Michael Crichton was the first novelist I devoured. I spent days reading passages from Jurassic Park and Congo . It wasn’t just the miffed T-Rex or maniacal gorilla that fired my imagination. In retrospect, I’d like to think I was processing matters more profound. Crichton’s tales of bestial mayhem were unmistakably cautionary in tone. When humans interact with animals and their habitat, a thin line separates intervention and invasion. Man invariably errs. It doesn’t matter on which side. Tania James certainly strings a better sentence than Crichton, but I found it hard to shake off my nostalgia for rampaging dinosaurs when reading her novel, The Tusk that did the Damage . Familiarity didn’t limit itself to the trail of destruction wrought by James’ homicidal elephant — the Gravedigger. The hunter-hunted juxtaposition, the man-nature dichotomy, the ethicality of conservation — these themes were reminiscent of those conscionable bestsellers.

Like much of Crichton’s oeuvre, Tusk is a well-paced page-turner for most part. Set in Kavanar wildlife park, it constantly shifts its attention from the Gravedigger to Manu Shivaram, the brother of a dauntless poacher, to Emma Lewis, a 20-something documentary filmmaker who has travelled from the US to Kerala in search of her first break. In the chapters dedicated to the elephant and Manu we find much of the novel’s substance and the graph of its central conflict. The Gravedigger sees his parents brutally killed by poachers and that violence is often revisited by his elephantine memory. A cycle of spiralling revenge is set in motion when the Gravedigger kills Manu’s cousin. The moral dimensions of this death are only confused when one considers that Manu’s brother Jayan had butchered 56 elephants for the ivory of their tusks.

In the forest that James creates for her readers, the elephant is an equal object of fear and veneration. The Gravedigger, who is referred to as the Master Executioner, was also once worshipped as the great Sooryamangalam Sreeganeshan. The narrative of profiteering, however, fast overshadows these arguably everyday sentiments. Kingpin of the ivory trade, Communist Chacko ironically cites scripture to justify his corruption — “And God said unto Man, Be fruitful and multiply and have dominion... over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” The co-existence of man and beast is threatened not so much by marauding tuskers, but by huntsmen who use their rifles to stamp an unlawful dominance. Though James’ portrayal of Jayan is insightful, it’s her quiet critique of poaching that is incontrovertibly damning.

While much of Tusk moves forward with a steady urgency, the book isn’t entirely free of potholes. Emma Lewis’ narration begins with purpose and promise. Her American nationality and documentary filmmaker credentials both place her on the periphery. She finds herself catapulted into ethically-questionable terrain when an encounter with her film’s subject, veterinarian Ravi Varma, turns sexual. Her affair, though, is somewhat laboured and predictable. Her discovery of unseemly Kavanar secrets and the subsequent unravelling of Varma are both rendered dreary in her retelling. For most part, Emma inhabits a ponderous coming-of-age drama that is at clear odds with James’ otherwise spry second novel.

More than Emma, it is possibly the short mention of her childhood parakeet that remains memorable. Wondering if Daisy was somehow suffering depression, a 15-year-old Emma asks, “Couldn’t her mind be capable of emotions beyond our own, like Wing Boredom or Flock Joy or Plummet Buzz, things we couldn’t feel and, therefore, could never understand?”

James, author of Atlas of Unknowns and Aerogrammes , quite obviously shares the concerns of her character. Inadvertently admitting that any human comprehension of animals can at best be limited, she avoids the indulgent tropes of anthropomorphism and uses a third-person voice to tell the story of the Gravedigger. The mammoth’s elaborate ritual of burying his victims does call for a human-centric empathy, but at no point does James claim to invoke some infinite reservoir of pachydermal knowledge. According to essayist Wendy Doniger, “No one can prove that someone else does not know how animals feel.” James exploits the uncertainty of these known unknowns with masterful acumen. Dismissing the foresight of an elephant, Manu tells his brother, “It’s an animal. I doubt it has a strategy.” A circumspect Jayan is quick to retort, “Then you don’t know a thing about elephants.”

Elephants have been protagonists of many a myth. Rather than rehash these tales of yore, James chooses to invent new parables that see sages clip the wings of mammoths and boys transform into tuskers. Though original and convincing, I kept thinking of a more timeworn story while reading Tusk , that of the blind men and the elephant. Saints and poets like the Buddha, Ramakrishna and Rumi are all said to have used this allegory to demonstrate the perils of sectarianism and dogma. But religious instruction apart, the fable can also perhaps be of use in literary criticism. Depending on the character you follow, Tusk can either be a compelling cliff-hanger or a thoughtful account of life in the wild. Sadly, it can also be a bore at times. Emma, the incautious filmmaker, only succeeds in distracting one from the giant elephant in the room.

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