Elephant (Elephas maximus), familiarly known in India, as Gajraj is world’s the largest terrestrial mammal. It is inextricably linked with Indian history, folklore and religion. For centuries the elephant has retained its status as a special species whether in wild or captivity and considered a symbol of fertility, wealth and abundance. The elephant headed God Lord Ganesh or Ganopati is worshiped throughout India as the God of wealth and wisdom.
This is a story of a ForlornKingdom. And there lives a princess named Lakkhi who is trying to be happy forever. But in her nightmares the elephants appear as a monster. Lakkhi is eight years old living with her two brothers and mother. She recollects the day and sees a big mark of a footstep on the ground where her father was lying-life less. She is told about a rogue elephant, and the deed. Lakkhi had never seen a wild elephant in the forest but only the shadow of the fear haunts her-a shadow of an evil being.
The shadow crosses the river the tea gardens and the grass lands and reaches to an ancient forest where Tarzan and his friend Ramdas lives a life. Tarzan is an orphan elephant works for his mahout Ramdas. Tarzan is a forest employee. Tarzan gets his food, water and resting place and in addition a heavy iron chain as the sign of an efficient and obedient servant. Tarzan serves the government. But some times the call from wild makes him troubled. He runs to the forest in the search of his core but he fails to recognize and comes back to the the life where man is the master and endorse his identity like all humans do. He becomes the Tarzan among the elephants of the foothills of North Bengal. These are two different character of the film.
This film produced by Nomadic Eyes, kolkata based production house. Nomadic eyes have been making this film for the last two and half years collecting data and evidences of man elephant conflict in the Dooars area of West Bengal. It was a coincidence that they meet Lakkhi at the spot when they were taking visuals evidences of a human death caused by rouge elephant near Binnaguri-a small town in Jalpaiguri district. We decided to keep the little girl as one of the primary character. Lakkhi would be the appropriate representative of the people who are harmfully affected by the man-elephant conflict.
Nomadic Eyes also find Tarzan in the forest of Chilapata in the Jaldapara wild life sanctuary. He is little bit un predictable. Asking about the reason we come to know about the history of this beautiful sub adult elephant. The forest department had rescued this elephant during a flood in the river Torsha when he was only six year of age. Usually the captive born elephant starts it’s training at the age of four, but in case of Tarzan it was little late although he is trying to cope with the dual identity and trying to build a love and hate relationship with his mahout Ramdas.
In north Bengal majority of the in habitants are farmers and agriculture is the primary occupation. Decades ago there was uninterrupted forest from hills to foothill and followed towards the vast grassland. This continuous eco chain was very much in favor of all the big mammals and other wild animals. But in the due course of time the forest has been destroyed and heartless fragmentation happened in this place. Some of the indigenous species got extinct and some of them are in the verge of extinction. Less than one percent Asian elephants present in India live here causing the highest amount of depredation on this earth. This is the reason why Nomadic Eyes have a dedicated to make a film on this issue –in a semi fictional way. Thus it becomes the story of a happy princess and an orphan elephant.
Nomadic Eyes Production. 2007
Directors- Bikramjit Gupta, Kallol Lahiri
Subject Consultant – Suchetana Bhattacharjee
Cinematography – Asok Dasgupta, Amit Majumder
Production Designer – Suchanda Mookherjee
Sound – Sanjib Saha, Asihm Dey
Editing – Sankhajit Biswas
Format- DVCAM 16:9
Duration – 55 min
Screened at
Vatavran Film Festival, New Delhi, 2007
Trichur Vibgyor Film Festival, Kerala, 2008
Nominated by excellence awards by Independent Documentary Producers Association, Mumbai, 2008
hey Kallol, you have misspelt my name. Please correct.
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