Each time we visit my maternal grandparent’s house in Talcher, we pass through the districts of Dhenkanal down the road that connects the district of Cuttack to the district of Angul in Odisha. Passing through those often broad and sometimes narrow roads, once or twice, amongst the many visits that we do yearly, we witness the largest land mammals crossing the national highways and connecting roads. Gigantic, magnificently intelligent creatures whose sheer existence is holy according to Hindu mythology and Buddhist tales.
The next day we open the television to watch the news reporting an elephant died from an electric mishap, an elephant stuck inside a gorge and dying slowly and struggling to survive, an elephant murdered to get its tusks, an elephant killed by the humans who found it offensive that the original owner of the land they now forcefully conquer is asking them to leave in the only way it knows.
“The Elephant Whisperers” is an ode to these magnanimous creatures. But it is not only a story of just an elephant and its caretakers but it is a tale of any human and animal, any two creatures who choose to co-exist.
The happening of this documentary takes place inside the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, located in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu state spread over 321 sq. km at the tri-junction of three states, viz, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, and one that plays a unique role by forming part of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve, the first Biosphere Reserve in India, declared during 1986. Inside this nature reserve is the oldest elephant camp in Asia, Theppakadu Elephant camp, established around 100 years ago. Located on the banks of the river Moyar, this camp is the perfect example of human nature co-existence.
Bomman and Bellie, a middle-aged couple of elephant caretakers heralding a generation of indigenous tribes called the Kattunayakan, who have coexisted with wildness— wild animals, wild plants, wild insects— and everything it brings with it. For them, elephants are their gods, and the forest is their mother. This is the story of Raghu, an abandoned elephant who was displaced from its herd as a baby and was then saved from almost certain death by the immense care of Bomman and then soon joined by the motherly care of Bellie.
As Raghu grows and you watch, you unfold the stories of manifolds of the conservational history of India. India launched the JFM (Joint Forest Management) program in the 1980s to work closely with the local communities for protecting and managing forests, something that has fallen out of place with how little care is given to the ones who handle and care after our lifelines, our only chance to escape from certain extinction. “The Elephant Whisperers” yet again proves how integral indigenous communities and their existence inside forestlands are to biodiversity conservation. A line that stayed with me is “We take what is necessary from the forest and never more. There is no greed here.”
Watching “The Elephant Whisperers’ ‘ breaks apart what it means to even look at biodiversity conservation, it makes you question how you are even looking at biodiversity. Just a natural component but something that is so a part of you just like you are of your mother or your bloodline. It breaks down what even a familial bond even means when it shows the bond that Bomman, Bellie, Raghu, and Ammu share. “Everyone now calls me the mother of elephants and that makes me proud,” she says, “Everything about him is like a human, except that he cannot talk.”
It made me reflect on how easily we view biodiversity of any kind as a separate component from us, something alien that we need to look at in one way or the other, but never as a part of us and us being a part of them. We need to learn a lot, more than words can explain from Bomman, whose father was killed by a wild elephant and yet cares for them as his children and from Bellie, whose husband was killed by a tiger and yet after years of being scared of the forest now dwells in it fearlessly and teaches her granddaughter to do the same.
Indigenous tribes like those from which Bomman and Bellie come have always been an integral part of the forest and its history. In the colonial rule, declaring forests as reserved needed the tribes residing in them to be declared criminal tribes. Their birth, their death, and their breath were all one. We all came from the same source, we are all no different from this. There is no line separating humans and creatures unlike how we have started to believe. We both need to join hands to save what is dear to us. There is no solution to saving nature if there is no awakening of environmental consciousness amongst the public. It is through films like these that it will soon become a reckoning and dawn upon all of us.
“The Elephant Whisperers” made me fall in love with what I am aspiring to do in the field of climate action yet again. It is often stories like this, stories such as that of Bomman and Bellie and Raghu, that are not only about the love between the old couple but also about what life is like. There is a certain amount of warmth and glow to the film, thronged throughout the length with scenic magical shots of Raghu and his parents. When Bellie feeds Raghu or when Bomman plays football with him and then you watch as the events unfold, you are left with a mixed concoction of sadness and warmth in your heart after you are done watching the documentary.
It is a befitting clap to Kartiki Gonsalves’s masterful direction that a nature documentary looks like an art film with scenes that will capture your heart in a second and mesmerize you with its beauty.
This roughly 45-minute film showcases an environmental awareness that is much necessary and urgent.
On average, indigenous territories in the Amazon Basin lost 0.17 percent of the carbon stored in their forests each year between 2003 and 2016 due to forest degradation, said a report titled “Forest Governance by Indigenous and Tribal Peoples”. In contrast, forests outside indigenous territories and protected areas lost 0.53 percent each year, 0.36 percent more than the indigenous territories, the report said. Despite this displacement of tribes out of forests has been rampant not only disturbing the fragile ecosystem of forests but also changing it drastically and at a faster rate. The forest fire in Simipal reserve of Odisha and how it went unchecked and thus grew into a devastating disaster due to the lack of indigenous tribes in the area to control the fire is an example of how the exclusion of indigenous tribes in conservation plans makes it futile.
Indigenous communities and JFMs are more important to save endangered species of animals from extinction now more than ever and it needs to be done just as the documentary shows: through love, support, care, and mutual respect for humans and nature.
With the upcoming Oscars season, India has had multiple nominations that have made it into the shortlists, one particularly all might know about now is the movie RRR, the now winner of Best Original Song at Golden Globe and Best Non-English Language Film at Critics Choice Awards. But amidst hype for these big-budget giants, an important but small-scale documentary like “The Elephant Whisperers” has gone into whispers.
This 41-minute gem of a documentary deserves much, even the Oscar it is nominated for.