Supratika

Flash fiction about a boy and an elephant

If I were suddenly rich, then I could buy an elephant, and a place for the elephant to stay, and an elephant keeper - a mahout - and a veterinarian specializing in the ailments and the psychological vulnerabilities of elephants, and an annual subscription for a membership in the National Elephant Owners' Club, and a whisk which is a way to signal to the elephant where to go and whether to go left or right or stay marching in place. Then I could consider a name, but nothing too Disneyfied or commercial or too obvious like Jumbo and certainly not Dumbo, something dignified and majestic and fitting for a majestic beast like an elephant but not too anthropomorphized like Alexander, maybe something more fitting to the whole mythic and world-bearing nature of an elephant like Airavata, Pundarika, Vamana, Kumunda, Anjana, Pushpadanta, Sarvabhauma, or Supratika. Supratika is good, easy to roll off the tongue and King Baghadatta rode on Supratika to annihilate all the evils of the world or something, and I need something like that because I have a lot of evils in my world, namely: homework, God, zits, genocide erupting halfway across the world, gut-churning dread, my crippling addictions both to cough medicine or whatever medicine I can find in my parents’ bathroom and also hentai porn available on the medium of one-hand-held cellphone, and most imminently and urgently that tremendous dickwad Malik. To conquer all those problems I'm gonna need a big elephant, a world-bearing one for sure. Malik would be the easiest prob to deal with elephant-wise, maybe, ‘cause elephants can't cure crippling addictions, or do your homework for you, and pachyderms can't compel God to make the universe less shitty or stop his people from slaughtering his other people and bulldozing their babies. Only God can do that, could stop that, and He just doesn't want to. So Supratika can take care of Malik for me and maybe all the other evils of the world will just have to take care of themselves, at least until God gets His ideas straight and fixes all the shit that He's allowed to spill out and sully his nice clean Edenic Eden garden of Eden of a world. Until that occurs, which is probably never because God has been stuck in his ways for oh I guess about six thousand years now, then the only problem I suppose I can really solve is Malik and all the bad things he does to me, starting with the stealing of loose change and then working their way up to the no no no best not to say. So here we go: I’m unexpectedly rich and Supratika, fresh from his psychoanalytical session at the elephant doctor and feeling strong and good, is led out of the clinic and into my new big rich house by Deepak the mahout. I tell Deepak to pass me the guidance whisk and take the night off. He tries to give me the ankusha, the pointy goad, but I say No, Deepak, Supratika is my elephant, my friend, and he doesn't need prodding with a goad (electric or analog) to do my bidding, he loves me as he did King Baghadatta way back when, and he just wants to help, all he needs is guidance with a wave of the whisk, go right go left. And I mount up into the properly cushioned saddle which mustn't be on the neck to prevent vertebral compression, see the study in Kongsawasdi et al., and then we're off to find Malik. He's probably hanging out in the waste ground behind the old tire changing place, that vacant lot full of cracked glass and old burned tires so I need to be specially attentive when I guide my elephant Supratika towards him to prevent cut footsoles. Maybe it would be better to lay in wait, me and Supratika, lurking by the corner, waiting for Malik to show, and then I'd say Hey, Ruffian! – a new word that I picked up from my latest homework about neglected kids in the Victorian age novel of Dickens called Oliver Twist, actually kinda cool once you get over the old-timey words and there's even a musical where they all prance around and pretend they're not being used or poked to it by grownups so it's kind of fake and gross but still quite fun if you ignore the cheese and the no no best not to say. So I say, Hey Ruffian, your time has come, and Malik starts to run off down the street, but Supratika is too fast for him and we catch up and it's like stamp stomp stamp and now Malik is a red pulp like ground beef with eyes staring all surprised and offended out of the crimson mush and I laugh and Supratika trumpets his trumpeting triumph.

So that's what I'd do if I were suddenly rich.

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NOTE - A shortish fiction (800 words) stemming from a prompt at Fictionistas:

Write a story including a ruffian and an elephant with a focus on the sentence starter “If I were suddenly rich…”

I see it as a school essay with handdrawn illustrations. but it might also be a monologue (to a school counselor?) or something else.

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