Unlike Pulimurugan, Sherni is not one-sided. The heroes we need are officers like Vidya Vincent (Vidya Balan) and teachers like Hassan Noorani (Vijay Raaz), who know an act of killing is not the solution to all problems but educating people is. Sherni makes us realise that we don’t need hunters like Pulimurugan or Pintu. The hunters think they are the solution but in actuality, they are part of the bigger problem. The motives of these two hunters are poles apart but what they have in common is the ignorance about the consequences of their actions. Shooting a tiger from a safe distance gives Pintu’s ego that much-needed boost. While for Pulimurugan, taking down tigers is a mix of personal vengeance and a sense of public service, for Pintu it is a sport. We would instead find him despicable and intolerable, just the way we feel about the celebrated hunter Ranjan Rajhans aka Pintu (Sharat Saxena) in Sherni. If Pulimurugan were to inhabit the premise of Sherni, we wouldn’t be singing hooray for his hunting skills. Writer Aastha Tiku’s screenplay clearly shows us who pays for all this trickle-down effect of unchecked development that doesn’t take nature into account. It is the rampant deforestation for commercial reasons, it is unchecked mining operations, it is well-paved roads cutting across jungles, and it is the corrupt political system that worries more about the optics of a conflict than the lasting consequences of ill-convinced policies. The film shines a light on the source of conflict that is pitting animals against humans. A man-eating tiger is not the villain, but ignorance is. Sherni, on the other hand, takes a very holistic and compassionate look at the man-animal conflict. Also Read | Vidya Balan on feminism of Sherni: It breaks the ‘strong woman’ stereotype