Oh ho! So that is where they keep it.

To their delight the lionses and lepudd and tiger found they were perfectly able to read the Aksharamanamalai in Elephant after they had Om-ed themselves into elephants. This was specially surprising to Om-elly, because he only knew how to read one word in Lion .... Om. But in Elephant, he could read all the words! He got so excited he bit Mum Elly's's ears and disarranged her vibhuti, but because he was Om-elly, Mum Elly could not even think of reprimanding him. And then little Spotty got so excited to see Om so excited that he bit Om's ears.

Med Tiger looked over at the most serious elderly elephants to see if they were shocked, but he noticed they were chuckling.

"Let the baby elephant read the verses," said the head elephant priest. "It is very auspicious to do one's first reading from this sacred Marital Garland."

So Om-elly read the verses and waved his trunk around in disbelief that he could even read huge words that meant "jugglery" and "transcendent" (though they looked and sounded quite different in Elephant). Tiru-elly raised an eyebrow nearby, thinking Om did not know the meaning of these words, but that did not seem to interfere with Om's joyful reading.

After this, the family left the elephant temple steeped in the sweetness of elephant bhakti, Oming themselves back into their usual forms a little distance from the temple.

"I hope we will be able to find this temple again!" said Arunacub.

"Yes, I thought we had been everywhere in the Hill, but we have never seen it before," said Tirucub.

Just then a big group of elephants came up beside them, heading home.



"If you are trying to find the temple, picture that book your little one just read ... picture it very clearly, and it will glow so brightly you will have no trouble finding the temple where the book lives."

"Oh!" said the cubses, glad to know this secret. ".... but, we did not know about your Elephant Aksharamanamalai when we found the temple today ..."

"Bhagavan must have wanted you to find it," said one of the elephants.

"I can't wait to tell Bhagavan!" said Spotty. He jumped up on Unca Stripes' back and clicked his back paws against Unca Stripes' sides to make him run fast.

"I am not a horse, and you are not a cowboy," objected Unca Stripes.

Spotty laughed at this and shouted out for Unca Stripes to run his very fastest to Bhagavan.

Quite soon Bhagavan was spotted, out for a walk. Spotty took a flying leap off Med Tiger's back and all four cubses scampered ahead to Bhagavan.

"You will never guess where we have been!" said the cubses, all speaking breathlessly at once. "The elephant temple! And the elephants were all doing pradakshina around the Aksharamanamalai you translated into Elephant for them."



"Oh ho," said Bhagavan, "So that is where they keep it!" He smiled His beautiful smile which caused a total melting of the cubses and Med Tiger and Mum Lioness who had caught up. Tirucub pretended to trip and fell in such a way that his furry little face ended up against Bhagavan's Feet. "It's Melty Day!" he murmured in bliss. The other cubs then all pretended to trip too and there was jostling to rest faces against the Divine Feet.

Bhagavan looked down and laughed, saying he had never known so many nimble-pawed creatures to trip on smooth ground all within moments of each other. Then he told them he would take them too a very beautiful spot.



"Look! It is Sri Muruganar and Annamalai Swami walking too," said Mum Lioness.

Together, they all let Bhagavan lead them on.