Keeping Madhubala alive: The fight for Karachi’s captive elephants

At Karachi Zoo, Jude Allen sang, You Are My Sunshine, to an elephant he could not save. Noor Jehan, the 17-year-old African elephant, was suffering. Allen recalls massaging her legs, nursing her bedsores and spending her final days beside her. She died on April 22, 2023, surrounded by a few activists. Allen, 45, had held various corporate jobs while volunteering as an animal caregiver since an early age. But Noor Jehan changed something in him, he said. “The day this wild African elephant rested her painful forehead on mine, and I hugged her for the first time – it all made sense,” he tells Al Jazeera.