Elephant-Human Conflict: Sweet and sad moments frozen in time. A Requiem

This story about humans and elephants was told to me by my late mother, Beta Leelawathie, in 1980. It is not a folktale. This story really took place nearly seven decades ago, when the phrase 'elephant-human conflict’ did not tango in the same sentence.

- LOKUBANDA TILLAKARATNE

Back then, humans and elephants lived in harmony. By most measures, there was more forest cover for elephants then. Now, satellite images reveal that over 70% of the forest cover, once a haven for elephants, has been lost. As a result, they are at risk of harm, and land disputes between humans and them have become daily occurrences. This story is not about the daily iterations of wounded tuskers, electric fences, elephants decapitated by Yakada Yaka, or drowning in agri-wells.

This episode took place on a small chena clearing near Kidapolagama village, abandoned sometime around 1911, situated near Getalagamakanda by Galkulama, along the A9 highway in the North Central Province. Hundreds of teledrama episodes, or Dr. R. L. Spittle in Holly/Bollywood, could not have imagined such a tale.

I paraphrase here my mother, one of the four protagonists in this story of two babies — a human and an elephant - and their mothers coming into contact under extraordinary circumstances.

The Setting

It was a 2-hectare chena clearing, located two kilometers from the village. It had been formatted a couple of weeks ago after slashing the virgin forest and burning. Two solitary figures, my mother and father, were tilling millet, kurahan, on the charred soil. They were engaged in this task at a deceptively relaxed pace in the middle of this desolate space. Their frail frames were slightly bent as they scraped the topsoil. In front of them lay a series of grids by nera, the oldest form of geometry known to humans, drawn on the cleaned-out chena floor, the nawadella, to facilitate the easy broadcasting of seeds.