Our elephant adventures began in 1984 when, with our one-year-old daughter, my husband and I crossed the jungle in a dilapidated jeep, sticking behind a lorry for comfort and company. The herds of elephants standing like sentinels on either side of the Bandipur-Mudumalai forest highway had us frantically praying for our safety. Mostly, one elephant, the matriarch, would trumpet loudly, warning us off, especially if there were young calves with the herd. Then she would angrily paw the ground as a prelude to charging. We would race away before she could carry out her threat.
It was wise to flee. We heard stories of tourists whose jeeps were overturned, while a couple of foolhardy photographers were killed because they ventured out of their cars and moved too close, dismissing the Adivasi guide’s pleas to stop immediately. Adivasis – India’s indigenous, aboriginal people – were originally hunter-gatherers who lived in the forests and knew them inside out. Many still do. Elephants are deceptive animals. They look docile and unthreatening, so tourists think it’s safe to picnic in the jungle. Yet angry elephants have knocked down interlopers in seconds before they could take off.
We locals have a love-hate relationship with wildlife. We take pride in our beautiful mountains and forests, and the excitement of visitors when there’s a porcupine outside the window or, even better, big cat noises at night. I go ballistic at the sound of sambar deer because one nocturnal banqueting visit will decimate my much-loved garden, so I adore the leopards that keep them away. Yet I loathe the panther that killed and devoured our beloved dog Elsa. All of us are acutely aware that we are privileged to live here. The animals’ presence brings something romantic, exotic and surreal into our lives.
A few days ago my conservationist son sent excited messages about a first-time visitor to our place, a wild elephant named Moopan. “Not much serious damage,” he texted. “He enjoyed your patch of anthuriums, though.” I smiled – what price a few fading anthuriums if Mr Moopan fancied them? The next morning, our toddler grand-daughter phoned excitedly to ask, “Has Mr Moopan come back to see us?”
Some months ago, another young pachyderm paid us a visit. Our dinner guests were forced to stay the night as an elephant on our narrow, winding road was not something the jeep could easily avoid. But all of us were enthralled. Our youngest son, a film-maker, was over the moon, photographing and filming the elephant outside his bedroom window. The jumbo was so close, we could have touched him if we’d dared to reach out. Perhaps he sensed he had us in thrall because he chomped his way calmly through the clump of bamboo, unperturbed by our presence, before lumbering off early in the morning.
We got off lightly. Just a few weeks ago, a local house was badly damaged after an elephant calf apparently ventured inside to explore, followed by the protective mother. After inadvertently knocking down several walls, the elephants found the store of rice and other grains, smashing up the kitchen as they devoured it. Ambika, the owner of the house, was philosophical about it, resigned to the realities of living with elephants. She hopes to get some compensation from the government, and mentioned that she needed to be more careful about leaving her home unoccupied.
Less dramatically, in the Adivasi village of Chembakolly, an elephant sheltering from the monsoon rains once got bored and began nibbling at the school’s thatched roof. The rain didn’t stop, so Ms Jumbo kept munching. By the time the clouds moved on, she had eaten half of it, giving the children an unplanned holiday.
Adivasis regard wildlife very differently from other, more urbanised people. They believe, quite simply, that the animals have as much right to food as human forest-dwellers. One elephant took to coming towards the local Adivasi hospital every evening. With minimal fuss, the tribal staff adjusted their schedules to suit the animal. One lad cut down most of his sugarcane crop and strewed it along the path leading away to the jungle. My son asked him why. “The poor fellow wouldn’t come here unless he was really hungry,” went the very logical reply. “If I put the cane down for him he’ll eat it and go back to the forest. That way no one will be hurt.”
Sitting on a verandah, you’ll hear some lovely wildlife stories. Tall tales? They sound like it, but who knows?
“That naughty fellow,” one forest-dwelling Adivasi begins, “stands outside my hut. I stepped out in the middle of the night, needed to pee, walked straight into him. ‘Move,’ I said, giving him a whack. Thought he was a cow. Next morning I saw the elephant dung outside my house. Gave me a fright, I can tell you, to think I smacked an elephant.”
Someone laughs. “Quite a few drinks you must have had to mistake an elephant for a cow?”
“It was a pitch-dark night. I was half-asleep,” protests the raconteur.
Such delightful stories could fill a book. But there’s another side of the coin. It’s really not that much fun to bump into an elephant in the dark. Far too many people have not lived to tell the tale.
Death by elephant is gruesome, grisly, sordid and terrible
Death by elephant is gruesome, grisly, sordid and terrible. Unsuspecting people who stumble across an enraged elephant stand no chance whatsoever. Kokila, an Adivasi woman we knew, went out to collect firewood and was just a few feet from her home when an elephant picked her up, flung her to the ground and pulverised her. No one knows why. Forest officials had the horrible task of picking up the pieces, and returning her trampled remains to her relatives in a bag. That vivacious, laughing woman, who loved to dance and sing, had been smashed to smithereens in minutes.
So elephants on the doorstep make life unpredictable and dangerous for the vulnerable. It’s difficult for armchair environmentalists to even begin to grasp this reality. It’s all very well to pontificate, as I’ve heard city folks do, that “we humans are encroaching on their forests.” But what’s the solution?
When a poor farmer borrows heavily to plant a crop, he’ll do anything to protect it. His life depends on it. Marauding elephants raiding an about-to-be harvested paddy field cannot expect to be welcomed like special guests. The battle between beast and farmer is ugly. We’ve heard of people flinging flaming tyres on to raider elephants. Apparently the burning rubber sticking to their backs is a sure-fire way of driving them away. I shudder at the thought – but it happens regularly.
In 1987, an elephant died in a nearby paddy field. It had more than 40 festering bullet wounds all over its body. Poachers possibly – but also farmers taking desperate potshots to protect their crops.
Experts are working on solutions to human-elephant conflicts. Some are doomed to failure, like the schemes to dig trenches or build electric fences around human settlements. Elephants rapidly suss them out and clamber in, around and over them. My son is working on a local early warning system to warn people via text messages when there’s an elephant nearby. Apparently being alert to an elephant in the vicinity is paramount in avoiding tragedy.
There are more questions than answers, for sure. But as my husband put it, “More people die in car accidents every single day, in every city on the globe. But they won’t take cars off the roads, will they?” So we need to strive for practical ways of preventing elephant accidents. And, romanticised though it seems, look to traditional forest dwellers to understand the animals better.
https://www.theguardian.com/