The family climbed up a nearby hillock to find a safe spot, only to find themselves facing the elephant trio half a metre away. “It was pitch dark, but the tusker standing nearby was hard to miss. The animal seemed terrified, too. I mumbled a prayer to the jumbo, saying we’d survived a disaster and asked it to spare us as we lay down for the night and awaited rescue,” said Sujatha at a relief camp in Meppadi.