Thiruvambadi Shivasundar,

 

The first I ever heard of Thiruvambadi Shivasundar was from an elephant-welfare activist named V.K. Venkitachalam, who told me that he’s “the most brandy-addicted elephant in Kerala.” A few hours later, I found Shivasundar getting a bath in the front yard of a mansion owned by the businessman Sundar Menon. Like many wealthy Keralites, Menon made his fortune in the Gulf; he’s chairman of Sun Group International, a fuel supplier in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. (In the music video, which Menon commissioned, he’s the guy with a goatee who’s often seen leading Shivasundar by the tusk.) Shivasundar was born in the wild and captured as a calf, and in 2002 Menon bought him for 3 million rupees, or around $60,000 — a steal compared with today’s prices. Menon told me that earlier this year, a “not very good elephant” sold for 13 million rupees. “It’s not that good an investment — it’s a risk,” he said. “Some elephants are very dangerous.” But not Shivasundar. Unlike some of the star elephants I write about in my article, he has never killed a human being.