The Elephant in the Road? (What Elephant?)

I would think we’re all more than adeqately familiar with the long list of clichés about roads in India — they’re chaotic, people honk a lot, there’s no clear lane structure, there are all these ultracheap, Ipod-sized cars… and yeah, there’s the occasional animal. Just in case you’ve forgotten some of them, here are the clichés again for you:

Amid a cacophony of horns, a blood-red sport utility vehicle weaved between cars, passing Mr. Sharma within a razor’s edge on the right. A school bus snuggled close up on his left. No one seemed to care about traffic lanes. Cars bounced in and out of crater-size potholes.

[…] Sharing the road with him were a bicyclist with three cooking-gas cylinders strapped to the back of his bike, a pushcart vendor plying guavas, a cycle rickshaw loaded with a photocopy machine (rickshaws often being the preferred mode of delivery for modern appliances).

There were also a great many pedestrians, either leaping into traffic in the absence of crosswalks or marching in thick rows on the sides of the road in the absence of sidewalks. At one point, a car careered down the wrong side of the road. Then a three-wheeled scooter-rickshaw came straight at Mr. Sharma, only to duck swiftly down a side street. At least this morning there was no elephant chewing bamboo in the fast lane, as there sometimes is. (link)

I have no problem if a reporter goes to Delhi, notices that the traffic is intense, and writes about it; some clichés, admittedly, are based in truth. (The article, incidentally, is by Somini Sengupta, with contributions from Hari Kumar and Seher Mahmood.) What I do have a problem are silly non-observations, like “At least there was no elephant chewing bamboo in the fast lane, as there sometimes is.” In fact, you didn’t see any elephants, did you? Why report on what you didn’t see?

Though I must admit I am no expert either, I have never seen an elephant on the road in central Delhi… Cows and goats, yes. But an elephant, no — it seems like an exceptional rather than an ordinary occurrence.

I think someone is pulling Somini’s leg.

119 thoughts on “The Elephant in the Road? (What Elephant?)

  1. how come she doesn’t mention the roadside sati and the roadside beating up of dalits as well? an india article without sati and caste? is she out of her head?

  2. Amardeep, while nowhere near a common sight on the streets of Dhaka, I have seen elephants there a couple of times, during Eid. Since a very large fraction of Dhaka’s denizens go “home” for Eid, there is hardly any traffic on Dhaka’s roads then, and it seems that the mahuts take advantage of this opportunity to show their elephants the city.

  3. I’ve lived in Delhi my whole life and I don’t remember the last time I said hello to my neighbourhood elephant. Its frustrating to see a cliched, and in this case an untrue picture being painted in the western press. Did anyone notice that the story was triggered by how the cheapest car in the world has been produced in India. Instead of highlighting a technological breakthrough that meets a quintessential Indian need, the writer shamelessly falls in the trap of ‘exotic’ India, a mocking tone questioning how a country that has elephants on the roads of its capital city dares to come up with such an original concept.

  4. 3 weeks and 11 cities recently in India and saw several eleplants in random cities, and dogs, and cats, and chickens, and camels and goats, and pigs and monkeys … but the best was a very very large cow who came up from behind me, walked past me and slightly bumped me making room for herself in the narrow alley!! Scared the crap out of me.

  5. I’ve been going to India almost yearly for the past 26. While most of my time is spent in the big city, I have traveled within many parts of the country. When I was a child it was possible, on occasion, to take elephant rides in the middle of Bombay (like, the real middle, not Bandra). But yes, an exception.

    Anyway, their photog managed to illustrate the idea quite well.

  6. we should all be grateful that she chose to only mention the sometimes presence of the elephant in the middle of delhi and neglected to mention that people stopped to offer prayer, money and get blessings from the said elephant while he was ambling down the street.

    this is exactly what i saw when i was in mumbai in this past april outside of the borivali train station. we will never get away from these cliches because they are true! but, how many people in the world have the opportunity to interact with so many different animals on a daily basis? it made me happy to see the elephant (although i did not pray).

  7. Well, folks, the photograph people have been linking to definitely undercuts my point. Even if the author of the article didn’t catch an elephant, the photographer did, and that’s probably good enough to pass journalistic muster.

