evidence: Sayyad Ali is the custodian of an ancient friendship. He guards what is perhaps the oldest animal-man relationship in the world—that of the elephant with its mahout. This is a bond that cannot be understood easily by anyone else, for it involves a cruelty so extreme that it can only be redeemed with a love of equal if not greater intensity. To watch the relationship is to observe the terror of the ankush at one moment, and the endearing coddling of a baby the very next.