Mysore/Mysuru: Ahead of the all-important Jumboo Savari, marking the culmination of the ten-day Dasara festival, the Dasara elephants were specially decorated for the grand event,with an art teacher from Hunsur drawing attractive pictures on their trunks and other parts of the body as a ‘Make-up.’

Nagalingappa Chandrappa Badiger, a resident of Hunsur and an art teacher at Panchavalli Government School in Periyapatna taluk, has earned the attraction of everyone by decorating the elephants in his own style with colourful drawings. 

Nagalingappa, who began his work at 5 am early on Monday morning with the make-up of Howdah-carrying elephant Abhimanyu, completed his task of making-up all the other four dasara elephants by 1.30 pm, an hour ahead of the start of Jumboo Savari.

Nagalingappa drew the picture of Shankha (Conch) on the ears of elephants, ‘Gandaberunda,’ flowers and leaves on the trunk, Parrot and leaf on the backside of Ivory, flowers, leaves, flower buds on the face, a bird, leaf, flowers on the legs, bird and leaf on the back of the elephants, depending upon the size of their tail, leaf all around their eyes, a Naama on their forehead etc., as part of an effort to enhance their beauty and majesty.

Nagalingappa told Star of Mysore that the paints used for drawing pictures of the elephants do no harm to the skin or body of the elephants. Pointing out that water paint is widely used for the drawings, he said that the nails of all the Dasara elephants, including the Howdah-carrying elephant Abhimanyu, were painted in Gold colour and the white skin marks on trunks were covered with a black painting. Noting that the pictures were so drawn so as to  give a 2-D effect, he said white, red, green, yellow and orange colours were widely used in the paintings.

Continuing, he said that he started his job at 5 am and the task of making-up all the five Dasara elephants ended by 1.30 pm, an hour ahead of the start of the procession. 

Stating that he underwent COVID test before taking up the job, Nagalingappa said that he painted the elephants by wearing face-mask all throughtout. He further said that he was assigned the job a week after the Dasara elephants were brought to Mysuru from their camps and he has been doing the job for 16 years.

Nagalingappa, a native of Kurtkoti in Gadag district, holds a Diploma in Painting and he learnt the art of painting on elephants when he earlier served as a teacher at Vyjayanthi School of Arts in city. He is helped in his job by his brother Narayana Badiger, friends Madhusudhan and Manish.