This wooden elephant is from the Punjab province of India, and would originally have had little tusks (probably made of ivory) inserted in the holes underneath the trunk.
The person who gave me the elephant explained that they had gone missing when the elephant was packed up for a house move that her parents made many years earlier, but that she preferred the elephant without the tusks, as the ivory would have made her think about the real elephant from which it had been taken.
I was given the elephant by the mother of a friend I met while volunteering in Tamil Nadu at a school in the Nilgiri Hills, and he was working at a local hospital. When we finished our volunteering placements, we travelled from southern India up to northern India, and stayed with his family in Chandigarh. I was given the wooden ornament as a leaving present after my stay; the small elephant inside the larger one represents the safety of a protective place at which you are always welcome, and also the hopefulness of new life.
Ms Dearden, Sixth Form Pastoral Assistant, Cheney School