Desicritics Category: Culture: Pets

Animal Husbandry, a la My Wife

Suresh Naig — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:33:56 EDT

Recently I was a privileged guest in a luxurious farm house belonging to one of my contacts in Andhra Pradesh. With its large green house where roses are tended with piped music, a massive hall centrally air-conditioned with a projector and giant screen, a bowling court, tastefully designed cottages textured with bamboos, a long verandah running the entire length of cottages, all flaunted the rich taste of the owner in every square inch.

Sitting on an intricately carved sofa which complemented the ambience of the verandah, I and one of the close associates of my contact, were giving final shape to the business proposal. Suddenly from nowhere a full grown German shepherd appeared and came towards me. From the physical movement of the dog with its head bowed down, tail wagging, swaggering its ass like a model on ramp; I could recognize its friendly gesture. The dog came very close to me, brushing its thick fur against my trousers it went straight to the other person and licked his forearm.

I commented, 'it's a friendly dog',

Acknowledging my comment, he raised his hand threateningly at the dog and shouted, 'Sit down'.

Sensing that something was wrong I told him, 'Don't raise your hand straight above the head of the dog, it will infuriate the dog'.

He immediately brought down his hand and rested it on the arm of the sofa. The dog sat quietly on the floor, placing itself at a vantage position. Oblivious of the dog, we continued our business discussion.

Most of my knowledge about animals is due to my wife who is fond of animals and often I have witnessed animals behaving like children with my wife. She seemed to understand the language of animals, so much so I felt that her communication is better with animals than with human beings, I and her in-laws included. During morning walks she had picked up friendship with many dogs, groomed and strays alike. She used to make some funny noise and many of the stray dogs would follow her wagging their tails, like the rodents followed the fabled piper.

One morning she had petted a cute little Golden Retriever in front of our house, when the pet accompanied her master for a stroll. From then on, she would not cross our house until my wife came out and cajoled her, making our pet dog howl out of envy. My wife is not obsessed only with dogs; she can communicate with almost all animals, wild and domesticated. She loves watching kittens, sparrows, crows, and lizards too. Recently when the vacant site adjacent to our house was cleared of all bushes, she took pity on the snakes which were living there for long.

She commented to me, 'Where will these poor children go now?'

Long ago, I served in Kerala for a brief period of one year at Calicut, its original name Kozhikode restored now. My wife spent the summer of '91 with me in a modest cute house I had rented. Every morning she would recite religious hymns and would light a pair of oil lamps, standing in front of two small bronze idols. Roughly 10 days after she joined me at Calicut, she pointed out to a squirrel waiting outside the window of the makeshift pooja room. The squirrel was waiting with expectation standing on its hind legs, and with its fore arms folded in front of its raised body. My wife was very happy to notice that the squirrel came everyday to listen to her chanting.

When she threw the burnt cotton wick of the oil lamp to replace it with a fresh one, I understood the reason for the squirrel's rapt attention to my wife's chanting. It jumped at the wick and vanished behind a bush to savor its equivalent of smoked salmon. I explained to my wife, that it was a re-enactment of the famous experiment of Pavlov on conditioning, which my wife could relate to immediately, being a teacher by profession.

Our conversation at the farm house was interrupted by the honk of an automobile horn and the master of the farm got down from the car. He turned pale seeing us in the company of his dog. He called at the dog mildly and it went obediently to him. He called another name and a person appeared discreetly from a nearby structure and froze. Regaining his composure he commanded the dog to follow him, which it did like a trained soldier; he locked up the dog in its kennel which was at the other end of the verandah. Until it was securely locked up, the chauffeur of the automobile never came out of the car.

The owner of the farm house was surprised and he said it was only providence that nothing had happened to us. He narrated that once his driver was pinned down by the trained dog when he tried to fetch a bucket of water to wash the car. Trying to wriggle out from the dog's grip he had lost some flesh and that was the reason he never got down from the car until it was securely locked up. It was indeed due to my wife's credit whose tutelage had turned me friendly with the beast, and my comment that it was a friendly dog made the other person comfortable with the dog. I never knew that he was also a stranger to the dog. Since we never reacted queerly, the dog instead of pouncing waited patiently keeping a watchful eye on us.

I was narrating these strange incidents to my wife over lunch, upon my return to Bangalore. She served "Khadi"- a preparation made out of curd, coconut and spices. She had used red chillies instead of the usual green ones and was watching me curiously reading my reactions. When asked, she said 'I felt there is something amiss in that dish; I waited for your reaction before I could serve it on my plate.'

Until then I never realised that she loved "Guinea Pigs" too.

