Director: Kartiki Gonsalves
This is the utopia that the modern world is looking for. A world that is all lush green and man living in harmony with Nature. A world where animals are cared for and the forest is respected. Add Indian mysticism and simple living to that, and what do you get? An Oscar-winning documentary.Kartiki Gonsalves, a filmmaker, went with her camera to record the daily activities of a tribal couple, Bomman and Bellie, who had been assigned to care for an elephant calf after his mother was killed by an electric fence. The forest department had given up hope on caring for an elephant calf as the outcome was not so promising.
Bellie had just lost her young daughter. As a divine calling, she thought nursing the baby elephant would give her some relief. She named the elephant Raghu. Later somebody gave them another orphaned elephant calf for them to care for.
Karthika Gonsalves spent a good five years filming the couple with their baby elephants to come out with this documentary. In the process, she also managed to capture the picturesque scenery around the reserve with the Kattunayakan tribe members and the animals inhabiting the forest. Hey, that is how people in this part of the country have been living all the while. They live off the jungle, harvesting fruits, collecting honey and such. In one scene, the indigenous people mentioned that, as a form of respect to the forest, they remove their footwear whenever they enter the jungle for work. This feel-good documentary shows how the barrier between the human and the animal world can be broken.
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| Bellie and Bomman (the main stars of the documentary) |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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