Nature Without Borders

The Story of Suprita

Buy Ambien Cr Canada In one instant of random chaos, a carefree schoolgirl and an enraged elephant crossed paths. This is their story

Kalyan Varma
Environmental Photojournalist

https://www.skipintros.com/photos/98539/11lrpz0x61 https://www.eastcotesignanddisplay.co.uk/ij08c2cjn0 It was seven in the morning.

https://comercialfuentes.com/lh1e9h3fgpe The air hung heavy with the heady fragrance of jasmine, tuberose, turmeric and sandal paste, mixed in with smoke from the ceremonial fire.

Can You Safely Buy Ambien Online The high-pitched excitement of arriving guests and the laughing chatter of those already settled into the serried rows of plastic seats competed with the blare of Kannada film songs from loudspeakers positioned at the four corners of the hall.

follow site Theertha threaded her way through the happy chaos, busy on some self-imposed errand. Preparations had been on since very early in the morning; there was not much left to be done – but it was a wedding after all. Her nephew Girish was to be married that day, and no family wedding ever feels complete without a lot of purposeful scurrying around to no purpose at all.

https://menteshexagonadas.com/2024/01/31/74u3n12z She had woken up hours earlier and, in the pre-dawn light, dressed carefully in her new sari – shiny green, with gold flecks and a border embroidered with gold motifs – before leaving home at five in the morning to catch the bus to the get link kalyana mantapam in town.

https://overflowdata.com/uncategorized/hl6ro40b Her heart lifted with pride at the sight of Girish in the traditional gold-bordered dhoti and turban of the groom, but her mind was back home with her daughter. She pictured Suprita, nose buried in her books, busy with eleventh hour preparation for the board exam that would conclude her final year in school.

Buy Ambien From Usa She will be here soon enough after her exam, Theertha told herself, her smile wide at the memory of her daughter’s excitement at the new clothes and gold chain her father had bought for her to wear to the wedding.

enter **

Ambien Dosage Purchase Inside https://bakingbrew.com/recipe/fu68sxi the house — a two-storey brick and tile structure with fading green walls and windows of a washed-ivory whiteness, nestling in the midst of a Kodagu coffee estate – there was little relief from the building heat of the bright summer morning.

Ambien Cr Online Suprita glanced at the wall clock for the tenth time in as many minutes, decided that she really had no more time for last minute study, and scrambled into her blue and green Can You Buy Ambien In Mexico churidar with the matching blue Zolpidem To Buy In Uk dupatta

https://ipaxcabinetsdirect.com/uncategorized/3esnjf5z The 10th standard board exam weighed heavy on her mind. Today was English – her least favorite subject. She was prepared, she had told her mother the previous night; she hoped to get decent marks.

https://bakingbrew.com/recipe/khd2s1z2h9 She gulped down her glass of milk, smiling at the taste of the Horlicks powder that had been stirred into it. She stopped for a moment in front of the glass showcase in the living room, home to assorted idols of Ganesha.

https://feriadelavivienda.co/z5e4fykts0 Her favorite was the one her father had hand-carved in wood. She paused before it in silent prayer. Suprita did not pray every day, but today was English, and she could use every bit of help she could get.

get link Slinging her book-bag over her shoulder, she grabbed the handlebar of her cycle and raced out through the gate, running up the narrow lane to the junction where it joined the road. Her friend Lakshmi was already there, waiting. With her were two other classmates, both in street clothes. Ayyo! Go home and change, Suprita scolded them — the headmaster has ordered that we should wear our uniforms. Do you want to be sent home and miss the exam?

enter The two ran back to their homes to change. Suprita and Lakshmi, chattering and giggling, pushed the bicycle up the slope. It was too hot to pedal up the steep incline.

https://www.larochellevb.com/2024/01/31/d82r9alhcw It was 7:40 AM.

Ambien Brand Online Prema smiled to himself as he watched his daughter’s headlong rush through the gate, and went back to fixing the sprinkler that had been causing problems all week. His day had begun much earlier, when he went to drop his wife Teertha at the bus-stand at five in the morning.

http://www.kantamotwani.com/rajjt8m4 Back home, he had looked in on his daughter, who was buried in her books. He warmed milk for her, and stirred in a heaped spoonful of Horlicks. He had never done that before; afterwards, he could never explain the impulse that had made him do it that day.

https://www.broommanufacturers.com/2024/01/31/vl0o7htgi As his daughter disappeared up the lane, Prema bent over the sprinkler. Times were hard and help was difficult to find — the young men of the village were migrating to the cities, where there were better jobs to be had; the few who were left demanded higher wages. Of late, he was doing much of the work on the estate on his own.

watch From the distance came a rumbling sound. He paused in his work, his senses on alert. He knew elephants; he knew their moods, and every nuance of their calls. Sure enough, he heard the sound he had learnt to dread: the chilling trumpet blast of an enraged elephant.

watch Shiva, his son, rushed out of the house and ran towards his bike. “Let’s find out what happened,” he called to his father as he ran.

