Artificial intelligence now tells us that elephants call each other by name and have chats with one another. Down in Jungleland probes this further and eavesdrops on a matriarch discussing the issue with her two senior-most aides, Golu and Bholu. Matriarch: Gather round girls and listen up. I have grave news! Golu: What? Have you discovered a new sugarcane field we can raid? Bholu (excitedly): Or a bar, or ration shop? Matriarch: Hush, pipe down! Humans can now tap into our conversations like they do each other’s. So we must be careful about what we say! Golu: But is this legal? Matriarch: Do you think humans care about what’s legal and what’s not? Look at their own record. Bholu: But what will this mean for us? Matriarch: That we can no longer discuss our migratory travel plans or dining options before embarking on them. They will know our routes and stop us. As it is they are spying on us with drones and satellites and whatnot trying to figure out our routes! Golu: (rumbling angrily) Just let them try to stop us! Matriarch: Golu, you’re the first to run when they burst firecrackers! Golu: Didi, I can’t help it. Besides all the babies get terrified and scream. Someone has to escort them away! Matriarch (dryly): You know we all do that. Bholu: But our migratory routes were set long before they turned up. Why did they have to plant paddy fields and tea gardens and build townships bang in the middle of them, cutting off our routes? Golu: And now they go on about man-elephant conflict getting worse. What did they expect? A love-in with us winding our trunks gently around their waists and whispering sweet-nothings? Matriarch (with a wry smile): Well, now that they think they can understand what we’re saying, maybe they’ll agree to peace talks! Golu: (trumpeting with laughter): Didi, like those have ever worked! As you told us: look at their record! Bholu: So how do we go about our migratory trips and dining options? Matriarch: (smiling): Very simple. We feed them deep fake data and basically hack their AI systems. We say we’re going to head on say route ‘A’ through such and such built-up area or field, they’ll guard those, and then I’ll lead you all by a completely different route to the field or bar ‘n’ restaurant I have chosen. They believe in data like it is God. By the time they realise they’ve been scammed, we will have vanished like ghosts into the night! But we’ll have to move very quietly — and no farting or rumbling. The babies will have to be told to hush. Golu: What if we come across some of them say, in a vehicle, on the route you have chosen? Then the elephant will be out of the bag! Matriarch (tossing her head angrily): Then we deal with it. Toss it into a river or off a cliff, or stomp it like a beer can. Surely you’ve seen those reels on YouTube of elephants holding up buses and trucks, or tossing auto-rickshaws across the road. Golu (wistfully): Yes, those dudes just rob them and let them go. Awesome hunks some of them are! It must be such fun and ooh, the kick they must get! Bholu: But if we stomp on them, we’ll be declared ‘rogues’ and they’ll come after us with guns! Golu: And they keep saying we are a protected species. Bah! Bholu (with sonorously rumbling tummy): Didi, I have a craving for bananas and hooch. Do you know of any tony banana bar we can raid tonight? Even the babies love them. Matriarch (affectionately patting Bholu with her trunk): Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But hush up your tummy. Its rumbling reminds me of the maharaja’s Buick Roadmaster that I had to overturn on Friday, June 12, 1953, on the Ramnagar-Nainital Road at 10.38 pm, because it was rudely honking at me! Bholu (chuckling): Didi, but just listen to what I’m rumbling… and telling them… Hope their Artificial Intelligence picks it up and interprets it correctly: That Mother Nature made a huge mistake by evolving human beings. She should have stopped with the chimpanzees. That the human species is the most dangerous nincompoops (except Sir David Attenborough) to inhabit planet Earth. That all they’re good at is talk - yak, yak, yak - and then go and do the exact opposite. They crap in the water they drink and poison the fields from where they get their crops and spew toxic fumes into the air and then complain when they get lung cancer and diarrhoea. My Baby got e-coli from just splashing in a stream - I will not forget that in a hurry. They fight each other like they’ve all got rabies, slaughter their own babies and say they have the right to defend themselves. From babies? Sure, their babies scream and poop a lot but… And to top it all, they say it’s all in the name of God so perfectly okay! Golu (butting in): Bholu, maybe they need to defend themselves from their babies because they’re soon going to make it mandatory that all babies be given machine pistols instead of pacifiers, and can run amuck with them… Look at what’s happening in schools… Matriarch (impressed): You know, both of you will be grand matriarchs one day. You have wisdom and sagacity. Bholu and Golu: Thank you, didi. We try! Matriarch (sighing): Still, I just wish the human species had more real intelligence than just artificial intelligence!
