My name is Kishore Sahu. I live in a village called Patpal, in the Bankura district of West Bengal. As the cold month of pous falls over our land—what you city babus call December-January—the belly of our fields grows heavy with potatoes; the rice shoots up in green stems, and the yellow-flowered mustard.

But we have learnt not to look ahead to a good harvest. For us, this is a time of fear. None of us go to the famous pous mela in Santiniketan. We get ready to heat up the hula. And get ready for the elephants.

The hula is an iron rod, 6 feet long with a pointed tip. We make the tip red-hot, and jab it into the elephants who come at this time of the year. They come from the Dalma hills in Bihar. They go to the Jaypur forest. Then they travel back. And my village falls in their way. And the elephants come, and trample our fields! Our hard work vanishes under their feet!

The forest department babus always promise to help, but are never there when the elephants come. What are we to do? So we burst crackers, and yell and shout, and in frustration jab the hula into their hides to turn them away from our fields, our harvest.

I suppose the elephants get angry, too. Certainly there was this big she-elephant last year whose eyes were rolling here and there as Kolu got near her, and she just squashed him! Dhania became a widow, my sister.

But let me tell you what happened five years ago. From December 29 to January 2, every village in Bankura and Hugli and Bardhamman went on an elephant alert. While going to Jaypur forest, 60 elephants took a route that took them in the opposite direction, and brought them into Senai village in Hugli district. My friend Sriraj Panda, who lives there, often recalls the incident: "You know, it was the first time we saw wild elephants. Early in the morning, we heard loud squeals, as if many trumpets were blowing! We just gathered around and stared. Then one or two of us threw stones. Everytime an elephant got hit, we’d cheer."

In Senai, too, things got out of hand. A man was crushed to death, and the elephants were stoned till they ran away.

Then for three days the elephants ran from village to village, out of Hugli district into Bardhamman and back. In Mogra, two were trampled. Dadpur villagers captured a three-month-old calf, and would have killed it, but the elders stopped them. One of the stories we heard at that time was that they would reach Calcutta itself, and that our Chief Minister Jyoti babu himself was asking questions! Prabir babu —a big Hugli politician—himself arranged a 3-km roadblock on the Grand Trunk Road. One of the calves that had strayed was sent to Calcutta zoo.

Ghoshbabu, our schoolteacher, followed the whole thing. He kept saying: "Those elephants are frightened! Scared, helpless!" I once asked him why the elephants had run around like this. He told me it was because they were looking for a proper path to go to Jaypur, which he said they used as a feeding ground. He said things would be worse in the future. The elephants’ behaviour proved they were not getting enough to eat in the Dalma hills. The forests there were disappearing, he said.

"Oh, so it’s because of hunger, enh? Just like us?" I asked him. He nodded. I looked down at the ground and told him, "Then our fight against the elephants will become a battle, Ghoshbabu. A battle for survival."