Cute butts and load of shit - Part 2

Continued....Read Part 1 here

For sometime, the ass play by the animals of the Bandipur National Park continued. The animals still longed for the calmness and serenity of their forest sans the humans and their catcalls, boohoos and flashes. They retrieved farther into the forest, away from the bumpy road and came out onto the road only to shit.

The next batch of tourists could not spot any animals but they found loads of shit along the kaccha road. All kinds of poop of different shapes and textures were lined on either side of the road. The tourists went away disappointed.

The forest officials understood that the animals were boycotting the humans but they cannot close the Safari and neither could they plead the magnificent creatures to come out. They figured out a new way to amuse the tourists.

The next time a disgruntled outsider on the Safari told to the bus driver that seeing the animals in Bandipur is farce, the driver asked the tourist to step out. The tourist wore shorts and had a camera hanging by his neck.

He did not like the suggestion of stepping out of the bus. 

He said, ‘Hey! Wouldn’t the animals come out? Will I not be in danger?’

The driver replied, ‘Do not worry Saar. No animals at this time, in this place’

The guy stepped out.

The driver asked the tourist, ‘Saar, do you see this shit?’ and pointed towards a considerable size of dark grey mass.

‘Yeah! So?’               

‘You see Saar, this, elephant shit’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘You see how much ground covered under it and the way it spread’

‘So?’

‘It must have come from up there to spread like that. Big animal, so elephant. You see that other small pieces of shit’ and pointed to some black pellets,  ‘came from small animal, may be deer. This is a proof that there are animals at Bandipur.’

The tourists felt that it would be silly to put up pictures of different textures and sizes of poop on their facebook page, so they returned unhappy.

And hence the story goes. The animals never came out and the forest rangers tried to pacify the tourists by showing them the shit lined along the road. After some time, the tourists stopped visiting Bandipur and the animals lived happily ever after. 

                                                         The End

No more Animals were sighted at Bandipur National Park. You can still go there for nature's beauty and serenity 

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This story was inspired from my collegues' discussion during Safari Trip in Bandipur

If you like this story, there is one more Bannerghatta National Park Safari Story

Cute butts and load of shit - Part 1

It was a pleasant evening in Bandipur. Cool breeze with the smell of flowers touched their faces. The calm evening was interrupted by the cries of the birds, flying to their abode to retire for the night. Alas! The wonderful evening did nothing to soothe their problems. All of them gathered to discuss about the issues that were troubling them. 

One of them said, ‘Them point at me something which lights up, it scares me’

Other said, ‘Them came behind me one day. I was walking along the path. There was this huge thing which made a loud noise, ‘chug chug chug’, came after me. I had to run fast, my paws hurt’

One more said, ‘Them also throw things, my little one ate one and fell sick’

The leader decreed, ‘It is enough! We have waited long enough for them to change their ways. We cannot wait any longer. They come into our lives without caring about our feelings. It is time to teach them a lesson, for life.’

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It was Safari time at Bandipur National Park. All the tourists got into the grey van. The driver/tour guide promised to show the tourists, lions, tigers, elephants and what not. None of the tourists realized that unlike a zoo, they were at the mercy of the animals for their darshan. They took out their cameras and turned them on, ready to capture the beauty of the nature.

The tourists first saw a peacock picking out the grass. The tourists were mesmerized by the beauty of the animal. They took out their cameras and clicked. In the excitement of the peacock sighting, few of the tourists forgot to turn off the flash. The peacock made a distress call.

The van moved further along the bumpy road lined with bushes on either side. They saw a herd of elephants. It was indeed a lucky day! As soon as the driver stopped and the visitors were about to click, all the five elephants showed their backs and nonchalantly started smelling the grass. They waited for ten minutes but the butts of the elephants still covered the camera lens.

The bus moved on. People thought it was a weird luck. Wonder of wonders, at the next stop they saw five tigers. No sooner did the van stop; the tigers also showed their backs and started twirling their tails. The same thing happened with the deer, bison and peahens. What a weird day it was! 

One of the tourists exclaimed to another, ‘Dude! Why are the animals showing their asses to us? Don’t they know that we are not interested to look at their butts? ‘

Next day the tourists’ facebook page was filled with the pictures of elephants, tigers, bison, peacocks and peahens asses. Their friends wondered if they should like the pictures or not.

