Black and grey realism and dotwork elephant tattoo with a lotus mandala above and sunflowers on the upper arm.

Elephant with lotus mandala on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey elephant head faces forward, with a lotus mandala above its head and sunflowers on either side. Fine dotwork and soft shading give the forehead, trunk and ears their texture, and mandala patterns decorate the forehead and trunk. The design fills the upper arm and shoulder, with leaves and stems framing the lower half of the piece.

Realism Dotwork Botanical Upper arm Shoulder Elephant Lotus Mandala Sunflower Leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The mahout's boy had been told three times to leave the lotus pond alone, yet there he knelt at its edge with a stick in his fist while the old bull Sultan waded in up to his shoulders. The rains had not come for two seasons. The pond was a brown eye with a green rim, and Sultan lowered his great grey head into it anyway, lifting lotus after lotus on the curl of his trunk and laying them on the cracked bank as carefully as a priest setting out offerings.

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Amma Lalitha watched from the temple steps, shelling peanuts into her lap. 'He is choosing,' she said, when the boy came running up with his shirt soaked to the ribs. 'Those rings on his trunk are the temple's tally. Each one is a festival he walked through without complaint. He will not give the flowers to just anyone.' She pointed with her chin toward the far field, where the sunflowers hung their heads like tired men at a funeral. 'Take the bank flowers there. Let him show you.'

So the boy carried a bundle of stems across the dust, and Sultan followed, slow and patient, his ears fanning the heat off the boy's neck. At the edge of the field the elephant pressed his brow against the nearest sunflower. The heavy head bent, the stalk gave, and a shower of black seed pattered into the furrows like the first sharp rain. The boy stood very still. Behind him the lotus stems, pushed into the wet earth, began to open in the dust.

That night Amma Lalitha pressed one seed into his palm. 'Plant it where the water runs,' she said. Later, by the light of a smoking lamp, the boy counted the rings on the bull's trunk from the stable door, and found that his finger could not yet reach the last one.