Jumbo romance

There is an interesting news in India recently, about a huge tusker, a wild elephant, straight out of the jungle, raided a circus, freed a female elephant and eloped with her to make a cozy home by a pond in Raniganj, West Bengal.

It is such a familiar name of the city that many of Mr. Awaara's relatives living there. When he was little, circus always came to their town. He was once picked up by an elephant using its trunk, and then put him back on the ground. I somehow can picture the scene of a small boy was taken in elephant's big trunk. I still remember when we told this story to Jing and Liang, they were so surprised.

For me, circus was always the scene in the TV. That was changed in our last year's visit to Fort Worth, Texas. We saw many people were waiting in line to entering a stadium for a circus show, and I was very interested. Mr. Awaara was surprised that I had never been to one, so we bought the ticket. Yiling said maybe that was affordable (12 dollars each) because it was in Texas. Similar show in Boston cost a lot more. So I now know most of the circus programs are similar, and elephant are there important programs. At the end, all elephants, six of them, came to the center, and younger kids could go to the center and take an elephant ride.

Back to the romance story, there was a twist later. There were four female elephants were following the bull to run away, although it seems that he was only interested in the one called Savitri. Then the circus people managed to bring back three of them. Later, one of the female who were brought back started fasting, showing her grieve for leaving of her friend. The story sounds totally like a bollywood masala script, as the Times of Indian says.

It is the mating season for this male elephant, and he might desperately be looking for a mate. Savitri determined to leave with him. This might be called the love at first sight. This reminds me of Qiong. She told me once after she went for a matchmaking meeting. "I haven't experienced 'love at first sight', but I really know what is 'no love at first sight'".

An interesting study on fast dating revealed that men look for beauty, while women go for wealth when it comes to assessing future partners. This study of course doesn't apply to most of the couples in real life. Because the rising of the match making business, when "speed dating" becomes a way to look for a life long partner, it is possible to find out what is the factors people taking into account when they choose their partners. The news says women are more 'choosier' than men.

What do elephants look for when they are looking for partners? Are they sharing some human being's desire for beauty? There is no money in their society, then they should mutually looking for beauty?