Our niece Cath, who is now a chemical engineer, was about four and crazy about animals when her attention was caught by - of all things - an elephant and its handler walking down our street. ``I'm going for a ride on the elephant,'' she announced. Mary, the Nepalese maidservant, was aghast.
Scene two. Mary knocks on the door. ``Memsahib,'' she asks of Rosalind, Cath's mother, ``can Catherine go for a ride on an elephant?''
Horrified shriek. ``No!'' comes the agitated reply.
``Memsahib,'' continued Mary, in a voice that was faltering, partly out of uncontrollable mirth and partly out of admiration for the child's undeniable courage. ``Memsahib, it's too late. She's gone on the elephant.''
And she had. My Dad raced downstairs with his camera. He captured for posterity the image of an elephant about half a kilometre down the broad road, with a little figure clad in an orange sari, perched proudly atop the lumbering beast.
No comments:
Post a Comment