Ujjwal Das is the last man standing in Patalpur. Well, the last farming family anyway.
When elephants tore down his home last October, that made it the eighth time in the past 10 years that his mud-walled house in Patalpur village was flattened by marauding pachyderms.
It was harvest time and the monsoons had also arrived – the months of asharh and shraban. The herd had travelled roughly 200 kilometres across hills and forests and reached the village of Patalpur at the base of some hills. They stopped first on the banks of the Siddheswari, a tributary of Mayurakshi where they rested for a while. That’s about a kilometre from the village. Then hungry after their long journey of roughly 200 kms, the herd headed towards the fields with standing crops.
“We went with flaming torches to drive them away, risking our lives,” says Prasenjit, the younger son of Chandana and Ujjwal Das. “Many times, elephants have come and destroyed the [ripe] paddy in the fields. If the elephants eat all the crops, what are we supposed to eat?”
It’s not just the loss of paddy that Das is worried about. The family also grow potatoes, gourds, tomatoes and pumpkins, as well as banana and papaya on their 14 bighas (approximately 8.6 acres).
And then Ujjwal Das is no ordinary farmer – his pumpkins won him a state award, the Krishak Ratna given annually to the best-performing farmer from every block in the state. He won it from the Rajnagar block in 2016 and 2022. He received a cash prize of Rs. 10,000 and a certificate.







