Toomai, The Elephant Boy of Mysuru

by slapstick.genius

In this version, which caters to preteens, Mysuru is a place full of struggle for Toomai, his long suffering family, and their Elephant Kala Nag from the northern Indian region of Bhilistan.

1. Kala Nag's Wartime Heyday

Kala Nag, which means Black Snake, had served the Madhya Government in every way that an elephant could serve it for forty years, and as she was ten and a half years old when she was caught, that makes her fifty two and a half years old - a ripe age for an elephant. She remembered pushing, with a big leather pad on her forehead, at a gun stuck in deep mud, and that was before the Afghan War of 1842, and she had never come to her full strength since.