A Young Perspective on Human-Animal Conflict

This is a story about a little girl Bumoni in an Assam village who sees wild elephants on a fairly regular basis because they come to eat the bananas growing in her backyard that she herself loves and needs to eat. From an adult’s point of view, this is a situation of human-animal conflict. But Bumoni thinks of an innovative, compassionate way to keep the herds away from her family’s banana crop. Then she goes a step further and comes up with a way to keep the elephants away from the village fields.

In our world, as a rule, literature follows life. But in the case of Bumoni’s Banana Trees, life seems to follow literature. About five years after this story was written, it was reported that a cluster of villages in central Assam had actually followed the practice of setting aside a meal zone for wild elephants to keep them off their crops (www.thehindu.com, Aug. 13, 2019).

Intended for the 4+ age group Bumoni’s Banana Trees will stay with the young reader/listener for years and ask for multiple readings at different ages. In fact, this book will continue to appeal to the reader right up to the pre-teen years. The ostensibly simple storyline has two major threads: 1. A way of life totally in consonance with nature where nothing is wasted (all parts of a banana tree find usage in everyday life);