The main attraction of the Pooram celebrations at Kombara Sreekrishna Swami Temple in Thrissur, Kerala, earlier this month was the elephant Kombara Kannan. Pooram is a temple festival and among its traditional rituals is a parade of caparisoned elephants. To say an elephant stole the show at such a gathering is stating the obvious.

But here’s the thing: Kombara Kannan is a mechanical elephant. It is made of rubber, fibre and metal. It has a motor where the elephant’s heart should be, and it is what controls the pachyderm’s movements and also the way it moves its eyes and tail. The mechanical beast comes fitted with a contraption that allows it to spray water like its flesh-and-blood counterparts.

The use of elephants at Pooram has led to many stampedes and deaths. Common headlines from earlier years read thus: “62 hurt as elephant runs amok” or “In Kerala temple fest, an inhuman parade of tortured, blind jumbos”. The Heritage Animal Task Force pegs the number of deaths caused by elephant attacks during temple processions in Kerala between 2007 and 2024 at 504. According to it, 700 plus people were injured in these attacks.

But that is only part of the story. Activists constantly draw attention to the fact that the elephants also suffer. They are exposed to noisy crowds and are burdened for hours with heavy adornments. In a 2017 report, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) claimed elephants with “open wounds, painful abscesses, cracked nails, impaired vision and suffering from lameness were paraded”. At many places, the report added, there was no access to drinking water and some elephants were made to walk and stand on a hot tar road with no shade.

Kombara Kannan is the name of the solution to this multi-pronged problem.

Since 2015, the Kombara temple has not been using elephants. The mechanical substitute is this year’s gift from Peta India and sitarist Anoushka Shankar.

The creator of Kombara Kannan is Prasanth Prakasan, who is also from Thrissur. He tells The Telegraph, “I grew up watching elephants. You wouldn’t really have to go to a zoo for that; they are everywhere in Kerala.” So when he sat down to build his first mechanical life-size elephant in 2020, purely on a whim, he would stop at the neighbouring temples to study them closely.

This was around the time when the discussion on doing away with elephants from Pooram festivals had really picked up. Prasanth says, “It took us about six weeks to build it. Videos of the elephant went viral. And then we got our first order for three elephants from Dubai.” He continues, “There are Malayali communities in Dubai and Singapore who buy our elephants for Pooram.”

Kombara Kannan, a mechanical elephant. Photo courtesy: Four He-Art Creations

In the last five years, they have built at least 47 elephants. And of these only five have gone to temples in Kerala. Prasanth has been aided in his efforts by three childhood friends — Santo, Jinesh and Robin. In this group, Prasanth is the artist, he paints life onto the machine; Robin does the fibre work, which includes the elephant’s tusks as well; Santo does the electrical work and Jinesh takes care of the mechanical parts. They can build three elephants in a month and each comes with a price tag of ₹5 lakh.

Prasanth says, “Our elephants are not replicas of any one elephant, neither do they all look the same.” Kombara Kannan is one of a kind.

The company mostly rents out its elephants to temples and schools in Kerala. They also build gorillas, reindeer and dinosaurs.

Kombara Kannan, a mechanical elephant. Photo courtesy: Four He-Art Creations

Even as this story goes to press, one of their elephants is on the way to Maharashtra, set to perform at the Rambo Circus in Pune. Their elephants have gone to circuses in Spain too. Another shipment, says Prasanth, is en route to South Africa.

Elephants are also used as props in restaurants in the US, Dubai and Malaysia, and at pubs in the UK, Canada and some parts of Europe. “They are shipped and once they reach the site, they are reassembled into shape,” says Prasanth.

Kerala’s temple elephants have always had their heroes. There was Guruvayur Kesavan, Thechikottukavu Ramachandran and Guruvayur Padmanabhan who was bestowed the honorific of gajaratnam. And now Kombara Kannan joins the list.

It might have a motor for a heart but the intent behind is in the right place.