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| Nafeesa, Ponkuzhi forest near Muthanga Check Post, Wynad |
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Keralite husbands going to remote corners of the world to run their families is quite common. Not so common is a wife who lives alone in the wild forest to run her family living elsewhere.
One such person is Nafeesa of Ponkuzhi forest near Muthanga Check Post, Wynad. She runs a small shop catering to adivasis and interstate travelers along the Kerala-Karnataka border. As night falls, she climbs up the thatched hut atop a tree, where she sleeps alone, unmindful of the wild elephants that cross her habitat on their way to the waterholes. Her husband Hasan Koya lives with their children further away at Thakarappadi and visits her place once in a while only.
Does she fear wild elephants? Why should one fear them, she asks. Rather it is the men whom she fears. There is reason for this. Even though her present abode is a sign of the mercy of the Forest Department, she had to dismantle her petty shop 5 times due to the whimsical actions of the department.
It was the wild elephants that were instrumental in her shifting from their ancestral agricultural land near Muthanga. When the wild tuskers started ransacking crops just before harvest, and beating some men to death, many families moved out of the place. Nafeesa’s family was one such.
She has a vantage view of the learning process among baby elephants. As these naughty ones sometimes try to pull down her shop, the mother elephant would pull them back give them a slap!
Nafeesa climbing up the ladder to her home
Courtesy: V.R.Jyothish, Vanitha, September 15-30, 2003
Contributed by: Administrator