    Still, it’s gratifying to find that for most people elephants in central Delhi in particular are quite rare.

  8. i think that line must have been a small inside joke on the writer’s part understandable to regular readers of the magazine who had seen the photo essay with an elephant in traffic.

    lurker delurking .. 🙂

  9. Good post, Amardeep. Your points are valid. The NY Times and Somini Sengupta are far from perfect. However, I find it laughable that some people would even compare the journalism that appears in The Hindu, Times of India etc. with The New York Times, Washington Post, etc. It’s night and day. Indian magazines are doing fairly well, but the newspapers have a long way to go to catch up with their American counterparts.

    I’m miffed partly because of this piece of shoddy journalism from the TOI. To be fair, The Telegraph did better.

    Go Seahawks!

  10. I’m miffed partly because of this piece of shoddy journalism from the TOI.

    What??? The TOI does journalism? Now, that is a news story I’d read.

  11. You mean, like the ones they have outside rations stores in India where the starving masses get subsidized sugar and rice?

    More like the ones in a Dept of Social Security office.

    Somini Sengupta is a hack. I’ve read an article she did on my engineering school in India. First she was never there. She did send two of her flunkies who turned up for the food and satiated, they promptly left. Yet she managed to write a two page article on the infrastructure of the place. Yeah that sounds like classy journalism. Incidentally she was very positive about the place. No doubt the biryani was very good. Oh and did I mention, they also wanted booze.

    Let’s be clear. I have no problem with criticism. What is not criticized cannot be perfected. This however is different. This is pandering to the bigoted imagery of a snooty audience. This is about being unable to praise anything without first looking for something, anything to criticize.

  12. However, I find it laughable that some people would even compare the journalism that appears in The Hindu, Times of India etc. with The New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

    You mean NYTimes and WP talking about America and Europe vs Hindu/TOI abt India? Maybe so, but I would hold Hindu a few years back comparable with NYTimes or WP.

    But NYTimes/WP about India and TOI/Indian TV channels—long lost twins.

  13. Many years ago, when I was on a photography kick, I was visiting my parents in Delhi and while roaming around Connaught Place I saw an elephant wandering down the street. After I took a photo, the mahout tried to get me to pay for that privilege 😉

  14. Somini Sengupta is a hack. I’ve read an article she did on my engineering school in India. First she was never there. She did send two of her flunkies who turned up for the food and satiated, they promptly left. Yet she managed to write a two page article on the infrastructure of the place. Yeah that sounds like classy journalism. Incidentally she was very positive about the place. No doubt the biryani was very good. Oh and did I mention, they also wanted booze.

    If she was never there, but wrote the article as if she was, that sounds like very suspect journalism. That is a far, far more serious allegation than just saying that she views India through bleak-gray-tinted-glasses.

  15. 65 · Rahul said

    If she was never there, but wrote the article as if she was, that sounds like very suspect journalism. That is a far, far more serious allegation than just saying that she views India through bleak-gray-tinted-glasses.

    Not really. Her two colleagues appear as having “contributed reporting” for the article.

  16. Not really. Her two colleagues appear as having “contributed reporting” for the article.

    Can you link the article?

  17. Not really. Her two colleagues appear as having “contributed reporting” for the article.

    Maybe that’s code in the journalism biz for that kind of behavior, but to me “contributed” means that some of the legwork was done by the colleages, and that the major part of the work was done by the reporter under whose byline the article is. Maybe I’m misunderstanding roles? I’d be interested in seeing the article if you have a link to it. (Also, to see if I should do preemptive eye rolls whenever I see an SS article, because in general, I have not found her articles as pathetic as the one described in this post).

  18. No luck so far. And I have work to do. Since it would be unfair of me to level all that criticism without proof I’ll retract what I said till I find the stupid article. Seya tommorow

  19. i have to add a bit here — i was living in delhi from 2005 – 2007, in south delhi (east of kailash) if you take outer ring road or mathura road than you will regularly see elephants as there is a colony of elephants and their owners (who use them for parties and also for work). oddly enough, its my understanding the somini sengupta and other journalists live around this area as well — so, it would not be a stretch for her to have seen elephants several times a month — i know i did, especially in the springtime….

    of course i can’t say i’ve ever seen an elephant running around connaught place, or even on the western sides of delhi, but for that area, oh yes, you see them. the kids i worked with were often on the lookout for elephants on the ride home from school 🙂

    for what it’s worth — i appreciate sengupta’s writings.