Nawwab and I: September 11

temporal — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:50:59 EDT

t: Today is September 11 Nawwab.
N: New Years day in the Coptic Calendar?
t: Same in the Ethiopian Calendar.
N:1885, Jinnah's birthday.
t: That is not what I had in mind.
N: September 11, 1973?
t: Hmmmm...Dr Salvadore Allende?
N: Yes, democracy should suit US agenda. Be warned.
t: Did not have in mind the overthrow of a democratically elected government by the US military.
N: US marines invade Honduras in 1919?
t: They did? Achcha.
N: Battle of Stirling, 1297?
t: The English defeat at the hands of the Scottish? No.
N:Founding of the World Wildlife Fund, 1961?
t: No.
N: Battle of Malplaquet?
t: Never heard of it?
N: I forgot you were not good in history
t: I know your date of birth.
N: That is not history, it is a fact.
t: Chalo theek hay, but no, not that battle also.
N: The date in 1982 when the International Forces left Beirut?
t:... paving the way for massacre at Sabira and Shatilla refugee camps? No.
N: Love Me Do
t: In 1962 at the Abbey Road Studios? They also recorded another single that day P S I love You. No.
N: Battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812.
t: American fleet's victory over the British? No.
N: Pentagon groundbreaking in 1941?
t: Interesting, I did not know, but no.
N:The day Nikita Khruschev died in 1971?
t: No
N: Then I don't know what else happened today
t: Try Nawwab, don't give up so easily.
N: Hmmm...some more names?
t: ...possibly
N: Hmmmm...Bernard Mascrenhas?
t: Another possibility, but no.
N: I forget you love words
t: (smile)
N: It must be this day in 1906 when MG coined Sathyagraha.

Movie Review: Bolt - Animals Are People Too

IdeaSmith — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:10:16 EDT

I’m not a dog-lover. In fact I am not even an animal-lover, though I could fairly tolerate a cat’s company. It’s not that I have anything against them, animals just never touched me. I’m a people-person, not an animal-person.

But what if animals were people too, just on fours and oh, with paws and fur instead of fingers and hair? Hmm. My animal-loving friends tell me that every pooch, every kitten, every bird has its own unique personality, just like human beings.

I’m convinced now that I’ve seen Bolt. Bolt is a white dog who adores his mistress Penny, frolics and chews a carrot-shaped toy and chases his own tail. He’s a dog like any other – with one difference. He thinks he’s actually a SuperDog with special powers like an iron-bending forehead, a fire-shooting glare and a SuperBark that can blow them all away (a special genetic contribution from his ancestor, The Big Bad Wolf, one supposes).

How does a normal well-fed dog with a loving owner come to suffer such delusions? Bolt, it transpires, is the star of a television series and the entire world that he sees around him, is an elaborately constructed set with actors playing every role. All so that he genuinely believes in the character of Bolt the SuperDog and acts accordingly. Method acting at its finest.

Bolt is a 3-D movie. Yes, the kind where you get to wear multi-coloured spectacles while watching! You can imagine how much that adds to a story about a dog with great powers and even greater imagination.

John Travolta provides the heart-warming, sometimes whiny, sometimes growly voice of Bolt. Penny, Bolt’s ‘person’ is played by Miley Cyrus. If you listen carefully enough, you can discern the shift in Penny the TV star and Penny, Bolt’s doting owner. During the shooting, when Miley began laying tracks for the scenes where Penny plays with Bolt, she imagined herself playing with her own dog and spoke as she would at home, with a Southern accent. So Penny naturally speaks with a drawl. But while shooting for the TV show, Miley was asked to record without the accent, so the actress Penny delivers her instructions of ‘Bolt, zoom zoom!’ on a crisp note.

When I first saw the promos detailing this story, I thought it was a tad contrived. But the nice part of the movie is that the story actually begins after Bolt accidently gets out of his set and what happens to him in the real world.

The story had a chance to go the ‘Babe in the city’ way with a smirking look at the mistakes of the uninitiated in the big, bad world. Instead, it took a strong bouquet of characters and carried a simple plot with style.

The bad guys are just circumstances (or circumstantial as in the case of Penny’s slimy Hollywood agent, but aren’t all TV agents supposed to be that way?), the good guys leave you wondering if it would be too much of a sin to give them a good kick now and then. Just like human people. We meet Mittens, the smirking New York alley cat, extortionist bully of the neighborhood bird community and expert in the matters of men and dogs. There is Rhino, an exuberant Bolt-groupie hamster energetically running around inside a plastic ball who alternately provides comic relief and the Yoda for Mittens’ hard-bitten cynicism.

And then there are the pigeons! Ever wonder what pigeons keep going on about while they goobgoob at each other from telephone wires and window parapets? Here’s what - they complain about bullies, they play tricks on people, they gossip about people (and dogs) walking about and in Hollywood, they even pitch movie ideas to any stars that they inadvertently bump into!

In all fairness, Bolt is exactly the way I see most dogs. Sweet, sometimes irritating in his antics, pretty lovable but nothing remarkable in himself. The other characters of this story are what make it really special and worth every minute of it.

*Bolt will premier at the multiplexes tomorrow, finally a good movie after the long wait! This movie was brought to me by The Social Media Catalyst.

Flash Comes of Age

Ruvy — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:30:54 EDT

My youngest son was on the computer, working on the layout of a book I'm editing. His older brother was already asleep, hugging the wall as is his wont. I watched Avi as he manipulated boxes from one end of the page to the other, fitting the text I had edited in them. He was impatient, like his father is, muttering curses in Arabic and Hebrew to vent his frustration.

