“After climbing the highest peak in Silent Valley, the Anginda peak (7,818 feet), we were walking down to our camp in Sispara through mist-laden trekking paths. Visibility was poor. Suddenly, right in front of me, may be ten feet away, was a Black Panther, like an apparition from another world. Instead of fear what enveloped me was a primeval respect for one of the most magnificent mammals of the Western Ghats: the Black Panther. Though I had my camera and tripod on my shoulder, by the time I realised it, the black beauty had vanished like a ghost into the thick white ethereal mist!” recalls ace naturalist and photographer Suresh Elamon while talking about his fascination for the magnificent Silent Valley, the last remaining rain forest of Kerala.
His film, Kananam, The Spirit of Silent Valley , was the inaugural film of the annual Kadakam Wildlife and Environment Film Festival at Palakkad, organised every year by Silent Valley National Park and Kerala State Chalachitra Academy. Produced by the Kerala State Film Development Corporation, the nearly 28-minute film is a visual treat of the flora and fauna of the ecological haven that is Silent Valley National Park.
Neelakkurinji in full bloom
The camera pans the canopy of the thick verdant forests and then suddenly zooms in to catch the ephemeral beauty of a dragonfly sunning itself on a leaf and then pulls back again to focus on the birds of the forest. Breathtaking visuals capture the panaromic expanse of the forest and its inhabitants, many of which are endemic to the Western Ghats. Gurgling brooks, roaring waterfalls and the quietly flowing stream capture the many moods of the Kunthi river that nourishes the Silent Valley National Park.
History of the national park
The film narrates the history of the Silent Valley and British scientists and botanists who documented the rich floral wealth of the valley by clambering into the valley from Ooty. Many of the latter-day explorers were guided by Hamasakka, a mail runner for the British, and Lacchiappan.
The Silent Valley National Park is also a powerful paradigm of a popular people’s movement in the Eighties that stopped a dam that would have flooded vast swathes of the pristine forest. The film documents the contributions of the leading lights of the struggle that saw eminent environmentalists, scientists and naturalists joining hands with writers, poets and artists to protect the Silent Valley from the axe.
In fact, Suresh had first visited Silent Valley in 1977 with a few friends from Thiruvananthapuram. “That was the time when the flame of save Silent Valley movement was just spreading. From then on, I have been visiting Silent Valley whenever I got a chance. But the longest period before this filming project was in 1997-98 to take photographs for a book Whispers of Reason , brought out by the Kerala Forest Department. Then, I had covered most of the areas inside the park,” he recalls.
Suresh began doing documentaries from 2001 and “one of my pet dreams even then was to do a film on Silent Valley”. But due to many reasons it did not take off. Finally, in 2017 Silpa V. Kumar, the then Director of Silent Valley National Park, and Pramod Krishnan, Chief Conservator of Forests, came forward with a proposal of doing a film on Silent Valley.
“My only demand was that I should be given one year to do the film, which would cover all the seasons. That was readily agreed. So the project started in February 2017 and ended in 2018. I made about 10 trips to the Valley to do the filming,” explains Suresh.
While he did the filming by himself, he has included shots from his son, cinematographer Sudeep Elamon’s stock photos and so his name also appears in the credits.
V. Balachandran, an ardent wildlife enthusiast, took care of the research and script. Instead of merely documenting the ecological wealth of the Silent Valley, the documentary includes vignettes of the struggle to save the valley.
Saving Silent Valley
It shows how herpetologist and conservationist Romulus Whittaker who visited the Silent Valley in 1972 was one of the first to raise the alarm against the plan to build a dam and submerge hectares of forest. Soon, many voices from all over India were raised against the project and it snowballed into a powerful movement against the dam. Suresh managed to speak to many of those who had led the protests against the dam, stalwarts such as activists of Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) led by M.P. Parameswaran, Professor M.K. Prasad, poet and activist B. Sugthakumari and so on who also pay homage to the departed writers, lecturers, ecologists, geologists and many more leaders who worked effortlessly to stop the dam. Ornithologist Dr. Salim Ali described Silent Valley as “one of the richest, most threatened and least studied habitats on earth” during the anti-dam campaign.
Significantly, the film highlights how The Hindu was perhaps the first newspaper in the national media to speak up in support of the Silent Valley with strongly worded editorials ‘Save the Silent Valley’ on August 10, 1979 and ‘An Ecocide That Should Be Stopped’on January 11, 1980. More well-researched articles, features and reports followed that highlighted why Silent Valley had to be conserved. “It was not an easy job. Balachandran and I had to search far and wide for press cuttings related to the Silent Valley movement of those times,” says Suresh.
The contributions of Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, are succinctly outlined by Jairam Ramesh, former Enviroment Minister. Although politicians all across the spectrum in Kerala were pushing for the dam, Indira Gandhi chose to weigh in the environmental costs of the dam and decided to put a stop to it.
So what were his memorable encounters in the heart of Silent Valley?
Suresh Elamon with Mari
“To be honest, every moment, every day spent in Silent Valley. In almost all the trips, my guide and companion was Mari, son of the legendary tribal watcher Lachiappan of Silent Valley. Another memorable incident was during a trek from Bankitapal to Sispara in November, 2017. We chanced upon an area of grassland where Kurinji had flowered after 12 years. It was an absolutely beautiful and soul-enriching experience, especially because I had not expected to see ‘kurinji’ flowering in Silent Valley at all.”
The Silent Valley is home to
Mammals: 41 species
Birds: 211
Reptiles: 49
Amphibians: 46
Butterflies: 164
Flora: Over 2,000 species
