BP

/*Write a 450-word narrative depicting the human-elephant confrontation in India.*/

I sighed as I walked through the devastated village, the victim of a stampede. Many mud houses lay destroyed on the ground. Worse still, the sight of mangled human bodies on the floor made my blood curdle. The scene of destruction was enough to shake anyone to the core. However, I had a job to do. I gathered up my wits and walked on as quickly as I could.

I often saw myself as a UN peacemaker working frantically to make peace in the Middle East. The only problem was that I was anything but that. An Environmentalist working in India, I had seen many examples of human-elephant confrontation over the years. Today, I am going to try to stop another example from appearing in my already long list. I walked to a group of angry villagers picking up knives and spears. They were already amassing an army to, presumably, attack an elephant for revenge.

I talked to the leader of the group, trying to stop him from going on with his plan of attack. It was all in vain. He refused to stop his attack, saying that his wife and one of his sons had been killed in the stampede. But after an hour of negotiating, he agreed to kill only one elephant. After that, he refused to talk with me any longer. Powerless to stop the group, I followed them closely.
We trudged through the forest for an hour or so, the natives ignoring me completely. It was hot and humid and my canteen was emptying fast. The trail was thin and only allowed for a single file.

It wasn’t long before we reached the waterhole at the end of the trail, a waterhole that the Asian elephants were known to frequent often. It was a mere fifteen minutes before the first elephant came lumbering in. It was a young elephant, merely ten years old. The natives ducked back into the dense forest and waited patiently for it to come.

The elephant, a female, came slowly to the waterhole and drank. It had a huge wound on its leg. This elephant was probably injured by another group of natives.

The leader nodded, his eyes glinting. He motioned to the group, coming up to a crouch himself. Raising his knife, he readied himself for the charge.

This elephant would not be able to run.

The knife swiped forward. With a deafening roar, the villagers swooped forward as one. The elephant was down in seconds. I watched horrified from my position on the trail as the leader sawed off the young elephant’s tail. The elephant was helpless to defend itself and screamed in pain. Another riled villager cruelly cut the end of her trunk off, causing blood to spurt out in all directions. This was not enough. The villagers all stabbed again and again, venting their anger on the already limp body lying on the ground. The stench of blood filled the air. By the time the last villager was done, the elephant had already been dead for an hour.

Slowly and painfully, I sank to my knees. This was the worst show of violence I had seen in my life. How could this happen? Was the world really that cruel? I would remember this day for the rest of my life.