Flash, our cat, was laying in his bed, a small round piece of fabric with a furry piece of cloth inside. Whenever our kids are home, Flash follows them as though they were demi-gods. You can almost see the anticipation on his face. "What's next, you big hairless cats?", he seems to be asking. And whenever it is evening, and when our kids are in their room, he sleeps in his special bed in the corner. I was looking at him, thinking of how we had dragged him a third of the world away from where he was born to be with us. He is not a pet, he is our friend. Every day, I get, among my other e-mails, are e-mails seeking homes for wonderful cats. This will never happen to Flash; he is part of the family.

As I dwelt on that thought, my mind drifted back to St. Paul, to a winter Sunday morning about 12½ years ago.....

Flash came of age this morning.

Flash has been our living-room lion. He is light tan with barely noticeable stripes on his body and rings on his tail. We got him 28 months ago at the county Humane Society when he was 10 weeks old. He purred in my wife's arms like he'd always belonged there.

We brought him home and the little thing ran all over the house as fast as lightning. That's how he got his name. Since then, he has grown to a respectable fifteen pounds and his lightning has slowed a bit.

We were reading the paper in bed when we heard our sons' screams from downstairs. "There's a dead mouse in the dining room! Mommy! Daddy! You gotta come see! Flash killed a mouse!" I didn't quite believe the last part about Flash actually having made the kill.

Just under two years ago, a month after we had him de-clawed, we noticed Flash stalking the kitchen appliances. Our stove, refrigerator and spice cabinet all stand cheek by jowl on one side of the kitchen, with cracks only small enough for a mouse to crawl out of. Flash's attention was focused on the spice rack - two revolving shelves enclosed in a cabinet.

After finally recognizing the feral stillness of a hunter, I opened the cabinet and turned the rack. There was a leap. Fur raced past me. The paprika can was knocked over and Flash had a grey brown mouse in his mouth.

He deposited it on the kitchen linoleum. Then he growled at it, and hissed and spat. When the mouse started to move, he stopped it with his paw, and tested it in his teeth.

Then Flash picked up the mouse, which struggled with its tiny legs, and carried it into the dining room. There he put it down once again, growled at it some more, hissed at it and played with it with his teeth and his paws. Again the mouse tried escape. Flash caught it in his mouth and brought it into the living-room near the phonograph which sits diagonally in the corner of the room. But instead of beginning to feast on his prey, he dropped it on the carpet and walked a foot away to watch. This time, when the mouse ran, he got under the phonograph where Flash's paws couldn't reach. Flash sat by the phonograph, waiting. The mouse made a run for it under the coffee table toward the sofa. Flash leapt at it and missed. The mouse fled toward the other corner of the room and got behind the sofa. I tried moving the sofa, so that Flash could get behind it and chase it down, but Flash just meowed with discouragement at the phonograph. When I picked up Flash and brought him to the sofa, he returned to the phonograph to look for the mouse. He looked so puzzled and disappointed. Meanwhile, the mouse had made its way back to the kitchen and the safety of our fortress of appliances where it disappeared. Later, traps we set caught two mice.

It was then that I concluded that Flash was just a living-room lion, the feline equivalent of a nebbish.

My sons continued to yell about the dead mouse in the dining room. My wife went downstairs to see what the commotion was all about. I was putting on my robe when she returned. The mouse was in a Dixie cup. One arm and one leg was missing. This mouse, with reddish brown fur on top and white fur beneath, looked very dead.

Then my youngest started in about the mouse turds. "The mouse pooped on the carpet, Mommy!" he yelled. "Come and take a look!"

I examined the mouse in the cup while my wife went down to examine my son's claims. She yelled up to me. "It is mouse poop, Ruvy! There's a pile of it and it's soft. Ooh, it stinks! Yecchh! Now, I have to wash the carpet off."

I continued getting dressed, grateful to be upstairs. "How's the cat?" I yelled down.

"He looks very content," my wife answered. She sounded frustrated "He's licking himself and sitting on his chair. Why don't you come down here and help me?"

I'll never know exactly what happened because Flash is too modest to tell me. A walk through the kitchen when I got downstairs revealed the probable tale of events. The trap for the mouse was set inadvertently by my oldest son, who hungrily munched on peanut butter cereal and left a mess on the floor. After leaving the mess, he came upstairs to lay down with us in bed. Then the mouse came out to check the cereal.

Bad move.

Flash caught the mouse, scared it into an upsetting intestinal episode, and gobbled up an arm and a leg.

Flash got more than just the pleasure of his first kill this morning. For a reward, he got some gourmet cat food in a can, which is something he craves.

He is more than just the living-room lion who relaxes on a chair that matches his fur. Now, when he walks, he holds his head up high. He's a mouser who's earned his keep. There is almost a swagger in his step; he has come of age.

Avi stopped manipulating the keys in the computer. Merely sensing that cessation of action ripped my thoughts back to the present. Feeling the vibration of his cell-phone, he answered before it rang, as is his wont. The conversation was in English. It ended with, "I love you, honey."

