There’s peril in the signage, yet visitors enjoy the turbulent black sea. A benign lust grows malignant in chains. The elephant thrusts at the ground with its tusks, as though saving itself from the violent voltage current. It hurls its trunk up the sky amidst a thunder as the loudest slogan of protest in the universe. It doesn’t need a calendar. A mahout can never conceal its honeymoon season. A lunatic liquid flows down the side of its head like the lava of suppressed love. Hormones of creation are wasted in the void. First appeared in The Literary Hatchet (issue #18). ‘Must ‘ is a periodic condition in a male elephant, characterized by highly aggressive behavior. I was inspired by an elephant in must in Punnathur Kotta, an old fort in Kerala State, where 159 elephants have been housed. All of them are in chains, living with suppressed passion like people in prison and similar situations.