That first time I dreamt of the almost indigo-hued baby elephant, I was in a dentist’s chair in Falls Church, Virginia, having a cavity cleaned and filled. The dentist had given me Novocaine, and I must have fallen asleep. How else to explain the sudden vision I had of a small Nilgiri elephant, barely a few years old, stumbling about in a circle while beside her a trainer yelled commands, wielded a baton, and then, horror of horrors, let fly so the hard steel rod struck the defenseless creature hard on the skull, the neck, the top of her delicate trunk.