That White Elephant

                                          Photo courtesy: AFP

These days, one is seldom adequately shielded from news intrusion into daily life.

First, it comes through the phone, which is smarter than its user and quite efficiently manages all the apps and news sites. If you ignore them during the day, they reappear on the iPad, thanks to their secret relationship through the cloud. The next front is, of course, the good old idiot box—for those who still have access to its remote control.

Till recently, my confusion was to determine who was the idiot in this relationship between the beauty and the beholder. With the advent of the smart TV, I have somewhat reached a resolution, albeit reluctantly.

And if you manage to escape all of these, there is always the morning newspaper to compensate for the great loss.

Earlier in the week, I read that a white elephant had been found in Myanmar.

What's new in that? I thought.

Most of us have grown up knowing the metaphorical meaning of white elephant—something expensive to maintain, out of proportion to its usefulness, and difficult to dispose of. There are plenty of white elephants around the world, in both the public and private sectors. Once in a while, we even find one in our personal lives - like this blog of mine.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised to discover that this particular white elephant was not metaphorical at all.

It was actually white.

Something akin to the mythical Airavata, the white elephant that carries Indra, the king of the Hindu gods.

My curiosity sent me scrambling to the internet—or, to be more precise, to Mr Google. I came away a little more enlightened.

Unlike the mythical Airavata, these mortal white elephants are usually rather pinkish, with fair eyelashes and toenails. They are not necessarily true albinos, but their unusual colouring has made them objects of reverence for centuries in Siam and Burma, present-day Thailand and Myanmar.

They were traditionally regarded as symbols of power and prosperity and were treated as royal animals. History even tells us that Siam and Burma once fought over the possession of four white elephants.

The one that caught my attention was a seven-year-old female captured on 27 February 2015 in a forest in Myanmar's Ayeyarwaddy region. At the time, she was reportedly the ninth such elephant in captivity in Myanmar.

So, if you ever wanted to see a white elephant, you now know where to look.

But there is a darker side to the story.

While these rare animals have been revered and protected for centuries, people with albinism in parts of Africa have historically faced horrific persecution because of superstition and beliefs surrounding their bodies.

Perhaps that is the real irony.

One white creature is considered a symbol of power and prosperity; another is hunted simply for being different.

Somewhere between the two lies a rather uncomfortable reflection on us humans.