Chasing tuskers for years, film producer Guneet Monga brought the Oscar home with The Elephant Whisperers, a heart-warming story from India's rural hinterland. But this is not a one-off miracle. Monga feels the world is connecting to our stories like never before. Words Sharmi Adhikary
Guneet Monga The Academy Award winning producer of the delightful documentary, The Elephant Whisperers, has never had to chase interesting stories. In fact, Monga humbly admits how tales have always found their way to her - stories, which are intrinsically Indian in spirit, yet so global, that they have been hailed across the world. Monga’s propensity to gravitate towards such attractive and tangible human tales has always stood her in good stead. It has provoked her to sift through the ordinary while retaining in her work, a certain quintessential Indianness that has the capacity to initiate both introspection and engaging dialogues between the presenter and the viewer. For instance, when she heard the story director Yashowardhan Mishra wanted to tell through Kathal (Monga’s upcoming production for Netflix), she thought it was a smartly-written satirical fiction on the police force. But on further probe, it appeared that the incident the movie would talk about has happened in real life. “Isn’t that amazing? We don’t even have to conjure up incidents. India is a cauldron of tales that tick,” says Monga, who continuously derives motivation for her work from the vastness of India's diversity! It was one such beautifullyindigenous culture of coexistence of man with his surroundings that Monga’s Sikhya Entertainment presented before the world through The Elephant Whisperers.
One probably won't be able to watch the award-winning documentary without smiling and tearing up. It’s about elephants (more precisely, Raghu and Ammu) and man (a couple, Bomman and Bellie) being in complete harmony with nature. But much of the narrative is about loss, love and hope. The delightful Tamil documentary shot by Kartiki Gonsalves, real time over a period of four to five years, will warm the cockles of your heart and teach you exactly why we must be indebted to those who have been taking care (and continue to do so) of our forests and its wild inhabitants. A broken human and a broken elephant come together and through the magic of the purest kind of love, they heal each other. This is what makes the story of The Elephant Whisperers so moving, inspiring and uplifting. It also connects to the Hindu philosophy of worshipping nature, which surfaces where Bellie explains how the forest is like a god to the locals and why they don’t wear shoes while walking on the grass as a mark of respect. Bomman is a mahout as well as a priest and the distinction between his work as an elephant caregiver and a priest is smudged the moment he envisages the divine in the baby animals he looks after. “We captured Bomman and Bellie getting married in the documentary. It was a beautiful and fulfilling moment. But more significantly, these two humans were bonding over a period and taking care of each other. This sense of heartfelt
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