JAYPADA Jamatia was in his fields on what looked like as yet another uneventful day. Suddenly from nowhere, he heard the roar of approaching wild elephants. Jaypada was scared. In an involuntary reflex picked up his country made gun and pulled the trigger.

What a sight it was? The bullet missed the target. And the pachyderms raced towards him, trampled upon him. Still unable to control their rage, they destroyed his excuse for a house.

 The word spread like wild fire to nearby township Maharani. People turned up in large numbers for the Jaypada funeral. The tuskers too came for the cremation, unsolicited. And to prove tales about their elephantine memory, did what comes natural to them: destroyed whatever bore Jaypada name or association –pillow, quilt et al.

Jaypada was the third victim of the ravaging pachyderms this year in the Teliamura sub division. The others were women. Remote villages lying mostly in the foothills of Atharamura range often face the fury of the pachyderms for one reason or the other. Generally harmless, the wild tuskers don’t like any one crossing their way. Their search for food makes them come in contact with the human habitations which are fast encroaching upon their space. Clash of interests is the natural corollary.

A few days ago, one evening, pachyderms on a long walk for their food targeted about one hundred houses and vast tracts of paddy fields. Forest officials are not surprised. "This is a common occurrence", they say, "when hills get dry and paddy is ripe for harvest".

The elephants are also attracted by the local wine when the paddy harvest is over" said a forest official. Loss, courtesy tuskers, in November, was about Rs.1.5 lakhs. Centre was asked to provide compensation.

On the reasons behind repeated raids by the elephants, the forest official said, due to encroachment and loss of forests, the elephants find it easier to go to the paddy fields and nearby huts searching for rice and other food . "Traditional ways like fire, beating of drums and crackers have yielded no result" said the officer. Now they are ‘deploying’ four trained elephants to drive away the wild into the wild south off the National Highway.

A way out is to declare a 50km belt in the Atharamura range as elephant sanctuary. Wild Life Warden M A Khan is enthusiastic about the plan. "We have sent the proposal to the Centre quite a while ago. Once it is cleared, it will be easy to let the beast and the man live together with no conflict. Then it will be possible to prevent what happened at Balucherra".

In that remote village, the angry villagers electrocuted the wild tuskers, which were harassing them. Elephants live herds. Move from one location to another in search of food. They follow the same route generally and it is called corridor.

Over the years, what has been happening is that the elephant corridor is shrinking due to encroachments; the swamps frequented by elephants are also disappearing under pressure of human habitations. Result is elephants are getting scattered in small herds.