When tourists invade

It may sound incredible but on several nights my son has spied on the marauder through his bedroom window, hardly 30 feet away. Once, hearing a sound, his servant inadvertently focused a flashlight on it. Angered, the tusker lunged at the window, demolishing it.

The 8216;8216;rogue8217;8217; and its cronies often damage parked vehicles. To protect his car, my son resorts to a simple ruse: at night he strings two lengths of spiral wiring around it. Mistaking this for an electric fence, like the ones in the locality, the elephants stay well away from his car!

Significantly, wild elephants started plaguing the residents of Madupatty only after the tourism boom started in the early 1990s, leading to progressive loss of their habitat and constant harassment from tourists. Aggravating the problem, now noisy speedboats carrying high-spirited tourists frequently streak through the Madupatty reservoir 8212; a favourite watering-hole 8212; disturbing the elephants foraging on its banks. For a small tip some foolhardy drivers will manoeuvre their boats right up to a pachyderm, speeding away at the first sign of its annoyance.

This constant badgering has naturally angered the elephants who now menace any human they come across. Recently an irate tusker held up traffic on the arterial Munnar-Madupatty road for well over 30 minutes on as many as three occasions. Elephants have killed no less than 5 persons here since 2002, and many have had a narrow escape. This is the tragedy of unrestricted tourism promotion in an elephant stronghold without taking adequate measures to protect the animal and its habitat.

Yet there has been no let-up. Tourists continue to flock to Madupatty in ever-increasing numbers throughout the year, much to the acute discomfiture of the pachyderms. They now run into humans wherever they go. And having enjoyed themselves uproariously, often at the expense of the jumbos, the tourists blithely go away, leaving the hapless locals to face their wrath.