I worry for Flash. As much as he can, my son wants to be with his girlfriend. I can't blame him - and it sounds serious. Not only that, but Avi will be in the army, home only on weekends - if that. My wife will be worried sick - I'll be lonely for him. But what about the tan ring-tailed cat who views him as a big brother?

When Avi's brother gets a job in a couple of years, who will be Flash's companion then? It will be just my wife and I. We both love him dearly, but it just isn't the same. When the boys aren't home, he wanders the house, lost and lonely. We're not "his big hairless cat-brothers".

Flash came of age 12½ years ago. Now, our sons are coming of age. If Flash doesn't die of loneliness for them, at least it won't be an empty nest altogether.

Cartoon: Lucky Escape

IdeaSmith — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:07:37 EDT

We all have days when we look back at our desicions and wonder "WHY??".

And when you have too many such days, you just shrug and thank your stars.

Amen to miraculous escapes by mistake.

(Click to see full comic in a new page)

Travel Review: Camel Market at Birqash, Egypt

Kim — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 02:40:17 EDT

Egypt's Largest Camel Market, the Birqash Camel Market is 35 km away from Cairo. The best day to visit is supposed to be Friday, when the market is most lively in the earlier parts of the morning 7am-9am.

This market used to earlier take place in Imbaba, but as the city expanded, the camel market was moved to the suburb of Birqash which is at the edge of the Western Desert.

Hundreds of Camels are sold here everyday. But this is definitely not a market for the Animal lover. The animals aren't in pitiable condition, but they could be treated much, much better than they currently are.

Camels from Sudan are brought into Egypt on the 40 day road via Abu Simbel to the market in Daraw. The unsold camels are then loaded into trucks and brought to Birqash after a 24 hour drive. Camels also arrive from the rest of Egypt and sometimes from Somalia. These camels are traded for other livestock or cash and are mostly bought for farm work or consumption.

Photo opportunities abound, if you can get the angles right since the camels are almost monochromatic in color. The traders have wonderfully charactered faces and I would have loved to be able to take close up portraits and talk to them and listen to their stories. Unfortunately as a woman, taking close up pictures of men is not the sanest thing to do. And my Arabic is too limited to have had a proper conversation with them.

As an obvious foreigner, you will be charged entry to the market. (it has a gated entry) 20 Egyptian Pound per person. Then they may try to charge you an additional 10LE per camera. Once you enter, you will not face any obvious resentment. The traders are pretty welcoming of foreigners and try to make a buck or so by posing for pictures with them. There were at least 10 other foreigners the day we visited. The only thing to be aware of is to not behave like an Animal Rights Activist and they will pretty much maintain their distance for the most part.

The market extends inside for a distance with sections cordoned off by walls for certain traders. Small single level constructions provide basic housing for traders. The roofs of which are covered with bales of hay. There are basic ramps built for loading and unloading camels from the trucks.

Obviously not all the camels are sold and some of them may not be worth carrying back. Some don't even survive the truck ride to Birqash. Their corpses are carelessly strewn about the desert as you approach the market. There are a few pictures of that at the bottom. Please don't scroll to the end, if you are squeamish.

The Drive through the Nile Delta makes you forget that you are surrounded by the largest desert in the world and is very reminiscent of the UP and Punjab fields.
The River Nile in the background is of course, unique to Egypt .

Some of the camels have one of their legs tied to prevent them from running away.

Quality check of camels like horses is done by inspecting the teeth. This one showed us his teeth voluntarily.

Unloading of Camels

Sold camels being taken away in a pick-up

Some of the character-filled faces

Warning: The pictures below are quite gory. Please do not scroll down if you are easily upset.

Death is inevitable, but I wish they could at least dispose the bodies in a less conspicuous and more humane fashion, rather than just leaving it out to the elements.

Some of the facts, come from the Lonely Planet guide for Egypt

Of Cats, Dogs and Individuals

RukmaniRam — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:20:43 EDT

Last week, I visited Fox- friend, kitten lover and a SPCA volunteer. As always, I found a kitten (this time around, it was Peekaboo) she was fostering for the SPCA. But there was also another cat, Harlequin, who "found" Fox and often came to eat and snuggle. Fox tried to find the owner of the cat. But when Harley was still homeless after a few weeks , she was taken to the SPCA to be cared for and hopefully adopted. Having grown up in a country where cats, dogs, cows and other such animals roam the streets with authority, I wondered why Harley had to be adopted or stay at the SPCA. Couldn't she just be a cat that wandered the neighborhood? Apparently, not. She had to "belong" to a family. She *had* to be a pet.

The same goes for dogs too. It was then that I realized that I had hardly seen a stray animal in the 11 months I have spent here in the US. Fox tells me that I had to look in the right places to find them. Besides, those animals did not want to be seen by humans- either because they once belonged to a family and later were dumped, or had been mistreated by people and were so affected that they feared us. These animals had to be pets (or livestock a la barn cats), because they could not survive on their own. If left to themselves, what happens when they are sick/hurt? They would have no one to take care of them. I have also heard that the "wild" ones would run loose acting out their whims and fancies with no one to regulate them.

