Long ago, in the time before tusks, every bull elephant had wings. Taloned, scaly, latticed with veins, they carried the males through the air while the cow elephants watched from below, with casual interest. Such feats they performed in mating times, such aerial swoops and dives!
Until the Sage ruined everything…
The Tusk That Did The Damage, the novel by Tania James, an acclaimed young American author of Indian origin, has been making waves in the US. Set in the forests of Kerala, the book is part-fable and part-thriller, written – intriguingly – from three different points of view: those of an elephant, a poacher (represented by his brother), and a young American documentary film-maker who’s making a film on the subject. Excerpts from an interview with James:
You write so feelingly about elephants. Do you think you were an elephant yourself in your last life?
I’ve been interviewed many times, but nobody’s ever asked me that question before! I have always known that elephants are highly intelligent creatures, but there were many things about them I didn’t know, until I did my research in India a few years ago. Like the fact that elephants are highly sensitive to stress – just as we humans are.
Elephants respond to this in complex ways. During my research I learned, for example, of an elephant who used to actually bury the humans that he would kill. He would sometimes even carry a body on his back for a mile before burying it. This kind of behaviour seemed to me to be almost human – and, in some strange way, even humane.
Learning about this elephant – and others like him – made me want to learn more about elephant behaviour. It also made me want to explore the relationship between elephants and humans – in fact, the various different kinds of relationships between these two unique species
So what kind of research did you do for the writing of this novel?
The bulk of my research was done while I was in India on a Fulbright fellowship. I was fortunate enough to meet Vivek Menon, Director of the Wildlife Trust of India, early on in my research, and he linked me up with a cross-section of people who interact with elephants in different ways: conservationists, forest officers, elephant handlers and farmers. I also spent time in the Kodanad elephant sanctuary in Kerala, as well as the Kaziranga Wildlife Park in Assam.
In the course of all this, I interviewed farmers who had gotten caught up in human-elephant conflict (including a man who had his own brother killed by an elephant). I interviewed forest guards, forest officers, and former poachers. I spoke with pappans (elephant keepers) and elephant owners – in fact, with pretty much anyone who came in contact with elephants and didn’t mind talking to me. Interestingly, these sources didn’t always agree with each other. For example, one person told me that elephant calves suckle on their own trunks at night for comfort; but another person insisted that they do this to keep ants from running up their nostrils.
At this stage, I really didn’t know what I was going to write about. I was just rooting around, on the faith that I’d know what I was looking for once I’d found it.
You seem to do a remarkable amount of research for your fiction – whether it is for this novel, or whether it’s for your some of your earlier writings. Like the short story about the chimpanzee, for which you obviously did an almost inordinate amount of anthropological research. Tell me about the role that research plays in your writing.
First, I try to immerse myself in the research as much as possible – reading, doing interviews, making notes to myself about what might hold some dramatic potential. Then I transcribe everything all over again, I go over my notes many times. And then, having done that, I put all the research material away.
That’s when I start working on the story. I need to shut the door on the research, and work from what I’ve retained in order to make room for the story to take shape. After writing a few drafts, I then go back and do more research in order to firm up what I’ve already written.
You studied film-making at Harvard: Has that affected the way you write in any way? Did that affect the way you wrote Tusk?
I don’t think it has affected my writing so much as my style of editing. You see, much of what I learned about documentary film-making happened in the editing room: that’s where the story gets made, that’s where you figure out the structure, the flow of the narrative. All those discussions and critiques we used to have about narrative and transitions have probably influenced me in the way I shape my unwieldy early drafts into the final story.
How much of Emma, the documentary film-maker in the novel, is actually Tania James?
Like Emma, I studied documentary film-making in college. I remember that post-collegiate fire, the sense of camaraderie combined with competition, the all-consuming ambition to make your creative mark, some of which reflects in Emma’s story. So, yes, I suppose Emma resembles me in certain ways on the surface – but then, on the other hand, I identify just as much with Manu, the poacher’s brother.
Some people have said that the part of this novel’s narrative told by the elephant is truly ethereal, but that the parts told by the poacher and the documentary film-maker somehow don’t quite match up to that. How would you respond to them?
I love novels that can tell a great story, but I’m also interested in the inter-play of ideas within the novel form. With Tusk, I wanted to look at the broader context of conservation and species preservation in this particular wildlife park.
I’m drawn to the moral dimension of whether the species should be saved, and the moral dilemmas that Ravi, the vet, has to face in order to do his work. And then, of course, there’s the ethical question of what it means to tell a story like this through the medium of film, and the responsibility that a filmmaker has to her subject, to her viewer, and to her own artistic vision. These are difficult questions to raise, especially within the framework of a novel. But I believe they are questions that have to be asked.
Tell me about the way you see yourself: How much of you is American? How much is Indian? What is your relationship with Kerala?
My parents are originally from Kerala: my father from Kumarakom and my mother from Kuzhimattom. And I’ve been visiting Kerala since I was a baby, every few years, so I have strong emotional ties to my parents’ hometowns. But I’ve never lived in these places myself, so my experience has always been filtered through family. Which is lovely – but it’s very different from experiencing a place on one’s own, as I did living in Delhi, a few years ago, while on a Fulbright fellowship. That was the trip when I happened to do the bulk of my research for this novel.