  20. sorry, amardeep, but I too have seen a couple of elephants slowly walking on noida roads, their little neck bells tinkling gently as they seem to vanish into dillis dusty haze…

  21. sorry, amardeep, but I too have seen a couple of elephants slowly walking on noida roads, their little neck bells tinkling gently as they seem to vanish into dillis dusty haze…

    I was right! Elephants are disappearing in India. That’s why Somini Sengupta didn’t see them.

  22. 71 · theresa said

    its my understanding the somini sengupta and other journalists live around this area as well — so, it would not be a stretch for her to have seen elephants several times a month — i know i did, especially in the springtime….

    yes, but a reporter cannot distort facts to make it appear as if the pachyderms/sq km ratio is as high in all delhi as it is in her area.

  23. 63 · bytewords said

    But NYTimes/WP about India and TOI/Indian TV channels—long lost twins.

    I was pretty happy about the quality of reportage on CNN-IBN and NDTV , but then again, it is hard to say in the absence of reliable, non-corporate, independent news outlets about the sort of the stuff that is not covered.

  24. Don’t be too sure. I had a British friend visiting Chennai. He wanted to take some photos of cows ‘interacting’ with people on the streets. Despite my scepticism, he had 18 photos in 3 hours, including one of a cow inside a tea shop. From cows to elephants is but a small extrapolation.

  25. I finally read Vikram Chandra’s “The Cult of Authenticity” last night. Here are some quotes I pulled:

    It apparently never occurs to Dr. Mukherjee that style is something that one feels in the pit of the stomach, that Narayan may be interested in a minimalistic representation because it grows from the marrow of his Malgudi bones, that perhaps when Narayan sits down at his desk with his pen and his paper, he is not thinking of his pan-Indian or international audience, not any more than Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver were thinking of their audiences in Ghaziabad and Vishakapatnam when they chiselled their laconic turns of phrase. […] Saintliness may have its temporary and ethereal satisfactions, but for any artist, it is finally a trap.4 But why this search for saints? And why this inquisition, this desire to fix and vanquish sin? Why, I wonder, this frantic searching for purity of purpose? I recall, now, E. M. Forster’s observation about “reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.” Perhaps, to extend Forster’s notion, the ones who see the anxiety of Indianness everywhere are in truth eaten at by this anxiety themselves, and the ones who battle the malign hand of the West in every action of every day are completely determined by the West. To be obsessed with defeating the devil is to be his servant.

    I’m a little too spent to contextualize at the moment, but it’s a good article and you’ll see why it fits in this context if you read it.

  26. I saw an elephant on the road in central New Delhi when I visited the last time, about 3 months ago. Just ambling along (as elephants do) with the mahout (mahawat) sitting on top. I used to see them on the city roads, infrequently, back in the 1960s and 1970s. These were typically elephants of religious mendicants and wanderers, but usually asssociated with some outlying temple or ashram.

    Once, a jumbo expired right down the road from our apartment block. Much excitement/curiosity/revulsion amongst the population of neighbourhood kids. It took them about a day to find a crane to lift it up and take it away.

  27. I don’t know about bamboo, but a very special treat for an elephant would be stalks of sugarcane, which look pretty much like bamboo to the unacquainted. Sugarcane is the jumbo equivalent of a premier cru Bordeaux.

  28. When I lived in Bengaluru this was my daily routine-

    7:00 am Woke up to the sounds of the neighborhood widow committing Suttee 7:05 am Did my business in the sugarcane field 7:10 am Rubbed aloo roti on my teeth to give me aloo roti breath 7:15 am Had a bath in my house-well – carefully avoided soap in armpits to maintain body odour 7:30 am Breakfast of 1 nan-bread and a glass of mango lassi (without ice) 7:45 am Took out my camel and rode it to work (Macacasoft) 8:00 am-12 noon Became Bubba and answered calls at Macacasoft 12 noon – 1 pm More nan-bread, chicken tikka and 1 coke (without ice) 1 pm-6 pm Checked the status of my H1B application online at 0.5 kbps 6 pm Took my camel back to home. Had an accident with an elephant/cow 7 pm Watched some snake charmers and a dalit being beaten 8 pm Ate 1 tandoori chicken with Basmati rice 9 pm to 12 midnight Tried position #75432 from my Kamasutra manual 12 midnight Sleeping in my lungi and baniyan

