“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” — Bible: Genesis 1:26In the evolution of Planet Earth, God created a vast range of aquatic, terrestrial and arboreal living creatures, from the lowliest earthworm to the mammoth elephant — each to live his destined lifespan in the symbiotic coexistence of harmony. He invested in man the cerebral genetic implant capable of comprehending and implementing that structured nature of the benign functional symbiosis, universally. Yet today, whether in kinetically the most lethal wholescale destruction of parcels of ‘The Living Planet’ in Ukraine, Gaza Strip, Iran and lately flash floods in Nepal, the loss of lives other than the Homo sapiens remains woefully unmourned.When I saw the footage of the aftermath of the flash floods in Nepal, I instantly looked for the 1950 book ‘Elephant Bill’ (EB) by Lt Col JH Williams. He alone, in my reading experience, witnessed and penned an earlier relentless struggle of a non-Homo sapiens doting mother — a cow elephant — daring the elements to rescue her hapless son!The setting was a sudden horrendous torrent nearing a gorge downstream of the confluence of Chindwin and Irrawaddy rivers down south of the China-Burma border junction. It was barely days before General Slim’s brilliant masterstroke of trapping the Japanese in the Mandalay plains by capturing Meiktila during World War II.EB was a distinguished veterinarian in charge of some 800 timber-logging elephants indentured in the Burma Theatre, describing in perfection all elements of a mother’s umbilical love for her three-month-old son. He had witnessed from a safe vantage point both the first surge of the torrent and the unusual roaring of an elephant as though terrified and so, “I at once went down to the edge of the near bank and there saw Ma Shwe (Miss Gold) with her three months old calf… swirling in the fast-rising torrent. She herself was still in her depth. There was a life and death struggle going on.”Given the podgy and rotund body contours, combined with the weight of even a three-month-old calf, it was natural he would float like a cork, screaming his heart out while drifting downstream rapidly. Even though Ma Shwe reached in trunk-tipping vicinity to grip him, “Every now and then the swirling water would sweep the calf away; then, with terrific strength, she would encircle it with her trunk and pull it upstream to rest against her body”.At this stage, the volume and velocity further increased and “the calf was washed clean over the Mother’s hindquarters and was gone. She turned to chase it, like an otter after a fish…. caught up… she pinned the calf… with her head and trunk. Then, with a really gigantic effort, she picked it up in her trunk and reared up until she was half-standing on her hind legs, so as to be able to place it on a narrow shelf of rock 5 feet above the flood level. It stood, tucked up, shivering and terrified on a ledge just wide enough to hold his feet. Its little, fat, protruding belly was tightly pressed against the bank”.That monumental struggle continued with pauses for nearly six hours. “The rain eased past midnight but it was dawn when Ma Shwe waded across, lifted it down from the same ledge as she had put it there. Five years later, when the calf came to be named, the Burmans christened her ‘Ma Yay Lee’ (Laughing Water)!”At this stage, it is incumbent to shift focus to Article 51A of the Constitution, which enjoins Fundamental Duties of a citizen; and herein exclusively on 51A(g), which emphatically stipulates “to protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers, wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures”. So, compassion not only for Homo sapiens or Ma Shwe, but the entirety of Noah’s Ark.Penning the foreword to ‘EB’, (now) Field Marshal Slim stated with pride, humility and above all “compassion for all living creatures” that “in the XIVth Army, our soldiers varied in colour from white through every shade of yellow and brown to coal black. The animals we used reflected a similar variety. Pigeons, dogs, ponies, mules, horses, bullocks, buffaloes and elephants but the elephant held a special place in our esteem… elephant building a bridge was to realise that he was indeed a skilled Sapper… and launched more ships for us than Helen ever did for Greece”.Now, shifting to the brazen destructive streak in US President Trump. Raising to rubble much of the centuries-old Persian cultural sites of Isfahan along with varieties of living creatures is an unpardonable sin.Back in the 1970s, my wife and I sat on a bench in the forecourt of an aesthetic monument, a repository of classic Persian art and cultural heritage. A few feet away on a yellow hibiscus bloom, we watched the tiny Purple Jattvibebird, 4 inches from beak to tail, weighing less than 9 grams and robed in its splendid plumage. Countless such living creatures would have perished in the mindless pursuit of USA’s Epic Fury. Is anyone listening?