Good bye, big buddy

Tharindu Muthukumarana

Raja the blind tusker	The blind eyes

Pinnawala elephant herd is known to be the largest permanent concentration of captive Asian elephants in the world. When we think about it what comes to our mind is elephants in all ages living in a nine-ha land of coconut plantations - or the famous elderly elephant Raja the blind-tusker. On January 11 this year, the elephant, who amazed every visitor at the orphanage, passed away.

Elephants getting old

According to Veterinary surgeon at Pinnawala elephant orphanage, Dr. Chandana Rajapaksa, recently Raja was consuming a little quantity of food and had a poor digestion; as a result he was losing his weight. This happens when elephants get old. The reason is, throughout the lifetime of elephants they would get six sets of molar teeth. Each set has four molars, two on the upper jaw and two on the lower jaw. Baby elephants are born with their first set of four molar teeth all together.

These would usually fall out when calf is about two years old and the second set appears and would fall when it is six years old. The third set would lose at nine to 15 of age, fourth set would be 18 to 28 years of age and the fifth set would be lost at the age from 40 to 50. Once the last set of molars fall off or wear off, the elephant would be in 60s. The death is usually being heralded by the wearing out of the last set of teeth which the elephant would find it impossible to masticate any coarse leaves or branches. As a result the amount of food consumption and the nutrients would reduce which make the animal weaker and reduces the weight; at last the animal dies.

Raja’s death

Raja having a bath with a mahout

The tusker at Pinnawala

At the time of Raja’s death he was 70 years old. This blind tusker was a significant attraction to the visitors at the orphanage. He was not blind at his birth but due to gun shots, both his eyes were blind. He was brought to Pinnawala orphanage from Galenbidunwewa at North Central Province on March 29, 1994 at the age 40 years and was named Raja but commonly was known as the blind tusker. He stayed in a special tent; feeding alone. Even, Raja was not taken for baths together with the rest of the Pinnawala elephants but was specially taken for a bath with the assistance of two mahouts. But the blindness did not restrict the attraction of visitors; with time in Pinnawala, this elephant’s fame grew into special figure at the orphanage.

With a tourist

Another important incident happened in Raja’s life; it was when the world famous traveler, Tony Giles, who was known as the blind traveler, visited Sri Lanka in year 2007. He did not miss to visit the Pinnawala elephant orphanage to meet Raja also did not forget to snap some photos posing with it. That special incident was an extraordinary moment, since they both were blind but had great respect.

He was not just the blind elephant at the orphanage but also had a reputation of been the biggest tusker at the orphanage. I noticed that a lot of local and foreign tourists used to pose next to Raja and snap photos with the magnificent tusker. Not only that, but this elephant was featured in a lot of documentaries, films, books, calendars, stamps and greeting cards. It seems that this was more beyond what a blind animal can have in its life time.

I believe that Raja gave us an important message; throughout Raja’s life he was not trained to do any tricks or any other entertainment related activity but yet this elephant got a lot of attention from the local and international communities.

The actual reason is that the attraction of the elephant dose not really come from the tricks or what the pachyderm does but it really rests on what it really is.