Making a trunk call

A page from the Gajapati Kulapati by Ashok Rajagopalan (Tulika Publishers); (right) Bittu Sahgal

Elephants have been a recurring character in fiction aimed at children, be it the Disney favourite Dumbo or Colonel Haathi in The Jungle Book. It goes to show how fascinated kids have been with the animal and an event tomorrow, meant to mark Children’s Day, will celebrate this aspect with a talk titled Writings on Elephants for Young Readers. It’s part of the Greenlitfest’s Dialogues series, and features environmental journalist Bittu Sahgal, Vinod Rishi who founded conservation initiative Project Elephant, and Priya Krishan, senior editor at Tulika Publishers that has Gajapati Kulapati, a series on elephants in its portfolio. Meghaa Gupta, who conceptualised the event, told us that the reasons she feels that kids are taken with elephants is their shape and the animal’s recurring appearances in mythology. “It is such a mammoth and magnificent animal, with this odd physiology and large floppy ears. It is commonly mentioned across Indian mythology. Ganesha is the Elephant God, for example. So, children have come across it in their homes in a different context as well,” she shared.