A Trunk Full of Tales

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* * *Dhriti Kanta Lahiri Choudhury is a former game hunter who favours

commercial culling of elephants in India.* *A Trunk Full of Tales : Seventy

Years with the Indian Elephant*

Author: Choudhury, Dhriti K. Lahiri

Year: 2006

 

ISBN : 8178241668

 

[ pp. 237 ]

*[ Price: RS. 495.00, US$ 11.65 ]*

 

 

*Main Features* »

Most children learn about the facts of life from birds and bees. The

author's wisdom in this crucial area came from hearing about the private

lives of elephants, of which his family owned seventeen. D. K. Lahiri

Choudhury grew up in Mymensingh district, now in Bangladesh, inhabiting a

near mythic feudal world of household elephants, shikar, Indian classical

music, and good food. The partition of the country ended this lifestyle, but

not his obsession with elephants. Over seventy years, he has trawled the

forests of Lower Assam, Barak Valley, West Bengal, Meghalaya, Arunachal

Pradesh and Orissa, as well as Uttaranchal, Mudumalai, Bandipur, and Periyar

in quest of the elephant. All this makes A Trunk Full of Tales unique: a

wildlife memoir peppered with anecdotes, shot through with humour and irony,

and always marked with a deep knowledge of elephants. Lahiri Choudhury's

experience with elephants includes tracking them in undivided Assam,

penetrating remote areas in chase of declared man-killing rogues. He has

surveyed the status and distribution of elephants, studied man–elephant

conflict and the problem of managing elephants in the wild. He has journeyed

over thousands of miles of hazardous roads, walked through the north-eastern

forests of India, learning to read the language of the jungle. His

acquaintance with wild elephants, some of them man-killers, was sometimes

from as close as a few feet, and he narrates his attempts to manage straying

herds and killer rogues with wry humour. For those who have wondered where

Jim Corbett's descendants are, here is the answer. This book is in the best

tradition of writing about animals, combining storytelling and science.