My mind kept drifting to the dog that gave birth to her litter underneath the staircase of my aunt's house in Chennai and then I felt I had heard something very similar before. Of the need to "belong" and "not be just a cat"… Oh yes, I know what it is. It's the older generation referring to me! But of course! You had to be part of a family. You *had* to be a pet (or in some cases, livestock too! :P) and belong. You couldn't be just a person, just a woman. I could also see the other parallels… People disliking or being afraid of society: either because they were disowned by it, or because they were taunted by it.

When I told someone that I enjoyed living by myself I was accused of abandoning my responsibilities towards my family! My desire to live alone as an adult is seen as unnatural, and I was branded as "Americanized". Wait… what? Why? "Because in India there is no life living alone. There isn't meaning to your life unless you have someone to live for (or had someone who lived for you). An individual life has no meaning at all." If you are defined by your job, you are a workaholic; if you live alone and go to grad school, you are a student; if you are married, you are a wife (and if you stay at home too, you are a housewife... being the wife of a house is something I find highly amusing!), you're a daughter in law, a mom, a sister (or a son, brother, father, husband- I hear this isn't gender specific!). I always thought these were roles we played in our lives, and who we were was defined by our interests, our passions, our principles and our beliefs.

Another person I have known for a very long time loathes the word "independence", because, to him, it implies defiance of authority.I don't get it. Independence, or as I like to call it (and think is more appropriate, seeing as human society is inherently interdependent) – self reliance (emotional, physical, financial- anyway you see it) is real hard. It is a lot of responsibility- towards yourself and towards society. It's not about not having a boss; it's about not having someone to lead you on. It is not about not having anyone to answer to; it's about being answerable to yourself. My reluctance to go back and "belong" to the structured society also stems from the fear that the freedom of thought and (to some extent) action that I have developed over the past few years will be unceremoniously taken away from me. I live with the elders, I'm always someone's beta, and a Beta is never an Alpha.

I'm not saying I do not like being part of a family. I'm only saying; don't feel sorry for me if I don't. I'm not saying that I don't need people around me. I'm only saying; if there aren't I'm still going to be okay. I'm not saying I don't want to be a pet. I'm only saying; that sometimes I want to be just a cat.

P.S: To all the PJ masters out there, I am speaking metaphorically. I do NOT *actually* want to be a cat.

Rats!

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 31 May 2008 12:07:26 EDT

Are rats cute? Just look at Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. They have an entire carnival of their own and a worldwide business around them! Theme parks galore! We have movies about a rat that turns into the amazing chef in the 2007 film Ratatouille. They are holy and auspicious as well. The Hindu God Ganesh’s favourite animal is a rat (or is it a mouse?). And this year is the Chinese Year of the Rat and in Chinese terms, a rat is supposed to represent protection and prosperity. But rats are actually not cuddly creatures and can legitimately be said to be a fully paid up member of the team of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Plague, Death, War, Conquest)

In a recent news report, the leading exterminator company in the UK talked about how the population of rats is increasing rapidly and has nearly doubled over the past few years. Not only doubled, but even more. This is because more and more of the British lands are being concreted over, so the rats do not have space to dig and create their burrows. Also because of the recent floods, they had to evacuate their burrows and move to higher ground. Hundreds of tons of food grains have been eaten by these furry creatures, but then, thousands and thousands tons more of food grains are eaten by these disgusting creatures across the world.

I don’t like rats (mice, bandicoots, every disgusting type of vermin), miserable creatures. I hate their beady eyes and how they scuttle across the rooms, good chef or cute mouse notwithstanding. My association to them goes back to my school days when one of my teachers used to regularly abuse us by calling us as station rats. Now, I don’t know if you have seen Indian railway station rats, but they are huge, scurry around in the excreta and muck and look absolutely filthy. So I am afraid they are not my cup of tea at all.

They are nasty things. They carry germs, disease and infection and god knows what else? There is a very good reason that food inspectors hate seeing rats in a kitchen, and when I saw that rat in Ratatouille actually clutch a piece of cheese to its plague ridden fur, I couldn’t stop shuddering. That went into the food that they were feeding their customers? Foul. It is the rats who also carry the fleas which transmitted the plague virus. It was because of their germ carrying capacity that tens of millions of humans died in the ravages of the black plague which have regularly swept through the world down the ages. This huge decimation of the population caused major dislocations to kingdoms, lead to wars, changed the path of the Christian Church and caused huge and brutal persecutions of minorities such as Jews (who were said to have caused the plague).

Rats also have been the cause of terrorism (near war) breaking out. In the misty mountains of Northeast India is a forgotten state called Mizoram. Almost forty years ago, a special type of bamboo flowered hugely across certain areas across the Mizoram and Bangladesh border. Its flowers are delicious and full of goodness. Well, because they are so good and nutritious, the rats eat them and grow huge. Not only that, they nearly double their breeding rate (from four to eight times in one year). Considering that you can end with about ten baby-rats in a litter, and female rats become fertile in a matter of months, you can see how the rat population can explode, and so it did!