To be continued....Read Part 2 here

The animals which were sighted at Bandipur National Park before they boycotted humans

Virtuous Animals

Do you know about the lion and rabbit story in Panchatantra? There was once a greedy lion that used to kill and terrorize animals just for the pleasure of it. All the animals in the forest went to the lion and made a pact with the lion. They asked the lion to stop the unnecessary killing and they would send an animal every day to the lion as his meal. The lion liked this agreement. One day it was the turn of an intelligent rabbit to become the lunch of the lion. It went to the lion very late. By that time, the lion was very angry and it decided to kill all the animals in the forest to teach them a lesson. The rabbit went and told the lion of another powerful lion in the forest. The lion asked it to show where it was. The rabbit took him to the well. The lion looked into the well and thought of its reflection as another lion and roared. The roar echoed and the stupid lion jumped into the well to battle with the other lion and died. All the animals celebrated the death of the cruel lion.

What did this story tell me? The animals in the forest recognized the lion to be greedy and wanted to get rid of it. The lion was called greedy because it desired more than what it had and killed the other animals just for the fun of it, even though it was not hungry. It told me that the animals were virtuous. They had values which they stick to, they hunt only when hungry. They do not hoard their kill.

What about humans? We hunt all the time. We are the greediest animals on planet Earth; we covet for what is not ours. We hunt for wealth, for power and for satisfying sexual pleasures. The hunters look for the people who are weak and can be succumbed easily. The hunters wield the weapons and threaten the victims to get what they want. The hunted are non-existent people in the eyes of the police and the judiciary. They are neither rich nor powerful, they are either poor or middle-class.

The attack on a woman in a Bangalore ATM made me realize that it is time for humans to learn virtues from animals. The incident has shocked many, because it happened in broad day light and in a crowded area. It shocked me because the miscreant came prepared with the weapons. He was bent on getting what he wanted no matter the consequences.

The attacker entered the ATM, closed the shutters and asked the woman to withdraw money. When she refused, he hit her on the head three times with a machete. After she was unconscious he took the valuables in her purse and fled. After sometime, a few passersby noticed the blood; they called the police, who rushed her to the hospital. The woman is now conscious but the right of her body is paralyzed. The hunter is still on the loose. The problem is that we do not have intelligent rabbits anymore; they have become lazy and refuse to use their intelligence on such trivial issues. After all what is the value of a poor or a middle class ‘Indian’ life? It is nothing. 

My Grandfather and my Religious Affiliations

In our life there are there certain incidents that we remember forever. These memories are etched in our conscious mind because the time, the place and the company are all conducive to that adherence factor.

When I was about 12-13 years of age, my grandfather and I were walking along an almost deserted street. The fruit vendors closed their carts, with flashy bright colored plastic sheets. Few of the auto drivers alongside the road were safely ensconced in their back seats and gave in to the call of dreamless sleep. The cool breeze touched us and the moon shined on us as though it was a special moment.

The silence around us made me think deeper. I asked my grandfather, ‘What happens after death?’

‘You merge with nature. You become part of nature; you are in the rain, the clouds and the streams that make the land fertile. After that you are born based on the good or bad deeds you did in your previous birth. You must have done good deeds in your previous life’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You are born to good parents who take care of you.’

I nodded my head.

I want to be like a few of my friends who belong to the higher echelons of life, people who are devotees of science and not religion, who denounce the presence of God. I cannot. There are a few questions that Science has’nt been able to answer yet. My continued faith in religion springs out of the inability of Science to comprehend the un-experimentable phenomena.

The first question is, ‘Why is Science far behind nature?’ 

We know beforehand about catastrophes like cyclones or earthquakes, why can’t we stop them? The most we can do is to evacuate people from the area of calamity. Why didn't we make a monstrous machine that swallows this destructive energy and uses it to power up humanity rather than consume it?

The second question is, ‘What happens after death?’ 

This question leads me to pick up a book about how to prepare for death at one of the Ramakrishna Math’s bookstores. My husband was shocked to look at that book in my hands, he must have thought not even one year into marriage and she picks this book!

In the book Autobiography of a Yogi, Swami Yogananda answers the question of death. All living things are in a cycle of life and death. We are born in different socio-economic levels of society based on our karma and until we attain moksha i.e., become one with God, we are reborn. There is one problem with this theory; there is no way to test it until and unless we have knowledge of all our previous births, if we have any.

Science has been dabbling with creating micro-organisms in lab but it is still far away from creating a Frankenstein. The first law of Thermodynamics states that Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. When we are dead, the life energy should go somewhere. Science does not answer where. Take a new born child, who due to some unfortunate incident is killed in an accident or has been drowned. The child is brand new, why can’t we just like a new car which had an accident, repair all the parts and make it run.  Machines run on energy no matter how screwed up they are. You can fix them and they will at least run sputtering and muttering. Why can’t we do the same with living beings? Repair them and bring them to life from death.

