The Four-Winged Elephant by Nikita Sharma

The rising sun was greeted by a triumphant roar. His trunk turned upwards, stretching in salutation to the new day, the Four-Winged Elephant leapt off the ground.

The Four-Winged Elephant pushed hard at the ground, heaved his huge wings and took flight. It was a sight to behold, a sight which was still familiar to the people of the Oriya village where the Four-Winged Elephant lived. He would fly across the morning sky and given the size of the massive mammal, it was as unreal as could be. For the skies are usually thought to be the domain of hollow boned birds which would feed on berries and such and not mammoth creatures who would engulf pumpkins whole.

Like a ripening mango the sun would change colour as it came out and that’s what the Four-Winged Elephant thought the sun to be, a mango. A mango, hung not from the branches of a tree but from the clouds, which moved with the wind and time. The Four-Winged Elephant would soar up in the sky, his trunk stretched out as if to roll up the mango-like-sun with his trunk and into his mouth the moment it seemed within his grasp.

Alas, the sun was too far out of the Four-Winged Elephant’s reach. The elusive promise of a succulent sweet mango which the sun presented would always make him impatient and hungry. It was the poor people of Oriya who ended up paying for the sun’s treachery. He would then wreak havoc on the food grown by the local folk. He would plunder the sugarcane fields, rolling them in bundles with his trunk and taking them whole in his bottomless mouth. He would uproot trees with his massive tusks and gorge on its foliage. Or he would simply pluck the plantains off the trees and pop whole bunches into his mouth.

His hunger satiated, he would launch off to yet another aerial expedition. His gleaming smooth white body would glisten in the sunlight like an opalescent pearl. When the Four-Winged Elephant was air borne, he looked like a flying Rosogulla, a sweet specialty of the village, plump and white.

But when it came to landings, the Four-Winged Elephant preferred to land on the rooftops of the village houses. These houses that were built of simple mud bricks and wood would collapse within moments under his immense weight. Their structure falling apart just like the sugar syrup oozing out of the Rosogulla. And the residents of the house were mostly lucky enough to get out in the nick of time.