Elephant in The Room - III

At times, it all sounds like a fairy tale; sometimes like a psychological thriller—the Hitchcock kind. Drama and suspense unfolds every day as elephants are paraded on streets and in religious institutions, thanks to their stardom and fanfare. With stardom comes ego clashes, petty fights and controversies, they say. The lives of these gentle giants in captivity, which started as draught animals, then as war machines and later as royal adornments, have changed manifold in the last decade and half. From the days of reverence and admiration for elephants, which arose from close associations with them, personification of these beings have gone to a totally different level today as exemplified by the aforementioned news headlines