Prema advised caution. The last thing we need to do, he told his son, is to rush headlong on a bike towards an angry elephant. “Let’s wait and see!”

As they spoke, two girls in uniform approached the gate. Prema recognized them as his daughter’s classmates. They said they thought the sound had come from a nearby hill, and promised to be extra careful on their way to school.

Prema felt relieved –the children were aware there was an elephant in the vicinity. Suprita loved elephants; she knew their moods. She would be careful.

Two weeks earlier, as his daughter’s exams neared, he had taken his family to the temple at Subramanya. Suprita had offered up money and two coconuts, and been blessed by the temple elephant. Prema grinned to himself as he remembered his daughter’s excitement when the elephant laid its trunk on her head.

The trumpeting stopped; the peace and quiet of the estate enveloped them again. Relieved, he decided it was too hot to continue working, and wandered off indoors for a shower.

The telephone rang. Instinctively, he glanced at the clock. It was nearing eight.

**

Afterwards, no one knew exactly what had happened. Much was hypothesis and conjecture — little fragments painstakingly stitched into the most probable narrative.

The two friends, Suprita and Lakshmi, pushed their bikes along, engrossed in their chatter and oblivious to a big elephant grazing amongst the tall bushes that fringed the sides of the road. The girls walked on and at some point, unconsciously stepped into the elephant’s personal space.

It charged. The panic-stricken girls dropped their bicycles, turned around, and ran for their lives. Suprita, the fitter of the two, was slightly ahead. “Ooodu… Ooodu…”, she exhorted her friend as she ran.

There was a house some forty meters down the road. It was their best refuge. Suprita ran headlong towards it.

Lakshmi slipped and fell. The elephant ignored the fallen girl and charged after Suprita, gaining with every foot.

Suprita reached the house. As she reached out to open the gate, she glanced back over her shoulder to check on her friend. At that same moment two dogs inside the compound, disturbed by the commotion, began to bark. Suprita was startled, momentarily distracted.

Her hesitation lasted just seconds, but it was enough. The elephant caught up with her.

**

The inhabitants of the house, alerted by the sudden commotion, came out into the yard and looked around, but could see nothing amiss.

Up the road, Lakshmi picked herself up, still in the grip of fright. She could see no sign of the elephant, or of her friend. She hurried towards the junction; the few people she met there had not seen Suprita either.

Lakshmi retraced her steps. The locals joined in the search.

They found Suprita’s body in a trench, just 20 meters away from the house that would have sheltered her. Her schoolbag was still on her back.

Prema froze at the sound of the telephone, prey to premonition. An instant later he heard Shiva’s voice, raised in alarm.

“Something has happened to Suprita!”

Prema rushed out of the bathroom, pulling on his shirt as he ran. He jumped on the bike as Shiva let in the clutch and raced it up the hill. At the top, they found a cluster of people. One of them, a neighbor, knelt by the road, a body cradled in his arms.

“See, child, your father has come…” he was saying as the bike raced up and skidded to a stop. “Open your eyes, baby… look…”

Prema laid his palm on his daughter’s cheek. “She was cold,” he recalled later.

A neighbor telephoned Prema’s brother, who lived in the nearby town of Kodlipet. When Prasanna drove up in his car, Prema climbed into the back seat. The neighor tenderly laid Suprita’s body in his lap.

The ancient Maruti 800, with Prasanna at the wheel and Shiva beside him, wheezed up the hill. In the back seat Prema, too shell-shocked for tears, ran gentle fingers over his daughter’s face, brushing away the dirt.

At Kodilpet hospital, Dr Thomas examined the child and pronounced her dead on arrival.

There were a few bruises, particularly on Suprita’s cheek. Her Ambien Mexico Online churidar was slightly torn. Otherwise, there was no visible sign of injury. She looked like she was sleeping, Prema recalled later.

After a more thorough examination, Dr Thomas said a couple of ribs were broken. More crucially, Suprita’s brain had suffered some trauma.

They reckoned that the elephant must have caught up Suprita in its trunk, bag and all, and flung her away in the midst of its enraged rush.

As nearly as Dr Thomas could tell, Suprita had died of fright.

**

At the wedding hall, the bustle of breakfast was over. Happy guests hung around in clusters, chatting. Off to one side, Theertha and her sister began putting together the http://www.kantamotwani.com/9kopohyc thamboolam, the auspicious gift that guests would take home after the wedding. As they worked, they caught up on gossip, sharing stories of the guests they had met.

A relative walked over and beckoned to her sister. Theertha kept working, mechanically putting together one coconut, a few betel leaves, a couple of betel nuts and a stick of turmeric in the decorated bags embellished with the name of the couple.

