Watch | ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ Bomman, Bellie move on; neither pain of separation nor pleasure of Academy Award stops them

After the Oscar for Best Documentary Short was announced for ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ in a glitzy ceremony, far away in Los Angeles, U.S., the director Kartiki Gonsalves thanked on that podium, Bomman and Bellie for sharing their tribal vision that helped her make the movie. Bomman is now taking care of two elephant calves in Dharmapuri, also in Western Tamil Nadu, orphaned when the mothers were electrocuted by the illegal electrical fencing of a farm there, quite like the elephant Raghu in the documentary. I’m worried about the little one,” he says, his worry reminding us of his loving chide of Raghu, in the Netflix documentary, for losing his bell in the river, the bell that would protect him, the bell that would lead Bomman to his elephant-son, in case he is lost in the forest. While she is happy, that on one hand, the two elephants she raised are the source of so much international attention, she adds, tearfully: “How can I be fully happy when my elephants are no longer with me?” She fondly recalls the moment when Raghu arrived at the Theppakadu Elephant Camp, wounded emaciated, and with very little hope of survival.