A Trunk Full of Tales: Seventy Years With The Indian Elephant

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Item Code: IDI506
Author: Dhriti K.Lahiri Choudhury
Publisher: Permanent Black
Edition: 2006
ISBN: 8178241668
Pages: 237 (B & W Illus: 24, Maps: 4)
Cover: Hardcover
Other Details 8.6" X 5.6
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Shipped to 153 countries
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100% Made in India
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Book Description
From the Jacket

Most children learn about the facts of life from birds and bees. The present author's wisdom in this crucial area came from hearing stories about the private lives of elephants (of which his family owned seventeen). Dr Lahiri-Choudhury was fed elephant's milk as a child, and though he graduated to other liquids by and by, those first draughts infused him with at least one passion that might appropriately be termed elephantine.

Dhriti 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 his country ended this lifestyle, but not his obsession with elephant.

Over seventy years he trawled the forests of Lower Assam, Barak Valley, West Bengal, Meghalaya. Arunachal Pradesh and Orissa, as well as Uttaranchal, Mudumalai, Bandipur, and Periyar. His experience with elephants includes tracking them in undivided Assam, penetrating remote areas in pursuit of declared mankilling rogues He surveyed the status and distribution of elephants, studied man-elephant conflicts, and analysed the problems of managing elephants in the wild. He journeyed over thousands of miles of hazardous roads and 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-killer, was sometimes from as close as a few feet.

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: a wildlife memoir peppered with anecdotes, shot through with humour and irony, perfectly combining story-telling and scholarship.

Back of the Book

Dhriti K. Lahiri-Choudhury is an unlikely elephant expert. He has a Ph. D. in English Literature from Leeds University. He was Professor and Head, Department of English, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta. In his parallel life as elephant specialist, he is a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He was a member of the task force outlining Indian's 'Project Elephant', and, later, its coordinator for eastern and north-eastern India. He writes in both English and Bengali. His published work on elephants includes (as editor) the great Indian Elephant Book' (in Bengali) Hati O Banjangaler Katha (Tales of Elephants and Forests); as well as technical manuals, scientific reports, and popular writings.

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations and Mapsix
Preface1
SECTION ONE: ELEPHANTS AND THEIR WAYS
1Growing up with Elephants9
2Lalji, the Elephant Baba19
3Mammoth Love29
4Take a Makna by the Tail32
5Gabbar Singh and Chomsky in Dalma36
6The Saga of Harjit46
SECTION TWO: ROGUES AND MARAUDERS
7Rogues and Marauders53
8Initiation: Cachar, October 196062
9Bloodletting: Cachar, October 196185
10Dead Giant: Garo Hills, October 196798
11Red Eye: Garo Hills, October 1968112
12A Ghostly Visitor: Garo Hills, December 1968120
13The Makna of Mahadeo: Garo Hills, December 1969, April 1970132
14Identity Crisis: North Bengal, June, July 1975145
15Teenage Aggression: North Bengal, July 1988157
SECTION THREE: MANAGING ELEPHANTS IN THE WILD
16Introducing Dalma183
17Return to Sender: East Medinipur, 1987-1988187
18Vet in the Forest: East Medinipur, 1991198
19Right of Way: Chinsurah, 1993203
20A Collar too Tight: East Medinipur, 1995213
21Elephant in a Krall: West Medinipur, 1995220
22The Indian Elephant: A Window on the Future229
Glossary235
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