Wayanad landslide survivors appeal to elephants to be spared: 'Tears were seen in their eyes'

 

Wayanad landslide survivors appeal to elephants to be spared: 'Tears were seen in their eyes'

The families who survived Wayanad's Choralmala landslide tell a powerful story of survival, compassion and tacit understanding between humans and animals. Sujatha, a tea plucker at Harrisons Malayalam Tea Estate in Mundakkai for 18 years, described her terrifying ordeal: 'I heard a loud noise and water flooded into our house. The roof of our house fell on us and my daughter was severely injured. I managed to remove a brick from the collapsed wall and got out.'

Sujatha managed to remove a brick from the collapsed wall and escaped. She heard her granddaughter's screams from the rubble and pulled her out with all her might. The rest of the family managed to escape, wading through the raging waters and eventually climbing a nearby hill.

When they reached the hill, they were met with a sight that filled them with horror: a bull elephant and two female elephants were standing just centimetres away from us.

Sujata and her granddaughter clung to an areca nut tree and lay in fear as night fell.

"It was pitch black and a wild bull elephant was standing just half a metre from us. "He seemed scared too. I murmured a wish to the elephant, that we had just survived a disaster, and asked him to lie down for the night and save us," Sujata said. The bull elephant seemed to be aware of their plight and remained calm without harming them.

"We were very close to the bull elephant's feet and he seemed to understand our predicament. We stayed there till 6am and the elephant stayed there too until he was rescued by some people in the morning. "At the end of the night I could see tears in his eyes," she recalled.