The moving bodies of elephants weave worlds together. Megafauna like elephants have shaped landscapes for all beings from microorganisms to humans and soils to forests, for millions of years. But now human-dominated landscapes seem to be cutting across their migratory worlds. Are they just passing ghosts or are they still shaping our lives? It is hard to imagine them shaping my life especially when I look out the car window and see kilometer after kilometer of monocropped tea gardens on my way to conduct fieldwork in Buxa, West Bengal. This frame of sight is dominated by cash crops, roads, power lines, cattle, and railway tracks. I find myself asking what is the difference between an intense urban area and hundreds of square kilometers of tea gardens to an elephant searching for survival? Both seem to have nothing to offer them and yet, elephants are traversing villages, towns, cities, and countries, leaving behind their large and fading footsteps. What can following them teach me about the shaping of our worlds? I follow Netraji who knows how to follow elephants. We find the traces of their presence that they leave behind – footprints in newly sown paddy fields, fallen areca nut trees, scattered vines along roads, bent metal poles, and stories of elephant encounters. Stories of damaged fields, crops, houses, shops, and deaths. Several farmers told me, “First, we stopped growing corn, then mustard, and then paddy. We have completely stopped farming for almost ten years because of the elephants. And now they are coming for our areca nut trees. We chase them with firecrackers and try to intimidate them with flashlights.” I heard this story repeatedly. It’s the one you hear on the news and read in the newspaper. But I also heard something else. Compassion and empathy for elephants from the same people who had sometimes lost not only crops and homes, but also loved ones. “Of course, I am angry at them! But we are in their land and there is nothing left for them to eat in the forest. We both have to share whatever there is left and survive.” I was meeting people whose lives are shaped by elephants and know how elephant lives are shaped by us. The way they talked about elephants sounded like how you might talk about annoying relatives you have grown up with. Twenty years ago, the villagers of Garo basti had approached the forest department urging them to plant food for elephants in the forests. They knew that elephant lives were changing and because of that so were theirs. They remembered a time when elephants and farmers stewarded community forests together. But these elephant-farmer relationships of coexistence have been excluded from the imagination of colonial and post-colonial development projects of teak and sal plantations, railroads, tea gardens, and mining. In barren farms and empty forests these farmers and elephants have compassion for each other as they struggle to hold on to what is left. There was fear and pain in his eyes as Jer shared with me about that night in 2005 when an elephant destroyed the house across from his. He pointed at the trees showing me the spot where the house used to be. “I heard a big sound and went outside. I saw my relative running around his collapsed wooden house, shouting, ‘the elephant has killed my wife, my son, and my daughter.’” His relative’s entire family was killed that night. Jer said, “since then fear has entered my heart. I am worried an elephant is going to come and kill me.” He stopped farming for many years and cut down all the jackfruit and banana trees around his house that elephants like to eat. Stunned into silence by his words and the emotion in his eyes, I grasp for my notebook wondering what to say. Is listening enough? “Why are the elephants coming to the village?” I ask wondering if he will share his anger with me about the forest department, colonization, oppression, capitalism, consumerism, and global supply chains. Instead, he says, “we used to live in the forest before, praying to the animals, trees, and rivers. We prayed to elephants three times a year. Now we’ve settled in villages, we cut down trees and sell them. Our elders who knew the old ways are gone. Our faith has turned into darkness. Maybe that is why this is happening.” In 2010, seven elephants were killed at once by a single goods train in India. I remember feeling devastated reading that news and making a painting to process my sorrow. In 2021, as I went through forest department records of elephant deaths in the Buxa area with Netraji one evening, I found an entry for seven elephants killed by a goods train. Without knowing, earlier that morning, I had walked the tracks where they had died. 10 years later, I realized how those seven elephants had shaped my life. I met an older farmer who had stopped farming because of elephants. He explained to me why the elephants were getting killed by trains. Males stand their ground, when they see bright lights, mistaking the approaching train for a person with a powerful flashlight used to deter elephants. In the case of families, the matriarch crosses the tracks first to inspect the vegetation on the other side. She then signals the rest of the group to cross over and feed. Elephants can feel seismic vibrations through their feet and the rumbling of trains can be very scary and disorienting for younger elephants. As the train approaches, they panic to cross back to the other side, the known and safe side. The older elephants rush to protect them. With tears in his eyes the older farmer tells me, “That’s when they get hit and die.” Our faith has turned into darkness. Jer was not naïve about the impact of colonization, capitalism, and conservation on his life when he chose to share about the loss of his old ways. When I asked him if he’d like to leave this place and go somewhere else where there were no elephants he said, “I would rather live here with elephants than in a city with gundas (goons). Humans cannot be trusted. I would rather live this difficult life than leave the forest. We will never leave this place.” Netraji shares with me, “I used to hate elephants because of how they destroyed my shop and crops year after year. But after following and watching them, their ears and trunks, I slowly fell in love with them. I think elephants in Buxa will only last for another couple of generations.” I found compassion in stories of loss at the edges of extinction. Many of us refuse to let elephants shape our lives. What if we stopped resisting? Could we live, feel, and think with elephants?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
October 2021
Categories |