More of the crazy elephant things native to the lowlands, I guess? Yeah.

An overabundance of plant matter on an elephant's hide or the invasion of shoots/roots/whatever of eyes and other important bits are Bad Things that can lead to malnutrition, blindness, and poor health in general. In the wild, elephant herds usually pluck each other's grasses as a form of social interaction/grooming; unfortunately, this doesn't prevent death by plants in older individuals as the elephants can't/don't remove root systems. Not many elephants die of old age; the most common cause of death is a fatal amount of plants or plants growing in all the wrong places.

Darshan's dickery doesn't just cover humans, though in this case it's not out of malice. That's just how nature works.

So yeah. Tame individuals get their faces cleaned by their handlers, in addition to other elephants. The first is Not Fun for either. The levels of fun are inversely proportionate to the mass of deeply rooted plant matter the handler has to pull out of nearly ten tons of angry animal.