attendant what happened to the salt, he repeats Guruvayor, points to the elephant poster, asks for a rupee.

A cow is blocking half the street ahead and as I frame a photo, I see a much bigger animal walking toward me, a twelve-foot tall bull elephant carrying a bundle of bright green palm leaves between white tusks and pink trunk. The chains ring lightly, its feet make a soft sound of sandpaper passing over asphalt, traffic stops to let it through the confusion of cars, two wheelers and pedestrians. It delicately threads the wide load through narrow streets past a yellow school where children’s excited voices yell aane, aane as it passes the open, turquoise framed windows. Back inside its yard it sets down the fodder and steps onto a cement pad. The mahout loosens, but does not remove the chains, leans a long, brass tipped pole behind the elephant’s huge, mottled pink ear, turns on a hose and inserts it into the animal’s mouth. It runs for a good 5 minutes until the water starts to overflow, the elephant spits out the hose and lets loose a torrent of pee equivalent to the volume of water that just went in. Another mahout collects wads of dung onto a plastic sheet and tosses them onto a pile double the size of the blacksmith’s shed. Beside it are the smoldering remains of a previous dung pile reduced to hot, silver-grey ash. They say luck favors the well prepared. Persistent looking is a form of preparation in action; I was looking for salt and saw an elephant.

In the dusk light a brilliant white cone draws my attention; five feet of crystal salt heaped on a round pedestal, overflowing its base into multiple subsidiary conical piles around the perimeter. Between the salt mound and the temple entrance, mounted on a bronze turtle is an oily, six-tiered, fire blackened column, each level with multiple shallow depressions holding lit wicks. Across a raised, tiled floor the first gate to the shrine is flanked by large posters of the same temple elephants I had seen the day before at Guruvayur. The attendant points to a poster and speaks to me; I hear and repeat aane, elephant, he smiles and gives me the distinctive, confusing Indian head-wobble nod of agreement. I say Guruvayur, he nods, Guruvayur, it could be the mascot elephant of this shrine. We repeat aane, aane, Guruvayur. The gate is lined with blue LEDs chasing around the jambs and header, strings of white and yellow flowers make a delicate canopy over the vestibule, the inner gate outlined in more lights red, blue and green. In the deepest sanctum is the goddess, her multi-armed orange body just visible through a dense cloak of red, orange, pink, white garlands of flowers and silk surrounded by live, flickering oil lamps. A sharp, hollow pop as a man smashes a coconut onto the pavement; he picks up the pieces to distribute to women at four stalls who sell oil, flowers, fruit and 500gm. bags of salt. A loudspeaker plays an endless loop of upbeat, falsetto praise-singing which abruptly stops mid-verse every few minutes, pauses, then repeats. Bells and drums briefly drown out the tape, another coconut smacks the pavement and an unmistakable, gut-thumping pulse announces the arrival of a Royal Enfield. Usually the ride of young Indian men or dissipated Europeans who look like they have had way too much sun, this one carries a family of four. Mother gets off, lifts down the 6 year-old, father hands the toddler across the gas tank to mom, they leave their sandals beside the machine and cross the street to do darshan. A steady stream of men and women from the neighborhood pour oil from small bottles onto the flames, empty bags of salt onto the cone, wait their turn to see and be seen, to exchange the gaze that develops affection. A few minutes later the family returns, mother carefully applies pigment to the son’s forehead, yellow and red, a touch on the chest. He makes the face of every boy whose mom is fussing with his appearance. 15 minutes, duty done, they remount the Bullet and head home.
In Fort Cochin today, Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Christian and Jewish temples closely intermingle. From a neighborhood minaret, loudspeakers play a muezzin’s recorded call to prayers next to a large Jain temple, down the street from the Sri Krishna Cafe. A loudspeaker near the old synagogue in Jewtown blasts an earsplitting and unmistakable cadence of call and response; Hail Mary in Malayalam. Inside the church, six rows of women wearing red and pink choir robes, crowns of white flowers in their jet hair, sit on one side of the aisle, more women in saris on the other, facing an altar where a female officiant leads the recitation. The baby Jesus has a distinctly Indian look, the intense colors of a Hindu high gloss enamel aesthetic.

Few surviving traces of 16th century Cochin remain; European influenced architecture, Catholic churches, a synagogue and a global spice trade. Fort Cochin was the port of embarkation for Portuguese armadas headed to Lisbon in the early 16th century. In addition to the primary cargo, black pepper, the armada that left in late 1510 or early 1511 included one nau carrying a young elephant. Both survived the six month journey, a fact by no means guaranteed given the hazards of long distance ocean travel at the time. Fort Cochin was a tenuous colonial toe-hold on the margin of a vast continent, its natural harbor had been used by fishermen, merchants and navies for many centuries by the time the Portuguese arrived, its sheltered channels and vicinity to spice growing regions making it a highly desirable and contested site. In the early 16th century the port was within the sphere of the Vijayanagara Empire, whose ruler tolerated and profited from the Portuguese. One theory is that the elephant Annone was a gift from the Emperor of Vijayanagara to the Portuguese King Manuel, another that it was a gift from a king in Sri Lanka. Yet another possibility is that the Portuguese bought it locally and sent it to Lisbon simply because they could.