These two questions still hold my affiliations with religion. The day Science answers these two questions I will denounce religion and join the bandwagon of atheists.

                                                       The quandary of Science and Religion

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Images from google images

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is a book written by Amy Chua. Amy Chua is a Chinese American. In this book she writes about her strong and willful parenting style as a Chinese mother and compares it with the weak American style of parenting. Americans hold their children’s whims and wishes above their own, whereas Chinese children are enforced to act as per their parents’ wishes and choices.

­­Amy Chua writes about the generation decline in Chinese immigrants who come to the United States (I think the generation decline philosophy applies to all Asian immigrants). 

The immigrant generation is the hardest working. They come to the States almost penniless and work hard to become successful. They also live thriftily, save money and spend it on their children’s’ education and real-estate. They are also extremely strict with their children lest they forget their roots and behave in an American way.

 The next generation (Amy’s), the first to be born in America, will be typically high achieving. They will play the piano or violin, will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten Universities, earn more income and be less frugal than their parents. They will often marry a white person and relax their parenting style. Amy married an American and is a Professor at Yale University of Law. 

The third generation reaps the best. They are born with golden spoons in their mouth. They will have wealthy friends who get rewarded for B-pluses, wear the designer clothes and are likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. The third generation is headed straight for decline. 

Amy’s children, Sophia and Lulu belonged to the third generation and she wanted to prevent the generation decline. The eldest daughter, Sophia, is the obedient and sincere Chinese-American. The younger daughter, Lulu is rebellious and there are a lot of skirmishes in the book between Amy and Lulu. 

Amy forced Sophia to play the Piano. At one point of time Amy finds small teeth marks on the piano on which Sophia played. 

Lulu played both violin and piano when young. As she grew up she played the violin more. Sometimes, Amy would make Lulu skip her lunch/recess breaks at school so she could practice violin. The children were always busy, with their piano or violin sessions. They were not allowed to go to sleep over, have a play date, be in a school play and get grades less than A.

I thought her parenting style was extreme when she rejected the birthday card her daughters’ made, saying that they have not worked on it enough and makes them do her a better birthday card. Amy’s mother-in-law expires due to cancer. The children have to write a short speech for their grandmother, which will be read at the funeral. Amy is behind the children correcting/editing their speech. Amy did not care about the kids’ grief at losing their grandmother; she wanted a perfect speech which everybody will appreciate.  

I found it a bit humorous and ridiculous when Amy tries to practice her Chinese parenting style on her pet dogs. After her futile efforts she settles that her pets will not have jobs like bomb sniffer dogs and lets them be as they want. 

It is definitely not a book from which you can take parenting advice but it gives you an idea of one extreme in parenting style.

                                      Amy with her daughters Sophia (on Piano) and Lulu (on viloin)

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahari

Jhumpa Lahari’s novel, The Lowland is a story of two brothers.

Plot: The story is based in Tollygunge, Calcutta. It starts with how the brothers, Subhash and Udayan spend their childhood in Tollygunge. In their teens Udayan joins the budding Naxalite Movement in Calcutta and Subhash goes to do a Ph.D. in the U.S. The rest of the story is about how Udayan’s life changes and how it affects Subhash who is in Rhode Island. He is far away from Tollygunge, yet not that far.

It is also a novel about relationships. The novel tells about how one brother, Udayan gets more love from their parents than Subhash, the complicated relationship between Udayan’s wife and her daughter and the scars each person carries in their hearts, yet on the surface they pretend that everything is going to fall into place. Reading this novel, I felt that each of the characters is so complicated. The decisions of one character affect another like ripples in the pond and the effect is farfetched

.

What I liked: The description of Calcutta through the eyes of Jhumpa Lahari. In India, Tollygunge and the lowland in Tollygunge was the focus of the novel. In the U.S., the beaches of Rhode Island get a good showing. I loved the way the author jumped across different timelines and the way she wrote about different points of view from each character. You get an insight into the character’s personality and why each character behaved the way he/she does.

What I did not like: The novel had too much showing and very less dialogue between the characters. After a certain point of time, I skipped all the descriptions of the cities, the universities, the houses in which the characters lived and jumped right into the story. The main twists in the plot were predictable.

Rating: If you are a budding writer, this book is a must read. For all others 3/5