It was some time before she had the uneasy sense that something was wrong. She looked up from her work and noticed that family members were gathered in little knots, whispering to one another. She caught a few furtive glances in her direction. In that instant, she sensed that something had gone terribly wrong.

A cousin detached himself from one of the groups and walked towards her.

_________

Read the second part of this series War of the worlds and the third The Elephants must go

Order Ambien Overnight Note: The events above have been recreated through extensive interviews with family members, friends of the dead schoolgirl, and neighbors. It is the first in a narrative series on the elephants of Hassan. This story is part of the Nature without Borders project. Illustrations by Tosha Jagad with the help of Divya Mudappa

20 thoughts on “The Story of Suprita”

  1. Dear Mr.Varma, am waiting to read the next instalment. I didn’t realise until now how journalism, investigative journalism, with deep research and compelling writing actually has the power to influence. Keep at it. I want to know what people think of this man vs.beast argument and if it’s a unsolvable conundrum that us at an impasse. Thank you for this.

    • Kalyan Varma
      June 3, 2015

      Thank you Renuka. This project is not just to influence people, but to lay out the ground realities of the conflict which very few people sitting in urban areas understand, yet these are the people who make the decisions for these rural landscapes.

  2. :'(

  3. Vinod Nair
    June 3, 2015

    Good Job Kalyan, Printing it to read it on my way back home form office…by Train
    Regards and good luck-Vinod Nair

  4. Kishore Murthy
    June 3, 2015

    Deeply moving. Thank you for opening a window into a reality of living in an area where human vs animal conflict is something people deal with on a daily basis and every so often pay the price with their own life or the life of a loved one.

  5. This is heartbreaking. My partner was once saved by his motorbike which was between him and an elephant he was trying to photograph. He still feels afraid when he remembers the angry subject of a picture that he couldn’t take.

    On a different note, this is very well written and I love the illustrations. Will there be a compilation of these narratives as a book?

    • Kalyan Varma
      June 4, 2015

      Kavita, eventually yes. But this is a long narrative and over the next few weeks, we will be posting more detailed account of how these things play out.

  6. Shynil Hashim
    June 4, 2015

    Kalyan, the recollection of the account and it’s writing is as influential as your photographs. Keep at it.

  7. Devalina
    June 4, 2015

    I am so impressed by this tory. But I am also scared that people who are not sensitive to the issue of man-animal conflicts (as you say, urban dwellers nd those who suffer due to dangerously faulty policies) and do not see them as resultant to bad planning, faulty policies and environmental degradation – will use a story like this precisely to destroy our natural wildlife habitations. would love to use this story in a children’s workshop on environment and nature.

  8. rakhee karumbaya
    June 4, 2015

    Very descriptive writing Kalyan and very evocative.

  9. Varma, Hello!

    I am an IISc alumnus. I think we met when you worked for IISc in Mudumalai forests.

    Keep writing.
    Regards

  10. Jacquie Whobrey
    June 8, 2015

    Thank you so very much for this story. I live in British Columbia, far away from interactions with elephants, and yet your words took me to another world.
    With much anticipation I await more stories. Again, thank you!

  11. Swapna Sagi
    June 15, 2015

    My heart broke at the young girl’s plight. You are doing a fabulous job with the blog. I had absolutely no idea about the man-animal conflicts until I came across your blog. Thank you for spreading the awareness. Keep up the good work !

  12. Powerful narrative. A story of man-animal conflict – hard to tell who the victim is but easy to say who the offenders are. Keep up the good work!

  13. Exciting writing and beautifully illustrated….also terribly sad…thanks for this Kalyan..

  14. Shreya Sethuraman
    July 15, 2015

    Dear Mr Varma,

    You write beautifully, recreating each and every scene through your words. While the ending is not necessarily a cliffhanger (a term we’ve grown to use ad nauseam), it creates a certain sense of shock and awe — and that familiar lump in the throat.

    Thank you so much for writing this, Sir.

    Warm regards,
    Shreya

  15. very tragic story indeed. for they are worshiped as Gods.moods do sometimes change, very hard to predict on the face of predicament.

  16. Mohan Krishnappa
    October 27, 2015

    Everytime i go to our beautiful forests – Western ghats, i always thought how do these tribes manage their lives every single day. As we have seen some images of tribes encountering these mammals while doing their day to day activity. Sometimes, i used to get this endless loop of dreams where i never could imagine nor i could complete the dream how it would be… after feeling your narration, now i can get through a part of it… great work and wish to meet you sometime..

  17. megha sridhar
    June 12, 2016

    The story is very well written… I have been wondering though. .is there any way a person facing such an angry elephant can help himself or the excited animal? ?

  18. Not since R.K. Narayan did my world stop as I was transported…. You are not just a nature lover, but a writer with tremendous skills. I’m waiting for your next..
    Thanks Tara..