Kerala Bids Emotional Farewell To Tusker Pallattu Brahmadathan

Pallattu Brahmadathan, Kerala's famous and gigantic temple elephant, who had walked at the heart of Kerala's festival life for more than two decades was laid to rest near the Pallattu tharavadu near Pala, with funeral rites performed just as they would be for a member of a Hindu family. He was 46. 

Ever since the news broke the entire village rushed to the spot and visuals reveal men women and children all wailing inconsolably

Since Sunday night, a long line of mourners had been winding its way to the family home. Many had travelled from neighbouring districts. Some carried flowers, some wept openly, and many simply stood in silence before the still form of the elephant they had watched at festival after festival. 

Brahmadathan was killed by lightning on Sunday evening. He had been tethered near the house of his owner, Advocate Rajesh Pallattu, president of the Kerala Festival Coordination Committee.

He was in his post-musth rest, a period of quiet recovery that had kept him off the festival circuit for weeks. Heavy rain swept the area around 6 pm, and the bolt hit the shed where he stood. A veterinarian who reached the spot confirmed his death. The post-mortem was completed on Monday before the funeral.

For the people of the Pallattu household and the village around it, he was never just an elephant. They called him "Pallattile Kutty", the child of the Pallattu home. In a world where festival elephants are often remembered for the trouble they caused, Brahmadathan was remembered for never causing any. Not once, in temple processions or out of them, did he turn violent

From Arunachal's Forests To Thrissur's Grandest Night

His journey began around 1999, when he was brought from the forests of Arunachal Pradesh, where he had worked hauling timber. His first owners were from Puthuppally, and for years he was known as Puthuppally Brahmadathan. He took the Pallattu name about 16 years ago, when Rajesh Pallattu's family took him in.

At over ten feet tall, he turned heads wherever he went. Elephant connoisseurs said he had everything the old texts on elephant lore prize: the forehead, the tusks, the bearing. His proudest moment came at the 2015 Thrissur Pooram, when he carried the thidambu of Paramekkavu Devi during the night procession. He was a familiar face at Vaikom Temple Festival and the Ettumanoor Festival, and his admirers called him 'Gajakausthubham', the jewel among elephants.

A Bond That Outlived A Man

Those who knew him best speak first of Damodaran Nair, his first mahout for nearly 25 years. When Brahmadathan arrived in Kerala, the commands of his new home meant nothing to him. So the mahout went to him instead, picking up Hindi so the two could understand each other, before Malayalam slowly replaced it. 
According to those who worked with the pair, that trust once saved the mahout's life. At a temple festival in Vadanappally, another elephant ran amok and Damodaran Nair was knocked to the ground. It was Brahmadathan who stepped between them and drove the attacker away.

When Damodaran Nair died in June 2021, his family brought Brahmadathan to see him one last time. The tusker reached out to the body, then lifted his trunk high and held it there. The video moved people far beyond Kerala.

Five years later, the roles were reversed. This time, it was Brahmadathan who lay still, and the people he had known who came to say goodbye.

"Like A Little Lamb"

Among those grieving was actress and television anchor Meenakshi, who had known the tusker as a child through her family's friendship with the Pallattu family. In an emotional note on Facebook, she said the news hit her "like a bolt of lightning". She recalled her first visit to the tharavadu, when she found Brahmadathan standing untethered in a corner of the courtyard. When she asked why he wasn't tied, the family told her he was one of them. She was nervous until Manoj Pallattu took her hand and led her to him. Before long, she was touching his tusks, and the giant was trailing her around the sprawling compound "like a little lamb". She wrote that the experience still makes her doubt the common belief that elephants are only ever broken, never truly tamed. Signing off, she bid him farewell "with all my heart".