In muggy early morning on Bazar Street in Jewtown, dozens of trucks unload heavy burlap and poly sacks of rice, flour and spices of every kind, the smell in the air thick, luscious and complex. Bags are hooked and handed down from hyper-painted All India Permit ten-wheelers onto blue, hand-pulled, two-wheeled carts with hard rubber wheels over iron rims, or onto the heads of barefoot men in dhoties. Men, sacks, trucks, carts, motorcycles, auto rickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians and goats compete for space until traffic congeals to a standstill, then moves again. Bags disappear through massive turquoise wooden doors into sunny interior courtyards and dark warehouses. Inside one yard a woman scoops coarse, fragrant, dark brown granular material from sacks onto a 5X10 meter repurposed plastic advertising billboard. Back bent double, she spreads an even layer with her hands, divides it into long rows, then into piles to dry in the sun. A pigeon picks its way through the rows, a chicken eyes a cat nearby. I find the India Pepper and Spice Trade Commission, the Cochin Pepper Exchange and many shops that sell spices to tourists. Farther away from the tourist zone the price of a kilo of pepper drops until I find a merchant who is selling to local residents at half the cost of the others. He carries ginger, turmeric, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace and dozens of other spices, beans and varieties of rice. I want to ship some Kerala pepper to Portugal, he will sell me as many kilos as I want, carry it on the plane he says, I think, our mutual understanding limited by meager English and nonexistent Malayalam. Pepper is not cheap today and was worth more than gold to the 16th century Portuguese. In addition to the cargo assigned to the king and his financiers, crews were allowed to bring home personal pepper in quantities according to rank. A captain was allowed 500 quintals, 10 for a regular sailor, 5 for a ship’s boy; at 59 kilos per quintal, pepper could make you very rich. I decide to buy two kilos, we do our trade and the bemused gentleman finally asks me why. It’s a long story I say, we laugh and then I tell it to him with supporting images from my iPad. He understands the gist of it, although maybe still not exactly why.
Walking down Bazar Street with my pepper in a blue plastic bag, past ginger merchants, tea, rice and flour dealers, the chaos of the street eventually calms. Looking deep into one warehouse, through the dark vestibule, across the bright open courtyard and into a dark shed, I see women working, their forms backlit by the sun through yet another door that opens to the waterfront. One of them makes a gesture with her hand that could either mean go away tourist, or come in and look. I take a chance on the latter interpretation and enter. A gentleman in the outer office invites me to come in and sit down, I tell him I am interested in black pepper. On his desk is a shallow basket of his product, small black grains of pepper. He explains that this is second grade product, destined to be ground and mixed with other pepper, not to be sold as whole kernels; this is all he handles. Again I tell my pepper/elephant story, show my pictures, explain the origin of Annone’s name, how the Italians made “aane” bigger by adding the augmentative suffix “-one”. When I say aane, he breaks into a huge smile and shakes my hand, aane, my one word of Malayalam. Laughing, he puts it together; Kerala plus Italian makes Annone. I cross the blinding bright drying yard to the back warehouse where the women are sifting and bagging pepper into white woven poly sacks stacked 8 high, piles of loose pepper line the room and the dust immediately burns my throat. On my way out the trader suggests that I stop at the tea shop next door where a woman serves me a glass cup of scalding hot milk-tea, two deep-fried bananas and a slice of battered, deep-fried white bread. Her husband comes in for his lunch and eyes my blue bag, it’s pepper I say, I bought some black pepper. Without asking he unties the outer bag, pokes his fingers through the plastic and takes out a pinch of twenty or so grains. He puts one in his mouth and begins to roll the others on the worn formica table, pressing hard on one until it crumbles. From his expression and gesture I can tell that this is a poor quality pepper grain and for a moment I fear that I have made a bad trade, but the others grains are solid. I ask him how much a kilo of pepper should cost; he leaves the room, comes back with a newspaper, begins to flip pages and I think our conversation is over, but he is looking for the pepper quote, the price of pepper on the market today. In the columns of figures and Malayalam script he finds black pepper and points to the number 52000. Fearing the worst, I ask what that means, how much should one kilo cost? His lips move silently as he makes a quick calculation, then says 500 rupees. I paid 580, not bad for retail.

