Chitapilly Rajashekaran emerging from Musthi

Old customs clearly die hard
In Kerala
The inhumanity is slow and firm
Katti Adikkai is a ritual
With a 48 to 72 hours term
Its all about the way one treats the elephants
Those that enter musthi and beyond
Its when they feel the urge to mate
Though chained up trying to relate
To inner depths frustrated by
The shackles imposed on them
They become aggressive as testosterone
Floods through them
Through their flesh and bone
And so they are left without water or feed
To weaken them which it does indeed
Submissive not really frustrated so
And the chains are tightened with no where to go

The worst intentions of man un kind
Who is I can say unduly blind
To the elephants and the way they are
When the final ritual appears to scar
7to 8 drunken men armed with bull hooks
And they know when
Beat the animal mercilessly
Until its spirit is broken it be
Lost to the world less it forget
Who is the master it must be set
Beaten and scarred and painfully so
So the heart of the beast does really know

In this case the poor elephant died
Imagine the agony the people lied
They took its body to another state
Hoping to get away but fate
Was there to see what they had done
Criminality in the sun
Spitefulness and a malignancy
Persecution and severity

Ill conditioned wilful pain
Beating this soul again and again
Hard hearted and ruthless
Blood thirsty sods
Clearly maligned without their gods
They slaughtered this young bull
Their embittered state
Flushed with anger and at a rate
And they must pay for the murder here
They let off steam by creating fear

No more than savages they became
Tanked up on toddy that cast a flame
Of insanity on these ugly brutes
Who roughed up an innocent to its roots
Who failed to imagine its darkly pain
As it was beaten again and again
The nausea of this threatens to be
A revulsion against true humanity
Lets remember the elephant cast in pain
Sent to his maker by those insane
Intoxicated by the toddy they drank
Tanked up and ready to break the bank