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Tailing the lonely captive elephant's journey
How many times have you marvelled at a caparisoned Indian elephant without sparing a thought for its plight amid alien sights and sounds, far from its home in the wilderness?
How many times have you marvelled at a caparisoned Indian elephant without sparing a thought for its plight amid alien sights and sounds, far from its home in the wilderness?
Now animal lover P. Balan has made a hard-hitting documentary highlighting the cruelty and hypocrisy towards the pachyderms, which are much loved even as they are subjected to unnerving human rituals.
Balan, a programme executive at the All India Radio, Thrissur, in his Malayalam film "The 18th Elephant - Three Monologues", questions the mindset behind using elephants as earthmovers, propping them as mascots for temple festivals and tourism syndicates.
"According to law, no person or authority can purchase wild animals. But famous personalities and temple authorities buy elephants as a status symbol and for pleasure," Balan told IANS.
"Nobody sees the plight of the animal, terrified by lights and sounds and chained to stand still for hours continuously," said the filmmaker who was here to receive the National Award for best environment conservation film Wednesday.
In the 63-minute documentary which has won the Green Oscar among other honours, three elephants "talk" to the audience about their condition, while extinct animals such as dodo, passenger pigeon and cheetah (which is not seen in India any more)- narrate warnings.
"My film is an attempt to open the common man's eyes towards the pain of the silent animals that are showcased before them," said Balan.
Filmed over five years in Bihar, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, it exposes the Indians' hypocritical relationship with the pachyderms.
"Indians revere elephants at religious and secular festivities. But nobody bothers to know the unseen side of these. Many of us do not know the bloody tale behind them," said Balan.
He said he was overwhelmed by the response he had received from schoolchildren. "I'm glad and satisfied that the children understood the message and promised to change their attitude and concept not only towards elephants but about the environment as a whole."
Balan said his film was not just for elephants. "It is basically an attempt to open people's eyes to their ill-treatment of nature."
The film reveals some shocking facts. Of as many as 352 species of elephants on earth, only two are surviving - the African and Asian.
But heavy poaching by ivory-hunters, the capture of tuskers for domestication and use in temple rituals and festivals has brought down the male-female ratio to an alarming 1:40. Balan says unofficially it is 1:60.
Out of the total 20,000 pachyderms in India, Kerala is home to a quarter. The elephant population is at an all-time low as the tuskers in domestic services and temples are not allowed to mate.
The film has bagged the international video festival award, the Ram Bahadur prize for best film at the South Asia film festival held in Nepal and the Kerala state award for best documentary.
--Indo-Asian News Service
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