  29. 76 · portmanteau said

    63 · bytewords said
    But NYTimes/WP about India and TOI/Indian TV channels—long lost twins.
    I was pretty happy about the quality of reportage on CNN-IBN and NDTV , but then again, it is hard to say in the absence of reliable, non-corporate, independent news outlets about the sort of the stuff that is not covered.

    CNN-IBN and NDTV? NDTV is a little better, I agree—but the CNN-IBN and several other channels were outrageously sensationalist. Remember the episode about Shakti Kapoor—the “sting”? It ruined the guy, but the reality was that there was nothing illegal there—not even any evidence of a casting couch—his crime was that he was seduced by the undercover operative. Not condoning what he did, but come on—if he cheats on his wife, it doesn’t have to be on TV, and it is none of our business. And you don’t have to look far for stories like this—in pretty much every high profile incident, these people run a similar spectacle.

    Sometimes it doesn’t even have to be high profile people if it is a slow news week. In Oct when I was in India, they had this pic and a short video footage about some thief being surrounded by a bunch of angry people and the police holding the guy. They spun an elaborate story about police brutality from it, saying the police joined the rest in beating him up. A few days later, it emerged that he was indeed a thief caught redhanded, and the police guy was escorting him out while the others were taunting him.

    They had another story about a kid being beaten, not by a mob, but by a few people who caught him stealing: one old woman and a couple of men. Horrifying story—but wtf were the reporters doing? I mention this not as an attack on the story per se, but to highlight how the journalists see people—they are just actors for their drama, they will let the kid be beaten up for the story, heaven forbid the beating stops and they lose the story.

    This irresponsibility is common to both NYTimes and CNN-IBN when reporting news on India—dont’ bother if you are right, wrong, if someone dies, doesn’t die, they are bit parts for the drama you will gloriously present. Like many of my friends joke—the news channels must come with the disclaimers movies come with: “these are dramatizations of actual events, any resemblence to real events and people is purely coincidential”.

  30. how come she doesn’t mention the roadside sati and the roadside beating up of dalits as well? an india article without sati and caste? is she out of her head?

    Because those are not common sights. Animals on Indian roads are, and even elephants are not “uncommon”, though perhaps not a daily sight.

  31. Because those are not common sights. Animals on Indian roads are, and even elephants are not “uncommon”, though perhaps not a daily sight.

    Elephants are not uncommon? Give me a break. In 22 years I lived in India, I have probably seen them on the road once? twice? and that as part of a procession. The way the article is written, I would think elephants were as common as stray dogs.

    This is akin to saying “american tries to go to work, today he is lucky to avoid mattresses on the fast lane”. what? didn’t you know? yesterday on the 580, a mattress had fallen on to the road. and i have seen it happen twice in only 7 years in america. must be a local tradition.

    But you are missing the point why people are pissed off—this is another in a long series of articles on India that exaggerate and add ridiculous references pandering to those who really wouldn’t want nuance, just-give-me-the-snake-charmer-story-thank-you types. Unless you call these people each and every time, they will keep going at it and due to the distribution of wealth. And these idiots have a disproportionate say in life in India, directly or indirectly.

    Here it is harmless. In many other articles, it isn’t.

  32. Unless you call these people each and every time, they will keep going at it and due to the distribution of wealth. And these idiots have a disproportionate say in life in India, directly or indirectly.

    should read:

    Unless you call these people each and every time, they will keep going at it. And due to the distribution of wealth, these idiots have a disproportionate say in life in India, directly or indirectly.

    Punctuation error, sorry.

  33. But you are missing the point why people are pissed off—this is another in a long series of articles on India that exaggerate and add ridiculous references pandering to those who really wouldn’t want nuance, just-give-me-the-snake-charmer-story-thank-you types.

    Do you get pissed off when Tom Friedman exaggerates and adds ridiculous references ?.