When it did, they ravaged through the bamboo forests eating everything in sight. When there was no bamboo left, they went for the crops and soon, there was widespread famine in these parts of the land. Typically, and contrary to what Amartya Sen says, famines do occur in democracies, especially weak and corrupt ones such as India. This famine and lack of government support can be directly attributable to the rise of Mizo nationalism, the bitter Mizo terrorist campaign, the one and only bombing by the Indian Air Force on Indian citizens and eventual peace after thousands of deaths and decades of fighting.

As an aside, this bamboo flowering happens once every fifty-odd years and it is happening again now. Rats have already devoured all the flowers and have already eaten a huge amount of crops in the Mizoram state and Bangladesh side. Almost forty thousand tons of food has been destroyed in the Indian side itself, while some Bangladeshi districts are reporting up to 100% food stock destruction. The Mizoram government has a bounty out on them and is paying about 2.5 pence or 2 Rupees for each rat tail delivered (see a fascinating picture here). And the last time a huge famine hit Bangladesh, war broke out.

Strangely enough, while rats were the cause of terrorism, other RATS are being formed to fight terrorism. A very interesting grouping, called as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which comprises of the central Asian republics, Russia, China and some others, signed the “Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism, and Extremism” in 2001. As part of this convention, a Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) was set up in Tashkent. While it is difficult to analyse its performance, it claims to have prevented more than 250 acts of terrorism so far. And heaven knows - that area is full of those terror rats. Ranging from the Uyghur’s in China to the Chechnyans in Russia, Kurds in Iran to Islamists everywhere else, all these terror rats need to be flushed out, and what better way than to set a RAT to catch a rat?

Not only that, the US military research arm, DARPA, is turning rats into remote controlled animals who can go up ladders, sneak into ruins, under the ground, etc. on commands which electronically manipulate their pleasure centres. So they can be used for land mine clearance, for reconnaissance, for earthquake rescue under collapsed buildings, and generally be good. Nothing wrong with it, the rats love being pleasured and if in return for pleasure, they do something nice for us, I am all for it.

As a matter of fact, there is a pretty nice cocktail called as a Sewer Rat, made of Vodka, Peach schnapps, Kahlua and Orange juice. It is an acquired taste, I am afraid. And so is eating them, rat meat is considered to be a delicacy across quite a large swathe of the world and here’s a good site with some recipes (if you can stomach that!). Do you remember the scene in the Demolition Man, where Sylvester Stallone wakes up in the future and gets all weird rabbit/processed food to eat. He is dying for some “proper” American food and then he spots this tiny dingy place selling burgers and he dives into the shop and starts to eat burgers with huge big bites. Idly asking about the burger, he learns that it is made of rat meat. But despite a moment of hesitation, he crams the burger down while saying, “This is a rat burger? Good burger!"

I suppose I can agree with that quote, “I eat meat not because I like meat but because I hate animals”, so perhaps I will try a rat burger one of these days. Meanwhile, the impact of rats on food grains is much more important, and the loss of food to rats, the scarcity of food grains, the rapidly rising food inflation can well lead to war and terrorism all again.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: Healthcare, Agriculture, Inflation, Terrorism

Fishing For Wishes: A Fish Who God Listens To

Aditi Nadkarni — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:49:18 EDT

Red was an impulse buy. He was, really. My roommate and I were at a 24-hour supermarket late one night to buy a coffee maker on a lazy Saturday for lack of anything better to do. Go figure. And there he was, in a short plastic jar looking at me. It was fate. I do not just say this, mind you. In this post I have empirical evidence to back it up. The following narrative is based on true accounts.

I was never a fish lover. But these flashy fish with their dazzling colors immediately caught my eye from an aisle away. Only one of them actually made eye-contact even from that far. I walked over and picked up the jars carrying a Betta fish each, one by one scrutinizing the brilliant fins of all the other fish. They were all jumpy. As we later found out, most Siamese Fighter Fish are. But when I picked up Red's glass it was magical. He did not jump or twitch like the others had and instead continued to look at me very intently. The only time I saw Red display any spunk was when I set his jar back on the shelf and started to walk away. He swam to the periphery, blew a few bubbles and did a couple of quick and startlingly violent twirls that caught my attention. He was the only bright scarlet one among the bright collection of Betta fish. They all seemed ferocious and a little upset. This little guy however, appeared peaceful and mainly curious. When I picked up his jar again, he continued to stare, right into my eyes, even more intently than before. I made up my mind.

That night, my roommate and I went home with a very treasured polythene bag. Every time he moved inside the thin plastic, I felt a gentle twitch on my fingers. I've felt a baby's kick on one of my pregnant friend's belly before and this twitch reminded me of that heady sensation, of how gently and unexpectedly even the littlest of life makes its presence felt.

