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Letter From Kerala
A rice-loving tusker sets off a national debate on human-elephant conflicts in India
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The tranquillised elephant being transported on April 29 in Idukki district in India’s Kerala state to the Periyar Tiger Reserve.
PHOTO: AFP
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KERALA – A music video about a wild elephant in the rain-drenched forests of southern India has been going viral since June 21. Halfway through, musician Kavalam Srikumar and poet Pramod Kannan Pillai ask poetically: “Would a hungry stomach be able to foresee, my friends, that rice would be a tusker’s downfall?”
The song laments a 35-year-old elephant whose love for rice drove him to emerge from his jungle in Idukki district in the southern Indian state of Kerala, cross coffee plantations and enter paddy fields and grocery shops in Chinnakanal village. Locals named him Arikomban, or rice tusker.