  34. I got curious how many elephants there might be in India, and it turns out that the Indian Government has been carrying out regular (eventually to be quinquennial) elephant censuses – counting their number every five years.

    In 2002, the elephant census reports a grand total of 26,413 wild elephants, and about 3,600 captive ones. Interestingly, and counter-intuitively, the number of wild elephants is reported exactly, while the number of captive ones is known only to within a range of about 200.

    Delhi had 31 captive elephants in 2000, and none wild; while the entire state of Maharashtra had fewer captive elephants (20-26) and none reported as wild. Most elephants in India are in the South (13,000 wild, and about 1,000 captive; wild population grew during 1993-2002) and the North East (mainly Assam, Meghalaya and Arunachal – about 2,000 captive and 9,300 wild, with the wild population declining by about 2,000 – 1993 to 2002). India’s elephants are about half the entire Asian total, and the Asian total is about one-sixth of the African total. The Indian total is declining faster than the Asian, and much faster than the African.

    So between Delhi and Bombay, the chances of seeing an elephant on the street would seem higher in Delhi, unless the reported captive ones in Delhi are mostly in the zoo.

    I don’t quite agree that elephants are ‘just a step up’ from cows – they are much more exotic, and far less numerous than cows (about 400 million in India). Trunks and tusks and sheer size for three things drive a lot of the interest, especially from Westerners – since elephants are not native to Europe, Australia or America. Also they remind kids (and adults) of the woolly mammoth, now extinct, and indirectly perhaps, also of dinosaurs. Let’s hope they don’t meet the same evolutionary fate…

  35. Do you get pissed off when Tom Friedman exaggerates and adds ridiculous references ?.

    Amused, not pissed off. Friedman writes his columns as opinion, not factual news.

  36. Amused, not pissed off. Friedman writes his columns as opinion, not factual news.

    I think this can be passed as Somini Sengupta’s opinion.. No ??

  37. I think this can be passed as Somini Sengupta’s opinion.. No ??

    Ah there is the problem—yes, it is her opinion, but this does not appear in the opinion section. Her opinion has now been promoted to news.

  38. India’s elephants are about half the entire Asian total, and the Asian total is about one-sixth of the African total. The Indian total is declining faster than the Asian, and much faster than the African.

    I think Asian elephants need need somebody like Colbert to do for them what he did to increase the population of African elephants.

    I think this can be passed as Somini Sengupta’s opinion.. No ??

    Much as the 24 hour “news” networks would like to eliminate the difference between news and bloviation, most people still read the “news” section of a newspaper expecting a reasonable rendering of facts.

    Do you get pissed off when Tom Friedman exaggerates and adds ridiculous references ?.

    His facts don’t irritate me, what does is the respect that is accorded to his “I am Tom Friedman, world traveler, international man of erudition”-laden inanities. Here’s a brilliant parody of the greatest mustachioed pundit of our times, the educated man’s Geraldo.

  39. 94 · Rahul Here’s a brilliant parody of the greatest mustachioed pundit of our times, the educated man’s Geraldo.

    Brilliant is not an exaggeration! Thanks for the link!

  40. 95 · rob said

    Brilliant is not an exaggeration! Thanks for the link!

    For real, Rahul, that was some good stuff. I was tempted to go here and here, but your references are way better.

  41. yes, but a reporter cannot distort facts to make it appear as if the pachyderms/sq km ratio is as high in all delhi as it is in her area.

    Maybe it was just an honest mistake, like the one made by the six blind men of Indostan and. prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen Although, maybe in this case, the elephant is the state of Indian traffic, and the snake/wall/spear/tree/fan/rope are the elephant 🙂

    Poor Somini, cows and dogs on Indian roads are so passe, and she was forced to work her way up to elephants so her article could get on the “most emailed” list. In two decades, I look forward to descriptions of an India where the great rhinoceroses can coexist peacefully with flying cars.

  42. I believe that the number of elephants struck by automobiles is less than the number struck by trains or having unfortunate encounters with power lines and other elements of encroachment on their migratory routes. I’s have to check, but in 2007 at least 6 elephants died in the Northeast.

    Is the word “cacophony” now a cliche when used in regards to India?

  43. are’nt we desis asked if we travel to office on elephants in India? so what is the big deal here? i always tell them i do, dressed like a maharajah no less…