'Bomb-eaters' of Kerala

 SUKUMARAN C.V.

[Humans] are the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.—Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels).

"Bulldozer died," the news channels reported. Buldozer was a mozhayaana (male elephant without tusks) who gained the name because he used to destroy the huts of the tribal people at Sholayur in Attappadi. The elephant has been wandering for over a month without eating anything, as his mouth was shattered by a bomb hidden inside the coconuts or pineapples he had eaten. As Attappadi is just 43 kilometres away from my home, I travelled to see the dead body of Bulldozer. The sight was really painful. Its mouth was competely shattered, festered and filled with worms. The hapless creature has shrunken into a skeleton. The tribal people whose homes have been demolished by him were seen crying standing in front of him and performing his last rites. It means that they are not the ones who hid bombs in the eatables to harm him. Who did it? We are not going to know it, because Bulldozer was buried and no case is registered for the unnatural death of the elephant. Some months ago a female elephant who was six months pregnant was killed in the same fashion. The poor animal, to escape from the flees that were being attracted to its festering, worms-filled mouth, stepped into a river and stood submerged in water. It was in the death throes and died standing in the water.

Imagine your hunger is a crime that warrants painful death. Imagine you are hungry and you get the food items you like very much. Imagine you put it in your mouth between your teeth and bite and it explodes and shatters your mouth. Imagine, not only your hunger was not quenched, but also you are badly injured and you can never eat food! Imagine you wander with the excruciating pain. Imagine your mouth festers and worms are crawling in your mouth and cheeks and throat. Imagine it was done to you by a species that encroached all your lands and considers you as a pest in your own lands stolen by them. And imagine this species is the one that boasts itself of being the most civlised species in earth. 

The number of elephants are decreasing in our country that venerates the elephant as God Ganesha or Vinayaka. In 2012 there were 29391 elephants in India. According to the all-India Elephant Population Census Report released on August 12, 2017 by the Ministry of Environment, there are only 27312 elephants. 

The latest data released by World Wide Find for Nature reveal more than half of the wildlife in the world was eliminated during the last forty years. There are only one animal whose population is increasing day by day and that animal is called Homo sapiens. 

Wild animals are generallyg very gentle beings. They never attack humans unless they are provoked or cornered by the humans. Elephants are the most gentle animals. I have been face to face with a wild tusker in the Nelliyampathy forests while I have been working at the Nelliyampathy office of my department. After office hours I used to walk into the forest and in my forest walks, I have seen Malabar giant squirrels, wild boars, gaurs, barking deer and wild elephants in close distance. The gigantic trees and the exotic music of the forest winds, wild birds and wild crickets and the occasional sightings of the gentle animals used to take my mind into an unearthly peace and contentment.

Once when I was returning from the forest after my usual forest walk in the dusk, I felt that I was being watched unseen and when I turned around, saw a wild boar with huge tushes observing me standing still. When the boar knew I saw it, it gently turned back and disappeared into the forest. It could easily have attacked me for being an intruder in its home or territory. But animals are too gentle to do so.

In another occasion, I met the gentle tusker and I could even capture many photographs of him on my mobile. What an ecstatic experience it was! He was having his food standing inside the dense thickets under the trees. Having heard the sound of twigs being broken, I knew it was an elephant having food, and very cautiously went to the spot and could see the elephant only when I reached a mere twenty metre distance away from him. The elephant felt my presence and started to come out of the thicket and now we were face to face! I was walking back capturing his photographs on my mobile and he was walking ahead in my direction, slowly, gently and calmly, enabling me to enjoy his majestic gait and to capture his photographs in different postures. When he came fully out of the thicket, I retreated with respect, and he disappeared into the deep forest. 

Two of the many photographs I have captured on my mobile standing hardly fifty metres away from him face to face.

The captive elephants shackled by chains and controlled by knives and spears and canes have never captivated me as the wild, free roaming tusker has.

A forest, even if it is filled with boars and gaurs and leopards and elephants, is more peaceful than our cities which is filled only with humans. Even if the humans are intruders into their abode of calmness, the animals always try to skip the humans instead of attacking. They live in the wild, but they are not wild.

The tragic death of Bulldozer and the pregnant elephant indicates that the humans are wild even if they are not living in the wild.

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The inhumanity of the humans against the wildlife is a pan-Indian phenomenon. 

In the chapter titled "Failing Our Gods" in Prerna Singh Bindra's book The Vanishing: India's Wildlife Crisis, the author says: "In India, the elephant is god: Ganesha, the lord of good fortune, remover of obstacles....But today, as human populations continue to skyrocket and habitations edge into elephant territory...Homo sapiens are locked in conflict with the lord's earthly avatar, Elephas maximus... As a conservation journalist, I have been aware of the conflict. The horror stories from across the country keep trickling in: Villagers in Assam riding a baby elephant that was accidentally left behind when her herd was chased away, then beating her to death as the police and media looked on... 

... I came accross a photograph... The image was of an elephant, lying lifeless in a pool of its own blood in a field in Assam. Scrawled on the carcass was 'Dhan Chor Bin Laden'—Paddy Thief Bin Laden. The message was disturbing: God had morphed into a thief and a terrorist. 

The human tragedy, of course, is monumental. ... Crop damage can be crippling. ... But what is the elephant to do, where does it go, what does it eat, with humans having flattened and invaded its forest? The 'Bin Laden' photograph was from Sonitpur (Assam), the district with the highest rate of deforestation in the country. The elephant reserves in Sonitpur-Kameng were massively encroached post 1990s. ...

It is we, Homo sapiens, who are at fault...It is not the elephants who are the problem. It's us. Elephants are wise, intelligent, peaceable beings with a heart and a conscience. We have wreaked havoc in their lives, taken their home, their food, blocked access to water. We have killed their families, destroyed their society."

It is high time we, the Homo sapiens, collectively learnt what Prerna Singh Bindra says in the Prologue of The Vanishing: India's Wildlife Crisis: "When we ravage nature, we are threatening our future. When we war with wildlife, it is a war against ourselves."