My Elephant

Every Saturday morning an elephant and her mahoot (owner, trainer, rider, boss to) came down the street in front of my house in Madurai, wearing a bell that rang to let everyone in the street know she was there.  You give her a coin, she  passes it to her mahoot, and taps you on the head in blessing.
I always ran out, saw it was the elephant (and not the peanut man, the water man, the ice cream man) ran back in and got the coin, ran out through the gate, and stood in the road in front of the house.  She takes the coin very adeptly, the tip of her trunk fully able to pick a small coin from my hand and hold it as well as any human fist, me waiting with chin down, top of head exposed, for the firm tap from the trunk on my head.
After a couple of these encounters I took to scratching her forehead, on the theory animals like being scratched and in places like that.  (She was turning into a very big dog in my thinking.) She started to anticipate my scratching by bowing her head toward me, offering her forehead.  Of course, I obliged.
Then I left Madurai for good.  On the Saturday after I'd been gone two weeks the elephant bell rang and my host and best friend, Premi, was outside.  The mahoot asked "Where's the white lady?"  "Oh, she's gone, gone for good," says Premi.  The mahoot clicks for the elephant to walk on, but she stands there, bangs on my gate with her trunk and doesn't go.  Premi says she dipped her head too, really insistently, and Premi thought she wanted some forehead scratching, but Premi is terrified of elephants so that was out.
Finally, my elephant walked on, her mahoot saying she was looking for the white lady.  And so was he.