Usually a pretty rational person, I surprised my roommate considerably when I held Red's polythene bag to the glass window letting him catch a glimpse of the world outside our car as we headed home. When else would he get a chance to look around again, I wondered. It could've been a series of coincidences but we passed on our way home, a Red Roof Inn, a Red Lobster and the song "Red, Red Wine" by UB40 came on the radio. At home as we put our new member in a bowl and turned on the TV, the feisty Red Foreman from 'That Seventy's Show' appeared making one of his dry, sarcastic quips. My friend and I exchanged glances and we knew. This was meant to be. He was christened Red.

Inside his bowl Red discovered his surroundings like a baby discovers the world around him. He moved in and out of the plastic flora and stared in awe at the sandalwood Ganesha next to his bowl. He wolfed down the small pellets of Betta fish food we had bought for him and we warmed up the apartment so that our tropical fish would be at a comfy temperature.

One fine morning Red's presence turned into somewhat of an added excitement. My friend was interviewing for a job the next day for which her credentials weren't exactly ideal. I was in the midst of feeding Red as she sat on our sofa and told me how much she needed the job. I turned to Red and for no particular reason said "Red, do you hear how much she needs the job? You are going to have to talk to God about this and make sure she gets it, OK?".

My friend stared at me with narrowed eyes as if I were nuts.

"Just wait and see" I said with a wink. Lets face it, we all do weird stuff to give our friends the extra bit of confidence and luck that they need. I have sat and patiently cracked 25 fortune cookies at a restaurant amidst startled Chinese waiters for a friend desperately looking for signs about her relationship. So praying to a fish was not odd any more. The next day my friend graciously called me to tell me she had received the job. There were so many people with great credentials, she told me, but she was the one who landed the position.

"It must be Red. He is lucky!" she exclaimed, in her excitement crediting our fish with what was most likely her own skills and talent that paid off in the interview. But word quickly spread and the next day I had a few voice messages from a few people half-joking about Red's newfound ability and half-asking me to pray for them as well. I won't lie, following this, I too whispered my own wishes to Red and watched wide-eyed as they all materialized one by one. Even the weather dodged rain and storm forecasts at Red's behest, which almost never happens in Ohio.

Someone came over and asked me to pray to Red for their sick pet and later sent pictures of their doe-eyed, recovered dog. Yet another wanted their car to be fixed. There were quite a few people who wanted that one precious job offer to come their way. And one by one Red granted them their wishes. Stock market hopes, loan needs, even relationship longings were rewarded almost instantly when I brought them to Red's bowl and made a quick wish.

Now Red's kind of a celebrity fish. I have started to maintain a notepad to keep track of wish-requests. My parents in India ensured that I receive such requests across borders as well. Friends and family call in to request that a good word be put in with Red. Red's schedule is jam packed and he has not let anybody down thus far. Every single wish has been brought to fruition...except maybe the one I made for world peace which I now believe falls out of Red's capabilities and is only a term meant for beauty pageant speeches.

Recently a fishy fungal infection sent waves of panic among the Red Wishing Club. Prayers were offered. My parents made a visit to the Siddhivinayak Temple in Bombay and my roommate and I made several trips to PetSmart looking like troubled, anxious parents. Red fought the fungus and made a speedy recovery meeting wish-deadlines with ease.

Most importantly, Red has contributed significantly towards our social life. People now call or come over if only to pay our stellar fish a visit. Betta fish are social beings to begin with and Red is enjoying all the attention to say the least. Meanwhile, funnily enough, I feel like the mother of a prodigy who needs to make sure that her wonder of a child sleeps and eats well and doesn't get an inflated ego as he goes on using his genius to do world a greater good.

One morning, a friend rendered skeptical by a recent heartbreak, after hearing about Red told me in great length about how faith is nothing but a crutch and that such superstitions just make him suspicious.

"True" I agreed much to his surprise, "I can see why you are suspicious. After all, more than anything, Red has demonstrated that faith does seem to be fishy"

Note: Red is still accepting wish-applications :)

A Cat Story

Zainub Razvi — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:27:19 EDT

I have to admit that I wasn't always a pet lover. But ever since my youngest sister Saadia nurtured a young kitten which she, in my opinion, somewhat inappropriately called 'Pinky', I have steadily begun to shift to the other camp.

Pinky and I had something of a bond. In those ghastly days when I was enrolled in a dentistry program on my mother’s insistence, she used to sit in my lap in the mornings as I waited to catch the bus. I enjoyed her company; it was a nice distraction from thinking about the horrible day that awaited me at college. And then when I returned in the afternoons, she was again the first to greet me, wrapping around me as I walked in tired.

Some times I would be very annoyed by her unasked for affection, and would barely miss trampling on her in my preoccupation. But she was so persistent that she kept trying and inevitably, I fell in love with her too. She was (and still is) far too cute for anyone to not fall in love with, unless of course you're allergic to cats, which my mom and my other younger sister think they are. (I say think here because none of them have ever had a medical test to prove their claims, instead just sighting their overbearing fear of cats as an indication of their allergy, something I refuse to buy into.)

