The Hindu Business Line : The fast & furious Lady Ganesha

"Boss, yanai pakka mudiuma (Boss, will we see an elephant?)," asked my good friend and fine photographer, Ananthan from our Coimbatore office. Having a near-elephant build, Anathan was sweating in the 20-degree day time temperature. Two days had gone and we were yet to sight the Indian elephant (Elephas maximus) in the wild.

In the afternoon, we went to see the power station located deep inside the Moyar gorge between Mudumalai and Bandipur. While returning along the Sigur plateau, one spotted a tusker, three female elephants and three baby elephants. The about 9 ft. tusker was standing at a distance from the females and all were feeding on the grass on the forest floor. The rains kept off for the evening and one had the first steady look at the rolly-polly animal from a distance of about 20 ft. It sported no arrogance. It was graceful in a classical way. Its movements had a natural fluidity, hard to believe in a Elephas maximus.

As we drove by, the tusker had a good look at us and turned away. We parked our car some 30 ft away from a feeding Lady Ganesha. Cut up over our impertinence, the female got a restless squirting brown earth over her back. Then started the stomping and digging of the ground using her right foreleg. She wrenched out a sheaf of grass with her trunk and placed it in her mouth. She then charged and we moved away with our driver Kasinathan all a-tremble.

Lady Ganesha halted and we followed. That got her and she set off on a second charge before driving off. She did not call. The lady was between 7 and 8 ft. tall. Ananthan beamed. He had taken pix of a charging elephant. It was about 4 in the evening and we heard people say that this year large herds with babies were moving into the Sigur plateau located outside the Mudumalai sanctuary. One could touch the fear of an elephant in the breath of the tribal and non-tribal folk. "Saar, moradu (Boss, the animal is ferocious)," said a tribal, sipping tea at a potti kadai (kiosk).

We drove on to meet Nigel Otter running an India project for animals and nature. "I am a vet and operate on all types of injured animals," Nigel told me with a rare, honest face. We climbed on to his jeep and at Adigumba in Sigur north division, came across four lady elephants with three small ones. They stood round their offspring providing a wall of comfort as the babies suckled. For a few moments one was lost.

Most Hindus pray to Lord Ganesha for some economic benefit and are the first to bring down this mighty creature (a tusker mainly) for the stock of ivory. We style ourselves civilised. With the forests and animals vanishing ... civilisation is a sports utility vehicle (SUV) mounted with a few AK-47s.

It was 5 in the evening and at around 5.30 p.m. we saw a third group (though some felt it was the second pack). Thanks to the young and firm wildlife warden, Rakesh Kumar Dogra, we made it into the interiors of the 321-sq. km Mudumalai Wildlife sanctuary. The 56-year-old Badaga gentleman, Bojan, with a passion for Nature ("I don't believe in God. I have faith in Nature," he told me) explained that Mudu in Tamil meant old and Mudumalai meant "Old Hills." It is located at the north-western corner of Nilgiri plateau at a height ranging between 800 and 1,000 metres.

The vegetation is dry deciduous scrub and our driver (a forest official) pointed to tall trees with Tamil names such as kalkanji, vellai mathi, kari mathi (crocodile bark), apart from rosewood, teak and bamboo, a favourite of the elephants. Our forest jeep touched Game Hut area before proceeding to Nardi-Googulla point. A forest for long ages. No human beings. No settlements. One saw a healthy, lone dhole (wild dog), resting on the forest floor. Dholes move in packs but this deep brown fellow seemed an exception. An elephant trumpets from near. We don't see the animal. Savyasaachi in his introduction to the book Between the Earth and the Sky, writes: "The forest is also a dwelling, a living space shared by animals, plants, human beings and spirits. While each has a life of its own, their lives are interwoven. ... The forest has its own soundscape where `quiet' can be differentiated from `silence' and `stillness'. The one who listens to the forest experiences the joy of becoming one with it, losing oneself in it, becoming a part of nature and celebrating the feminine capacity for self-regeneration."

For this writer, the trip was made by the lone, lady elephant on the Ooty-Mysore Highway. An elephant herd waited near a river and Bojan speculated that the lady belonged to the herd. One goes by the simple formula: Never be dead sure of anything in Nature. It can mock you at the first turn.

Between 5.30 p.m. and 5.50 p.m. this lady ate up vast clumps of rain-fresh grass trembling with raindrops on the border of the black topped highway. Some vehicles stood in a row being unsure of the lady's next move. With her trunk in sway she went halfway when a roaring nuisance of a bus hurried her on to the other side. She did not mind the prying, racing cars, including ours, but was scared of the bus.

Possibly elephant memory carries the fear of trucks felling them; of men from powerful vehicles bulleting them. Yet, she stayed quiet as we watched, standing on the road, from about 15 ft. The Ooty-Mysore Highway needs to be shut down in the night for elephants to have long walks. That will surely never happen. There is a move to bring Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary and Mukurthi National Park under Project Tiger and the public living in the buffer zones of these reserves are protesting. "We will not be able to do any business," they claim and that generally excludes tribals. They need not fear as Project Tiger is a colossal flop. It only provides employment to bureaucrats. By 6 in the evening we left the lady in peace and pray that she is still living.

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