Med Tiger was still sniffling and snuffling. Om had spread a rumour that Mum Lioness had her hands full with four sick cubs, Spotty having gotten the cold from Stripes, and Omcub from Spotty, and Arunacub and Tirucub from Omcub. "Mum Lioness felt all the cubses' foreheads and found them to be very hot," he was overheard telling Fluffaswami. There did not, however, seem to be any truth to this. It was simply a case of Omcub trying to copy his baby brother's habit of rumour spreading.

The cubses instead were friskier than ever.

"I know how we can get Unca Stripes perked up!" said Arunacub. "We can take him for a walk."

They bounded in to the cave where Unca Stripes was lying under a blanket, looking reasonably restored by the very spicy rasam. He was taking sips of his herbal drink. Omcub daringly dipped in one claw and sucked it. Right away he let out a huge yelp and had to have a big bowl of yogurt and maple syrup to recover. The big yelp seemed to help get the tiger out from under the blanket. And as soon as Med T smelled maple syrup, he told Mum Lioness that it had long been recognized as a back-up cure for colds, so she had to fix him a big bowl too.

After the bowls had been licked clean, the all set out on the walk.

"Where shall we go?" asked Med Tiger.

"We're going to take you on a different path ... a path most creatures don't know about," said Omcub.

"Oh?" said Med Tiger, who was doing his best to keep up with the racing cubses. Spotty and Omcub very soon both insisted on riding on Mum Lioness's back. Tirucub set a very brisk pace.

After a while, a great many elephants were spotted.

"Where are they all heading?" asked Mum Lioness.

"They look specially happy," said Tirucub. "Wherever they are going, it must be somewere extra good ... let's follow them."

Suddenly they came upon a temple none of them had ever seen before or even heard of. The elephants were vibhuti-ing their foreheads near the temple entrance, and some elephant singing could be heard coming from inside.

"Such beautiful chanting," said Mum Lioness. To their delight, a baby elephant who had dipped his trunk in the vibhuti unexpectedly striped all their foreheads. Omcub began laughing helplessly, saying the trunk was too ticklish but then asking for more stripes. Tiru pretended his name was Ramanatha Brahmachari so the elephant would do his stripes all over.

"Soon you will be mistaken for me!" said Unca Stripes, quite liking the idea.

They entered the temple which turned out to have quite a few parts to it. Omcub bounded in to an inner shrine with a mother and father and baby elephant and found to his joy that there was a big beautiful picture of Bhagavan in the shrine.



From another part of the temple, he heard Mum Lioness give the soft half purr/half growl that meant "where is my missing Omcub?" and he bounded along in her direction. He found his mother and brothers and uncle standing at the edge of a beautiful room. All the elephants were slowly walking clockwise in a circle.



"What is that in the centre?" asked Spotty, curiously.

A little elephant who was just circling passed him whispered, "In the centre is the only known copy of the Aksharamanamalai written in Elephant. Bhagavan gave it to us as a gift. He wrote it himself."

The cubs looked over at the sacred text.

"Let's om om om ourseffs into elefinks so we can do this pradakshina too, in full elefink style!" said Omcub in high excitement.

"Om om om let us be elephants!" they all said. The other elephants glanced over, a bit astonished, and went on with their worship.