• Recently, there have been consecutive deaths of elephants in the Nilgiris and other surrounding areas of Coimbatore
• Vikas Muntot, a resident of Coimbatore, decided to organise a Maha Ganapati Yagam and pray for the cause
• Other than that, he appealed to the Forest Department to ensure proper food and water for the elephants in forests

The Hindu mythology boasts of an extremely diverse set of Gods and Goddesses. One of the many Gods is Lord Ganapati or Lord Ganesha, who incidentally has a head of an elephant. He is considered to be the God of wisdom. Ganapati festival is highly popular in Maharashtra and is slowly spreading to other parts of India as well. So, when elephants in certain parts of India started dying consecutively, a man named Vikas Muntot decided to pray to Lord Ganesha for their safety.

Seven elephants had died in the surrounding areas of Coimbatore recently within a short span of time. Originally belonging to Rajasthan, Vikas had been settled in Coimbatore for quite some time now and he wanted to do something about the sudden deaths of these elephants. Evidently, the immediate thing that came to his mind was to organise a puja or Yagam for the purpose. Yagam is a Hindu ritual involving fire and ghee. Yagams are often resorted to in order to inaugurate, purify or consolidate one's desires. In this case, it was Ganapati Yagam because who else other than the Elephant headed God himself would be more concerned about the death of elephants.

Many other people joined Vikas in his endeavor and the Yagam was performed successfully with a very systematic approach. Vikas himself made arrangements for everything and others helped him.

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He also appealed to the Forest Department to arrange for proper water and food for the elephants in the forests so that none of them dies of hunger or thirst at least. "Encroachments in the forest areas also have to be removed by the authorities. Even wild elephants are docile and they will not come our way unless we disturb them. We make them our enemies by lighting crackers," reported The Hindu.

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With the wildlife of India being in extremely harsh natural conditions and scarcity of food and water, the loss of lives of the animals has become inevitable. Even most of the zoos are very reluctant about taking proper care of the animals. It is high time that we take some steps to stop all these things because even though it seems that wildlife does not affect us, it does so to a huge extent. With wild animals getting endangered and extinct, the ecological balance is harmed and therefore it has and it will have a great impact on human life as well. What Vikas Muntot did was commendable and we need to be more like him.

– prepared by Atreyee Sengupta, an intern at NewsGram. Twitter: Etrui14

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