The Tusk That Did the Damage (Vintage Contemporaries)

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Loss is a constant in the novel. Discuss the various examples of loss featured in the book. How do the characters react to loss? What overall message do you think the book offers on the subjects of grieving, coping, and loss?

Sooryamangalam Sreeganeshan is a calf when we meet him, caught in the crossfire of a brutal mass elephant shooting. He watches his mother get shot in the mouth, and poachers take a saw to the bridge of an old tusker’s trunk, tipping the ivory “from the root, easy as a fruit”. Later, after a bad incident with an elephant handler, he turns rogue: terrified villagers call him the Gravedigger for the tender way in which he covers his victims’ bodies with leaves.Everyone in Sitamala thinks they know my brother’s story. On the contrary. They may know the tune, but I would bet a half bag of pepper the words are all wrong. I blame his wife’s people for spreading slander, all those perfidious huge-hipped sisters, not a one half as lovely as Leela. The last piece of the narrative puzzle is Emma, who is in Kerala with Teddy to shoot a documentary in a wildlife park. They film an elephant calf being rescued from a ditch and reunited with its mother, and also interview Samina Hakim, Divisional Range Officer for the Forest Department. In the process they stumble upon what looks like a conspiracy: the Forest Department has been authorizing Shankar Timber Company to fell trees, putting them in conflict with villagers who rely on the forest for their livelihood. What else might this government body be willing to turn a blind eye to?

There are parts which try to portray romance, friendship, mental health, assault, alcoholism, deaths and grief. I would say the writing is decent at these parts. I decided to really take my time with this one because I didn't want the fact that I've recently encountered a cluster of underwhelming books to be the reason that I was finding this one to be underwhelming as well. After finishing it I have no doubt that it was just this book. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-07-07 13:01:07 Boxid IA40170219 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Chapters rotate between the perspectives of three main characters: the elephant — that’d be the Gravedigger — a young filmmaker named Emma and a teen named Manu, the most prominent and complex of these narrators. Now the solo bull could be a very rude intruder. If one of those fellows were to pay us a visit, we were to leap out of the palli and race home. Do not be fooled by the lumps you see at the zoo—the elephant can run! Ask Raghu’s father, who was only twenty years old when a bull elephant discovered him dozing in the palli. Synthetic Achan survived because he knew the elephant has weak eyes. Run straight and you will be trampled. Cut a zig-zag and you may confuse it.

This is a novel that takes place in present day India. Told from three perspectives - that of a film crew, poachers, and an elephant known as The Gravedigger - the reader is privy to the problems and issues facing the survival of elephants.

Emma is working on a documentary set in a Kerala wildlife park with her best friend. Her work leads her to witness the porous boundary between conservation and corruption, until eventually she finds herself caught up in her own betrayal. This second novel may be [James’] true coming out…Ivory trading, poaching, an escaped elephant, a risky love affair, all set in rural South India and “blend[ing] the mythical and the political”—this novel seems to have it all.” He was speechless so long I thought he hadn’t heard me. “I know the elephant,” he said finally. “Everyone does.” Through the exchanges of the many characters, storytelling itself becomes a subject of the novel. Who in the novel would you consider a storyteller? What are some of the legends, myths, and folktales presented in the book? Do these stories contain any truth? Why do the characters share stories with one another?Although it has much insight and nuance to add to the [ivory] discourse, James’s inventive new novel has a far broader vision, one that will likely outlast this iteration of the ivory conversation. With remarkable brevity, The Tusk That Did the Damage delves into India’s mythic, troubled history with elephants — a strange marriage of reverence and violence — and asks readers to imagine the incomprehensible, to experience the world, for a few moments, through the eyes of a killer elephant called the Gravedigger.”

Q: I’m curious about the title, THE TUSK THAT DID THE DAMAGE. It’s drawn from a myth told at the crux of the novel. Where did that myth come from? Did you write it with the rest of the novel in mind, or was it the germ from which the rest of the novel came?He nodded, absorbed in thought. There was the distant, drifting silence again, the indecipherable knit of his brow.