As for the Indian-American divide: I think identity is a flexible, fluid thing, hard to define by category. So I guess I’d say I’m wholly both.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
Until the Sage ruined everything…
The Tusk That Did The Damage, the novel by Tania James, an acclaimed young American author of Indian origin, has been making waves in the US. Set in the forests of Kerala, the book is part-fable and part-thriller, written – intriguingly – from three different points of view: those of an elephant, a poacher (represented by his brother), and a young American documentary film-maker who’s making a film on the subject. Excerpts from an interview with James:
You write so feelingly about elephants. Do you think you were an elephant yourself in your last life?
I’ve been interviewed many times, but nobody’s ever asked me that question before! I have always known that elephants are highly intelligent creatures, but there were many things about them I didn’t know, until I did my research in India a few years ago. Like the fact that elephants are highly sensitive to stress – just as we humans are.
Elephants respond to this in complex ways. During my research I learned, for example, of an elephant who used to actually bury the humans that he would kill. He would sometimes even carry a body on his back for a mile before burying it. This kind of behaviour seemed to me to be almost human – and, in some strange way, even humane.
Learning about this elephant – and others like him – made me want to learn more about elephant behaviour. It also made me want to explore the relationship between elephants and humans – in fact, the various different kinds of relationships between these two unique species
So what kind of research did you do for the writing of this novel?
The bulk of my research was done while I was in India on a Fulbright fellowship. I was fortunate enough to meet Vivek Menon, Director of the Wildlife Trust of India, early on in my research, and he linked me up with a cross-section of people who interact with elephants in different ways: conservationists, forest officers, elephant handlers and farmers. I also spent time in the Kodanad elephant sanctuary in Kerala, as well as the Kaziranga Wildlife Park in Assam.
In the course of all this, I interviewed farmers who had gotten caught up in human-elephant conflict (including a man who had his own brother killed by an elephant). I interviewed forest guards, forest officers, and former poachers. I spoke with pappans (elephant keepers) and elephant owners – in fact, with pretty much anyone who came in contact with elephants and didn’t mind talking to me. Interestingly, these sources didn’t always agree with each other. For example, one person told me that elephant calves suckle on their own trunks at night for comfort; but another person insisted that they do this to keep ants from running up their nostrils.
At this stage, I really didn’t know what I was going to write about. I was just rooting around, on the faith that I’d know what I was looking for once I’d found it.
You seem to do a remarkable amount of research for your fiction – whether it is for this novel, or whether it’s for your some of your earlier writings. Like the short story about the chimpanzee, for which you obviously did an almost inordinate amount of anthropological research. Tell me about the role that research plays in your writing.
First, I try to immerse myself in the research as much as possible – reading, doing interviews, making notes to myself about what might hold some dramatic potential. Then I transcribe everything all over again, I go over my notes many times. And then, having done that, I put all the research material away.
That’s when I start working on the story. I need to shut the door on the research, and work from what I’ve retained in order to make room for the story to take shape. After writing a few drafts, I then go back and do more research in order to firm up what I’ve already written.
You studied film-making at Harvard: Has that affected the way you write in any way? Did that affect the way you wrote Tusk?
I don’t think it has affected my writing so much as my style of editing. You see, much of what I learned about documentary film-making happened in the editing room: that’s where the story gets made, that’s where you figure out the structure, the flow of the narrative. All those discussions and critiques we used to have about narrative and transitions have probably influenced me in the way I shape my unwieldy early drafts into the final story.
How much of Emma, the documentary film-maker in the novel, is actually Tania James?
Like Emma, I studied documentary film-making in college. I remember that post-collegiate fire, the sense of camaraderie combined with competition, the all-consuming ambition to make your creative mark, some of which reflects in Emma’s story. So, yes, I suppose Emma resembles me in certain ways on the surface – but then, on the other hand, I identify just as much with Manu, the poacher’s brother.
Some people have said that the part of this novel’s narrative told by the elephant is truly ethereal, but that the parts told by the poacher and the documentary film-maker somehow don’t quite match up to that. How would you respond to them?
I love novels that can tell a great story, but I’m also interested in the inter-play of ideas within the novel form. With Tusk, I wanted to look at the broader context of conservation and species preservation in this particular wildlife park.
I’m drawn to the moral dimension of whether the species should be saved, and the moral dilemmas that Ravi, the vet, has to face in order to do his work. And then, of course, there’s the ethical question of what it means to tell a story like this through the medium of film, and the responsibility that a filmmaker has to her subject, to her viewer, and to her own artistic vision. These are difficult questions to raise, especially within the framework of a novel. But I believe they are questions that have to be asked.
Tell me about the way you see yourself: How much of you is American? How much is Indian? What is your relationship with Kerala?
My parents are originally from Kerala: my father from Kumarakom and my mother from Kuzhimattom. And I’ve been visiting Kerala since I was a baby, every few years, so I have strong emotional ties to my parents’ hometowns. But I’ve never lived in these places myself, so my experience has always been filtered through family. Which is lovely – but it’s very different from experiencing a place on one’s own, as I did living in Delhi, a few years ago, while on a Fulbright fellowship. That was the trip when I happened to do the bulk of my research for this novel.
As for the Indian-American divide: I think identity is a flexible, fluid thing, hard to define by category. So I guess I’d say I’m wholly both.
