Loneliest elephant inspires city team to start a book sharing initiative

On the remembrance day of the elephant doctor, Dr K on December 9, the citybased Akarmaa Foundation has launched an initiative called Trunk Trails. 

“Thannaram Publications, a part of Cuckoo Forest School, took this particular chapter and printed a separate book titled Yaanai Doctor. They printed 300 copies of the book and we have got 100 copies. 

We launched this initiative to spread smiles through books and to understand how beautiful it is to be connected by books. We will be creating a book trail — the books will be gifted to interested students and soon after reading the book, the student should write their name and date and pass it on to the next student. It can be their friends or schoolmates,” quips Kaushik of Akarmaa Foundation. 

On December 1, elephant Kaavan, ‘former, world’s loneliest elephant’, had his first interaction with a fellow elephant at the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary, after eight long years of forlorn and 35 years of captivity. News reports say that Kaavan has been exploring his new home in a happy environment. 

“Trunk Trails can be dedicated to the happiness of elephant Kaavan. Shared joy is double joy and I would like to emphasise the popular quote: you are not done with a book until you pass it to another reader. The book that you have read today and shared might come back to your hands years or even decades later. We believe that this initiative could connect a lot of students through a single book. 

Think of this scenario: what the writer wrote alone, you read alone, someone had read it alone and the person after will read alone... All of us reading alone with each other. We hope to see changes in the way people approach book reading and sharing the books,” he says.