The elephant smeared all over by coal dust stops a truck to collect its ?toll? ? food ? on the Chaibasa-Kiriburu Road

Jamshedpur, Dec. 14: Crying in a dense forest ? Aranya Rudan ? is usually futile. But that, in any case, is the title of a 32-minute documentary film on the conflict between man and nature in West Singhbhum.

Directed by New Delhi-based journalist-filmmaker Prabal Mahto, the film has been accepted for screening at the international short-film festival at Mumbai in February, 2006.

Trucks carrying iron-ore on the Chaibasa-Kiriburu Road, recalls Mahto, are often stopped by a tusker. The elephant regularly strays on to the road in search of food and has learnt to gently knock on the trucks and demand his share. Generally it costs truckers a dozen chapatis, fruits or a bunch of bananas before being allowed to proceed.

So familiar is the sight of the tusker blocking the road that drivers have started calling it the ?DFO (divisional forest officer) of Noamundi? points out the filmmaker. The DFO, he adds, plays a crucial role in the film and highlights how elephants are being driven out of the forests by increasing mining activity in West Singhbhum and a progressive dearth of food and drinking water.

Ashok Kumar, DFO, Chaibasa,endorses the tale. The tusker, he said, was not wild at all. On the contrary, it was far too gentle and had started visiting neighbouring villages to beg for food.

Occasionally, he did stray on the road, Kumar acknowledged, due to increasing mining in the region. Indiscriminate mining, says Mahto, has destroyed hills, forest and water bodies in the area, forcing wild beasts to go out and beg. It is a miracle that the DFO of Noamundi has survived so long. Many other tuskers would have been killed by smugglers of ivory.

?When I saw this tusker for the first time,? recalls Mahto, ?I too felt that a forest officer was blocking the way; through the plight of this homeless elephant I have tried to establish a relationship between the past and the present.? The man-animal conflict has reached dangerous proportions in Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand, feels the filmmaker.

The film also deals with the plight of villagers who are deprived of their livelihood for so-called ?development?. Through a character called Sango Ho, the village headman, and the plight of his daughter, Ladgu, the director has tried to bring out the mental suffering of villagers due to mining activity and movement of outsiders.