Lakshmi the elephant was not at her station, but the Ganesh temple in Pondicherry was open and crowded with local residents, Indian tourists, a few Europeans looking silly in their socks. The Hindus stop at stalls that line the street outside to assemble an offering or carry their own bowls prepared at home with tied sprigs of grass, pieces of coconut, small bananas, yellow and red flowers, a single, large pink lotus blossom, something sweet, money, all the things that Ganesh loves. Some touch the finger-worn brass image of Ganesh on the mirror-bright money collection canister outside the door, others bend to touch the foot-polished threshold with its image of a lotus flower, the jambs and columns inside covered with more patterned yellow brass. Some of them circle clockwise through the long narrow space around the inner sanctum, a room within a room, stopping to light a lamp or receive a dab of red or yellow on the forehead from a temple functionary. Others join lines on twin raised causeways either side of the direct path to the sanctum. A few take advantage of a sort of express lane where for 20 rupees you can jump the line to enter by a side door. Temple men wearing white dhoti and a single white string across their bare chest ring bells and carry smoking lamps to the waiting devout who pass their hand over the flame, then lightly across the top of the head. They offer a stainless steel bowl of white pigment to be drawn across the forehead with an index finger in a single, double or triple horizontal line. People lean in, craning their necks to see ahead, excited or impatient, waiting their turn to do darshan, a reciprocal interaction between devotee and image. An act of looking at, beholding or simply glimpsing a divine image or holy person, darshan heightens spiritual consciousness and develops mutual affection between god and devotee. Bodies shift and for a second through the crowd, deep within the innermost sacred space where the living god resides, Ganesh is visible, garlanded and wrapped, glistening black. Intermediated by the attendants, devotees kneel and prostrate themselves to look, to see and be seen.
Over the entrance to the inner sanctum is a large symbol of Ganesh in red neon, the pulsing tubes giving the room a pleasant, incongruous glow, like a liquor store beer sign in church. Simultaneously conspicuous and ignored, nobody seems to care that I am taking notes, that my knees don’t bend when I sit on the floor or that my expression of perpetual, awestruck curiosity could be interpreted as rude. A soundscape of hand rung bells, whir of a dozen ceiling fans, low conversations, loud voices of workmen and the distinctive metallic thunder and twang of sheets of corrugated metal being removed from scaffolding; this is not a hushed cathedral or Christian chapel. The people here are serious and reverent, but mostly relaxed and about their business. Some appear in a hurry to perform a duty, observe a ritual and be on their way, others linger cross-legged on the floor around the perimeter, meditating or talking softly. A woman takes flowers from two plastic bags, ties a garland of marigolds and pink blossoms in rapid rhythmic repetition, a simple motion practiced thousands of times. Like knitting, she does not need to look.
On one wall a serene Ganesh is flanked by floating, banner bearing attendants, adoring Tamil putti with plump bare bottoms, wings and curly black hair. The upper eight-foot band of the interior walls is lined with a gallery of portraits, a high-relief plaster frieze painted in the gaudy-bright polychrome typical of South Indian temples. In stacked tiers of three- by four-foot panels above a wide black dado densely inscribed with Tamil script and a high wainscot of dark red granite, the elephant-headed god is presented in ninety-five iterations; as a child, dancing, fat, fierce, serene, poised ready for action, worshiping Shiva, being worshiped by Ravanah, meditating, multi-headed and multi-armed. He is called Ganesh, Ganesa, Ganepathy, Maha, Bhuvana, Vijaya, Herambla, Narantha, Oorthava, Shripra, Mayuresa, Dundi, Shanmuga, Pancha Muga, Mooshi Gavahani and eighty other names.
As I stand taking notes, a gentleman who had been sitting on the white marble floor approaches me, leaning on a cane. “I am sorry to disturb you, but I see that you are taking notes and I want to explain to you that these images on the walls around you are part of a system of mystic symbolism.” I tell him of my interest in elephants and Ganesh. He says that these images have nothing to do with elephants, that Ganesh is simply a mythical being that happens to have the head of an animal, like the Minotaur. He repeats, “It is merely mystic symbolism. Some Hindus are religious, some are spiritual, some are intellectual, some are merely ritualistic.” Does a Hindu think about Ganesh when he sees a living elephant? He replies, “That would depend on the individual, if I saw an elephant come into this room right now, I would think about running away.” His name is Subramaniam, named for Ganesh’s elder brother, also son of Shiva and Parvathi. “I am 78 and I have lost many things in my life, now I come here each day to meditate for half an hour, and for those minutes all my worries fall away.” We chat, his voice so soft I need to cup my ear to hear. Taking his leave, he puts a hand on my shoulder- “May all these gods bless you.”