Ever since, my self, Saadia and my dad, the three people in our household that were in the opposite camp, pampered Pinky and others cats as much as we could. In addition to Pinky, Tommy and a host of other neighborhood cats had all came and almost permanently settled in our house.

All three of us, meaning my self, my dad and of course my sister, took care of them. I would secretly give them milk in the afternoons because I knew my mother would be furious if she found out. My dad on the other hand had no one to fear so he actually bought the cats custom made fat from the butchers every time he went to them to get supplies for the house. Saadia too, increasingly grew indifferent to my mother’s advice to “stay away from the cats”. She’d collect bones at every meal’s conclusion and ceremoniously call the cats and feed them. She didn’t stop here, occasionally even investing her pocket money on giving the cats treats by buying them expensive cat food.

In this way, the three of us all pampered and spoiled the cats in our own distinctive ways, but because Saadia took the initiative, they were always “officially” her cats and she’d take great pride in introducing them as such whenever curious young guests arrived.

When I moved over to my in-laws place this January I had never imagined that I'd miss these cats so much. I knew I was going to miss them a little bit, but this much, I didn't think it was possible. After all, I had a memories that I was leaving behind, in comparison with those I thought I’d barely remember the cats.

I told my self I could find new cats, every Karachi neighborhood has stray cats and I could pet one of them just like Saadia did. If not that, I could in the least strike out an adoption deal with Saadia whenever Pinky gives birth to her first liter (ever since we figured out Pinky had all grown up and was looking for a mate, we had been spying on every Tom cat in the neighborhood like anxious parents keeping a look out on children’s girl or boyfriends!)

But all this planning was dealt a blow when I discovered that my mother in law (like my mom) wasn’t too fond of having pets. I thought I’d get over it, but I ended up missing the pet element in my life a fair bit.

And I realized just how much I missed them every time I came back to my parent's place to visit. On my last visit a couple of week ago I finally got to see the three adorable kittens Pinky recently gave birth to. Saadia has somehow shed her tendency to name her pets absurdly and this time has called them Teddy, Daisy and Lilly.

They all resemble little tufts of black and white wool, running precariously around us and their mother. I was quite surprised to see that I was reacting in much the same manner as I would in the event of a human being giving birth, asking the same traditional questions (Does the baby look more like the mother or the father? Is the baby healthy or does he or she look weak?) but nevertheless feeling slightly jealous that my sister knew the answers and I could only guess.

Even Saadia hasn’t figured out the exact identity of the father though. She claims she has narrowed down the possibilities to one of two neighborhood Tom cats going by the fur colour of the new-borns but I’m not too sure of her calculations. What I am sure of though is that I want the cat element back in my life. Seeing my sister go on and on about her adorable cats, now up to a glorious five in total, including Pinky, her kittens Teddy, Daisy and Lilly and Tommy the second (the first once, may his soul rest in peace, died of unknown causes last summer), has made me sure that I cannot afford to lag behind in the race.

And as luck would have it, only the other day my husband and I discovered this feeble little creature in our back yard, completely out of the blue. For one whole day she did nothing but laze around in our yard, crying around as if she was in pain. Every time we try and went close to her though, she’d threaten, screeching and giving a complete picture of all her teeth, not even changing her attitude after she was given milk and fresh raw chicken meat to devour. We guessed as much that she had a semi-injured leg which reduced her mobility and that she was hungry, but we’re still trying to figure out why she’s so unfriendly. I understand she might have felt vulnerable at first, but surely if some one’s giving you food, drink and genuinely trying to be nice, this ought to be enough to remove any initial doubts. I couldn’t get my self to understand what this cat was thinking about.

Then I suddenly realized I was making a crucial presumption. All the cats I had encountered closely until now were those already tamed by my sister, and were hence quite comfortable around humans. This was a stray cat I was dealing with, who probably doesn’t like humans a lot to begin with. It was here that I realized that if I was to convert this cat, I’d have to make all the hard yards that my sister probably did in the first place. I had to convince this little fellow to allow me to be “frands” with her and only then I can teach her all the other pet stuff (beginning with some manners, like you don’t poo straight in front of the backyard’s door so that the entire back portion of the house starts smelling yucky!).

Another big and pleasant discovery I’ve made in this entire cat story is that my mom-in-law isn’t entirely averse to cats; in fact she told me the other day a stray cat’s four generations gave birth to their litters in her old home in Sharjah. She’s only uncomfortable with the idea of them strolling around freely inside the house. That’s something that can be perfectly worked inside with, I thought to my self.

Now all I need to do is win this cat over with the help of my more experienced sister’s cat parenting tips, teach her how to poo nicely and always stay out of the house, and viola, I’ll have a full fledge pet! Isn’t this totally wonderful?

PS: I also have to think of a name for it, suggestions most welcome. I don’t have a picture of her with me right now, but as a guide, she’s not as cute as Pinky, although they’re both the same colour. My cat has slightly more grey spots then Pinky and much bigger whiskers, which is why I’m thinking of calling it Whisky, but I know that sounds terrible, so better suggestions are most, most welcome.