THE ELEPHANTS OF ABRAHAH, “WHITE ELEPHANT” AND BATU GAJAH

There was a Koranic tale of the army of Abraha who came with elephants to attack Mecca. Then God sent birds attacking them with fiery stones from Hell, sending them to retreat and Mecca was saved.

The West saw this and said hey, aerial attack demolished the ground offensive! And worked on inventing planes and aerial firepower.

While the rest, are stuck reading and romanticizing the Koranic verse which is a ‘petunjuk’. Like Bruce Lee said when he scolded his student for looking at only his fingers pointing instead of the moon. “If you just look at my fingers you will miss all the heavenly glory.

And one wonders why it is as it is in the Middle East.

In the 1999 film ‘Anna and the King’ (which involved a lot of elephants!) the ending shows that the Thai King Mongkut was surrounded by his traitor in a sacred place and knew that the savior ‘White Elephant’ is just a myth. Yet through the play of tricks, they managed to use it against the odds and shoo the surrounding force away, who believed that it was the ‘White Elephant’.

Such a magnificent tale of bravery and the intelligence of a King is shot in, by coincidence or not, Batu Gajah. A foreigner made use of it to sculpt an epic tale of such significance, yet the locals like the late Yasmin Ahmad and Mamat Khalid had to parodise and be poetic to narrate the backward thinking of those who had been sitting on too many ‘white elephants’ (the negative one).

On a more positive note (and related) today it is for Lord Ganesh and Goddess Lakshmi. Happy Deepavali to all celebrating.