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[00:00:00] The Phajaan
[00:00:01] Chapter Two
[00:00:02] Pick up the paintbrush. Pick up the paintbrush. Said the man who I would come to know as Mr. Pokey. Mr. Pokey looked like he was always standing under a black cloud. Even with the lights in my tent on full blast, his face always looked like it was in a shadow. He was a middle-aged man. With stringy hair that clung to his face and peeked out from under his soiled looking pa kao mah-- that's what you'd call the scarf wrapped around his head in Thai.-- Don't ask me how I know that. His eyes looked like evil slits under his bushy eyebrows. He had a big crooked nose with long black hairs is hanging out of it.
[00:00:37] His thin lips were always chapped and when he opened his mouth, It didn't matter how far away from him I was; his breath was mystifyingly rancid. He was always carrying that bull hook I hate with a big shiny metal tip that really hurt when he poked me with it. And sometimes he'd have what I now know is called an elephant gun slung over his shoulder. I never smelled anything like Mr.
[00:01:01] Pokey before. He smelled like a mixture of sweat. Alcohol. And I know this sounds strange, but desperation. Mr pokey stunk. That's for sure.
[00:01:12] Like at that moment, he was behind me, but I could smell him as if he were right in front of me. Every time I see him, I instinctively want to run, but I don't, I can't. It's not just that elephants can't technically run--
[00:01:25] we can't-- but aside from that, there's a little red rope around my ankle that's tied to a big pole holding up my little tent. If it weren't for that rope, and the thought of Mr. Pokey putting me back in the box, I'd have left long ago. I try not to look at the box ever. I still wasn't able to think straight. He had just released me from the box earlier that day. And I was hungry and weak and everything hurt. And give me a break.
[00:01:51] We don't even have that word in elephant paintbrush. By the way, who is this? Rajah, he keeps talking about, my name is Carlos. I just stood there, looking at him as he repeated pick up the paint brush. And then he poked me with that bull hook as he looked over at the box, which was sitting there in my tent with the door open. I now know why he kept it there in my tent. So I could always see it. So I knew I was just one mistake away from going back in there. I wondered to myself, what's a paintbrush?.
[00:02:21] I knew someone like Mr.
[00:02:22] Pokey would never speak elephant. So I didn't even try to ask the question. I'm a pretty smart elephant. So. I could understand most of what he was saying, but I had no idea what a paint brush was. I wondered if he spoke Korean. I can speak Korean pretty well. My mom taught me to do it. She told
[00:02:39] me stories in Korean sometimes I loved it when she did that. It would have been a lot easier had he stood in front of me and pointed at the brush, but now I know he was getting me used to getting poked. Every time he gave me an order, he'd poke me in a different spot and they all hurt..
[00:02:54] So I picked up a bag of peanuts that was lying on the floor next to me, but he poked me again. I stood up on my hind legs and stuck my belly out. Like my mom had taught me to do thinking that would impress him. I really miss my mom. I thought about how she would wrap her trunk around me when I was scared. Every time I close my eyes to sleep.
[00:03:13] I whisper a silent prayer that the same mysterious force that had taken me from my mother to this place would hear my plea and take me back to her. There was always a special moment before I opened my eyes. When I felt a glimmer of hope that maybe this time. I still believe in miracles, but it was getting harder every day.
[00:03:33] I remember hearing some of the grownup elephants in my herd make a deep, powerful sound that seemed to roll like thunder across the jungle. They called it a rumble call. It was a low vibrating sound so deep that sometimes I felt it in my feet more than I heard it with my ears.
[00:03:48] My mom Told me it was how we would talk to each other over long distances if I ever got lost, because it's a way to say I'm here or come find me.
[00:03:55] But I was still too little to make the rumble call. When I tried, it came out as the soft murmur and I knew my call wasn't loud enough to reach the ears of my herd, to tell them where I was or how much I missed them.
[00:04:08] Mr pokey wasn't impressed with me standing up and poked me again. This time I screamed really loud, so he'd know he was hurting me. Pick up the paintbrush. I had to figure out how to make him stop poking me. I picked up one of those colored sticks. He didn't poke me. I picked up another one. He didn't poke me. I remember thinking, "So that's what a paint brush is!" Because I'm a pretty smart elephant, and since I now knew what paintbrushes were (even though that's not a word in elephant), when Mr. Pokey told me to pick up the yellow paint brush, I knew what he meant and did it.
[00:04:43] Sometimes when I was pretending to be with my mom, as I tried to fall asleep. I 'd remember how she would totally freak out if a bumblebee with its yellow and black stripes ever buzzed near her. For some reason, all elephants were super scared of bumblebees. I don't know why. So, yeah. I knew the color yellow.
[00:05:03] Then he told me to pick up the red paint brush. I did it.
[00:05:07] He couldn't believe. I knew the colors. Even though it couldn't have been any easier. I mean, like I said, I knew what yellow was and red too. Sometimes red ladybugs would land right on top of my mom's head.
[00:05:18] Elephants aren't scared of lady bugs. So she'd just stand there when they'd land on her and I'd laugh because the sight of it was so ridiculous. A little teeny, tiny red lady bug on her big, gigantic head.
[00:05:29]
[00:05:30] Yes. I had seen yellow and red before. When Mr. Pokey first brought me into what I now know as my tent, my eyes hurt at all the red and yellow. It's red and yellow everywhere here. But this red and yellow was different. It wasn't like the lady bugs or the bumblebees. It was fake. I can't explain it, but even though I had seen red and yellow before, it just didn't feel right. You know,
[00:05:57] The only brush left at that time was what I now know is blue.
[00:06:01] So when he told me to pick up the blue brush,
[00:06:05] Eventually I learned what all the different colors were called. Even the really hard ones like fuchsia and magenta. I learned how to dip the paintbrush and the little jars of what I now know are called paint. The whole time being told what to do by Mr. Pokey, who would as his name suggests stand behind me and poke me with that bull hook. Signaling what brush to use, what color to dip it in. And where to move the brush. Every move I made was his doing not mine. I'd smeared the paint all over the canvas, according to how Mr.
[00:06:34] Pokey signaled how to do it. It hurt a lot at first and sometimes I'd cry, but I'm used to it now. When I was all done, humans would call it a painting.
[00:06:44] It wasn't long after that Mr. Pokey came into my tent with a strange look on his face. Which is saying a lot because his face is pretty strange to begin with. And said something that would change my life forever. A shiver ran down my spine as he spoke.
[00:07:01] Raja.
[00:07:02] You're ready.
