IS there an elephant in the room or not? If so, is it rogue or sober? Is it stable or shaky? Is it satiated or on a binge? These are important questions because aside from the havoc they can cause, elephants consume a lot, both in nominal and real terms, and these are days when many other jungle inhabitants go hungry.
This is a difficult question because there are no wild elephants in our country and many do not know what they are capable of. Most simply carry a cherished two-dimensional memory of the cute animal associated with the ‘hathi wali hay’ in the first-class Urdu qaida that may not have survived the revolutionary Single National Curriculum that banned the lovely ‘fakhta’ on the letter ‘fay.’ Could the new ‘fayvourite’ be a coded reference to an elephant? They both have the same gloomy shade of dust – ‘khaak mein kya sooraten hongi ke pinhaan ho gaeen’ (‘all that is still buried in the dust’).
It is true that there used to be a real elephant in the capital, but he was toothless and so mistreated that he could barely move; good-hearted foreigners had to come to her aid. All our dignitaries gathered to serenade and send him to the place where elephants were loved and appreciated. After congratulating the nation on their magnanimity, they must have thought that this was the end of the country’s elephants. Now only monkeys in the capital during the day and owls in the dark sit on every branch, tending what is left of the gardens after their transformation into housing associations and golf courses. But these are not the Minervan birds of wisdom that adorn the seals of many foreign universities. Our owls are celebrated for other attributes.
Even a lion is no match for a predatory dingbat.
Confusion all around. Some argue that the monkeys, who aren’t even native, and dishonest to boot, are in charge while the elephants sleep behind the wheel. Others swear the owls are retired elephants. Still others denigrate the elephant and claim that the lion is the real king of the jungle. But here too there are no lions in the wild and you can easily take a paper tiger for it. In any case, even the paper tiger has been caught by the toe and banned for eating beyond its means to be replaced by docile look-alikes from the pack.
Adding to the cacophony are tender loving parakeets accompanied by colonies of screeching bats, blind but omniscient or so they claim. Some of the latter pretend to be crickets but are actually dingbats, very unusual flying creatures with short deer-like antlers on their heads that allow them to trip their opponents. Even a lion is no match for a predatory dingbat that can dive from above when the timing is right and the light changes from neutral to green. Especially dangerous is a giant dingbat when it lands on the back of an invisible elephant; and even more so when it is scorned.
So, given this state of affairs, what can be said of the periodic claim that there is a really big elephant in the room? Is it nothing more than a figment of feverish fantasies after we have been repeatedly sworn under oath that there are no elephants in the land or, if there are any, they are good-natured and busy baking bread? The literary types try to educate us about the world of metaphors by referencing Wikipedia where an elephant in the room is defined as “an important or huge topic, question or controversial issue that is obvious or that everyone knows about but no one mentions.” or want to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable and is personally, socially or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory or dangerous”.
The few who believe this can raise their hands; no one will crush them to confirm their suspicion. But most deny such a metaphorical beast and attribute the accusation to a Western conspiracy. In recent days, some seem to have lent an ear to the amusing ‘qissa’ of a dingbat flying in on the back of an invisible elephant that had first caught a lion, enjoyed the ride on the same back for a while, before being dumped when it tried to scratch the elephant. But even these heretics are torn between condemning the elephant and relying on its sturdy legs and sharp tusks to rein in the wolves within and jackals without.
It is said, when all is said and done, that we desperately need an elephant, real or metaphorical, and prayers are made for its greater glory. At the same time, buckets of crocodile tears are being shed to protest its innocence. There are few crocodiles left in Manghopir, but there are still sanctuaries where elephants can shed crocodile tears all night, comforted by fawning monkeys, mischievous owls, mutilated lions and blind bats.
The author is co-author of Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation, Folio Books 2021.
Published in Dawn, July 31, 2022