Director and scriptwriter Sreekumar Arookutty, with six years of TV running time and more than 270 episodes of ‘E4 Elephant’ programme that talked, breathed and smelled of elephants, has covered another lap of his elephantine journey with the upcoming documentary Azhakindey Thamburan.
The documentary will be released on the Thrissur Pooram day on the temple premises.
Unlike ‘E4 Elephant’- an encyclopedia on elephants, the documentary is a musical video on the life of the famous tusker ‘Thiruvambadi Sivasundar’. “Thiruvambadi Sivasundar is the one who carries the ‘thidambu’ for Thiruvambadi Devaswom. This ‘Sahyaputhran’ is one among the few remaining elephants in the state with all the best characteristics an elephant should have,” says Sreekumar.
The documentary narrates the story of ‘Thiruvambadi Sivasundar’, his life as a calf and subsequent association with the humans. “His story is an interesting one, of sacrifice. It was actually his mother who was captured in the trap hole years back. Seeing his mother trapped, Sivasundar went berserk. But, the people who captured his mother were mesmerised by the handsome and well-built calf, so they left his mother to jungle and brought Sundar to human world,” narrates Sreekumar.
“He is a fascinating animal. Once he got a chance to return to the jungle. His then owner Pookodan Francis said that if Sundar wants to come, he will return. And after 18 days, Sundar came back to his master,” says Sreekumar. “Another interesting thing is that Thiruvambadi Sivasundar, in his 40 years of existence, hasn’t killed a single human being,” adds Sreekumar who spent eight long years to compile the documentary.
On the 1-hour-26-minute documentary, Sreekumar says, “Documentary is shot in a story-telling format leaving out all the dryness of the usual documentary format. To add more colour to it, there is music and song. The interviews of the most-highly regarded people in the field are included in the documentary,” he said.
The film has interviews of traditional physician for elephants and toxicologist Avanaparambu Maheswaran Namboodiripad, writer Madambu Kunjukuttan and elephant expert Dr K C Panicker.
Sundar Menon is the producer of the documentary. “He was the last owner of Sivasundar and the person who offered the elephant before the Thiruvambadi deity in 1992. For him, Sivasundar is like his own son. Before one year, everyone thought Sivasundar’s end has come as the elephant was ailing from a severe disease, but Sundar Menon never agreed,” says Sreekumar who has penned the story for the 1996 Jayaraj’s National award winning film Desadanam.
Interestingly, Sreekumar’s documentary on an elephant will be released in a unique way on April 20. “It will be released on Thrissur Pooram before the Paarmekaav Temple. The first copy of the CD will be handed over to tuskers Paramekkavu Padmanabhan and Paramekkavu Rajendran,” says Sreekumar. The cost of the DVD is `100.