“Bhago, Dada!” Oni trumpetted, his trunk high in the air.

“Run! The fire people are coming again!”

Oni is only six years old, but his legs knew how to run like the wind when danger come. His ears flapped like sails as he followed his aunts, brothers, and cousins. There were more than 50 elephants in his herd, but Oni only really knew a few. The others had joined later. Or maybe they had joined the others. It didn’t matter. What mattered was staying together. Because in this land called Southwest Bengal. The home wasn’t safe anymore for Oni and his family.

Suddenly, “BOOM!” Hula- a fire torch flew through the night sky and landed with a thud. “AAAH!” trumpeted Mithi’s mother. She had been hit. Her side burned. Her eyes filled with tears. “No! Maa!” Mithi roared. Mithi was a shy elephant calf, just a little younger than Oni. Her mother turned around, roaring, her trunk swinging wildly. Towards the crowd. She roared again. But then she saw them, a crowd of humans with torches and hulas! There were too many. Way too many! She turned back to Mithi and limped to join the herd.

Far away, away from this chaos, was Bhunte. Now slightly older than Oni, and also wiser. By now, he has explored many forests and now started learning tricks. He wore big round scholar glasses, tied to his ears with forest vines. Bhunte looked wise! While Sano was busy chasing the butterflies.

Bhunte remembers, he heard trumpets and saw torches, when he was crossing Jhargram on his way to Odisha forest. He opened his little forest journal and started thinking “why do humans chase us? Why they are scared?” As he was pondering, Bulbul flew by. And landed on his back. “Maybe they’ are scared too, Bhunte”, Bulbul chirped. “When I was flying by I saw your relatives running across the farmlands, the little green things humans grew, those got damaged! Humans got angry and started chasing your relatives…”

“Well, they won’t see we have fear inside. This affects our physiology!” Bhunte wisely trumpetted. “Physio…what is that?” Bulbul chirped. “Physiology means how our body works to keep us alive and healthy. But too much fear/threat messes it up!” He pulled out a long banana leaf and scholarly pointed his trunk to sketch he made with a twig!

“Look! when we get chased by humans, our brains send signals to our glands (adrenal), that’s what starts the stress response, either you run away or you face humans!” Bulbul nodded her head, “yes, that happened when I was chased by a cat!”

“Exactly!” Bhunte added…”And our thyroid gland helps with energy, reproduction and growth! But if we are scared every day, these glands get confused, They either make too many or not enough hormones. These hormones are chemicals that controls the body balance! And if this get disturbed, we are either tired, weak or sick!”

Back their in West Bengal, Mithi’s mother got wounded badly! Bhunte could only send his thoughts to her.

“This has to stop” he sniffed. “I read that SSP* studied elephants all across India. She found that elephants in Mithi’s land, in southwest Bengal, had the highest stress-related and lowest diet-related hormones”. Bulbul gasped “Is that… bad news?” Bhunte flapped his ears in agreement.

“It means…our physiology is suffering! And no one can see it. That will affect how we behave, eat, reproduce and survive!”

Back there in southwest Bengal, Mithi curled up next to her mother, as her herd rested in a small forest patch hiding from people. “Do you ever think these people will understand, how much scared we are, like them?” Mithi whispered. Not to be noticed by the farmers who were alert and gaurding their lands.

Mithi’s mother who was wounded, pulled Mithi closer to her and said, “…I do not know!”

Bhunte got up in the morning. Hoping some day or someone will hear his and his relatives’ stories. Maybe they will leave paths open for them to move across the forest, SAFELY. Maybe they will protect their homes and farms, without hurting Bhunte and his relatives. And maybe…just maybe…we can all live in peace, like our ancestors did.

The forest was quiet here.

And far away, in a village beyond the trees, a child looked out her window and whispered to her father: “Baba, do elephants feel the pain? Do they get hurt? Do they cry?” Her mother shouted from the kitchen. “Pihu, come for breakfast, let Baba go to the farm! I heard from Mira, more elephants are hiding in that Poplar field! Tell him to be careful…”

~*SSP writes

(*Sanjeeta Sharma Pokharel)

Read about how hula party affects the physiology: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-06243-y

And about other stress-related understandings: https://sites.google.com/view/gajah-vigyan/publication?authuser=0