They shackle their gods in Kerala

Those massive grand old pachyderms
Land animals that grow
Upwards to the sky itself
Yet they are shackled low
We know how to torture
In actuality
We make them stand for hours on end
Is it their priority
If it’s our festivity
And we make them carry loads
Of 400 kilos and be
Standing in the hot sun
Ganesh what would he say
He would say they don’t deserve
It
Not any single day

Massive crowds and beating drums
It’s scary you can know
That behind the glitz and glamour
And the so called great big show
There is torture there is ugliness
And stress beyond belief
We discriminate against them
And truly give them grief

There is no compensation
They get no rest all day
They really have their greatness
But with their eminence they pay
They are stupendous creatures
With memories so long
But for some reason the human being
Thinks they do not belong

In the favoured kingdom
Where freedom comes to all
With their life it’s conformity
Chained up to a wall
They just must acclimatise
And get on with it or they
Are beaten or their shackles tightened
Causing them dismay

And with so much repetition
The same thing every day
Boredom comes to all of them
The monotony they say
It’s a tenancy of torture
In a semester of sin
The antiquity of anguish
With their patience wearing thin

The suddenness of agony
Fugitives they be
Locked up in the dullest place
For all eternity
Their power is overwhelming
The violence though does play
Into their destruction
By the order of each day

The bull hooks all kept secret
Used in the darkly place
Causing awful injuries
You see it in their face
Tears they are often crying
What else can one do
Alone and shackled Brutally
In pain the whole night through

Rubbing tears the leg to shreds
And ulcerates at will
A festering of the accursed
And the blood and pus will spill
In silence maggots creep and crawl
That is what they do
Listen as the elephant cries
It’s shrill and its piercing through

They have great power to reason
And they are cognitive as well
Their thought processes suffering
Driving them through hell
Through vast seas of people
Changing drumming souls
That frighten with their massive numbers
And their changing goals

The great gods must be thinking
Why Ganesh is treated so
A negligent proposal
When he is on show
The drama of each moment
The tragedy of time
The tenacity to carry on
And suffer as they climb

Up the hills and down the hills
Wanting to drop and die
The incompetence of mahouts
Who inadequately rely
On the fitness and the powerhouse
That is within them all
Not seeing the danger signals
Of how quick they are to fall