Dodda Masti , Kuruba camp mahout in India Born 1953? in India dead 2016-08-11 in India . 2013: Hailing from the Jenu Kuruba community, he learned the dangerous job of training and handling elephants from his father. “My father and his father were also mahouts,” Doddamasti, in his early 60s, said. He started full time as Mahout with an elephant called Hussein (Later exported to Hagenbecks Tierpark in Hamburg, Germany) for 12 years, Rama for six years, and Bhaskar for seven years. Training: Dodda Masti, the Mahout of Arjuna, during rehearsals held in Mysore on Sunday. 2012: Dodda Masti who has finally got his due after completing 32 years of his service in the forest department this year. He has been its Mahout for the past 12 years. However in the case of his 26-year-old son, it’s double delight; it’s his very first year with the forest department, and is Kavadi to none other than Howdah elephant. For Sannappa (Kavadi) too, Dasara mood is not new. Before joining government services, he was the caretaker of elephants owned by royal scion Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar. 2017: The question of Arjuna’s Mahout cropped up last year after the death of its regular Mahout Dodda Masti just a fortnight before Gajapayana. Following his death, the responsibility of training Arjuna fell on Dodda Masti’s son Mahesh.
