3-05-2008

Cruelty to Animals –the Vodafone TV ad-The crying babies during film shooting? The youngsters dropping dead on hot high way's during Police Recruitment physical endurance tests?

Let us all extend our support to the activism against cruelty meted out to animals by humans chiefly for two reasons. To prove ourselves the fact that we are HUMANS and secondly the animals which suffer mostly are not wild ones. They were the unfortunate ones who got trapped in the human dwellings and hence miserably hapless.

We see animals particularly Dogs, Cats, Pigs etc were much scared of humans rather than its own fellow animals. A couple of dogs fight among themselves for the litter and left over’s near by a function, but natural. I have come across stray dogs at the very sight of me in my colony fold its tail beneath, and walk slowly and quietly along side of the road. I watched it after it crossed over me, it picked up speed then. I vouch for the fact that I never ever picked up a stone and ever thrown on it. I never had such a dubious reacord at this age so embarrassing is not it? But why then this fear?

Is animals are so afraid of humans! Yes certainly!

Probably humans in India are scarier to our animals than anywhere in the world.  No amount of terror or horror would match.  Undoubtedly the Indian Bulls (not the temple bulls the luckiest among animals in India) dragging the carts in our villages and towns were the piteous creatures on planet earth!

While driving in the city of Hyderabad I witnessed a number of bullock carts with the loads of iron bars on their shoulders, trembling, shivering, parching skin, and dropping froth, with a long dried up mark of eye drops passing the body down.

A couple of years back in Chennai during a film shooting dozens of horses were burnt alive due to sheer negligence of the crew.

In Andhra Pradesh dozens of Monkeys were found dead in and around a colony apparently due to poisoning. The inmates unable to control the menace of monkeys cleverly fed them food mixed with poison. We worship Monkey as God Hanuman. Ha!

The list is endless and perennial too.

Now I welcome the charges made against Vodafone Publicity (the much popular TV ad) for cruelty meted out to the mascot pug. I do not know exactly the amount of cruelty or other sorts of physical exhaustion subjected to the dog during shooting, but they denied it as usual.

Another aspect I would like to make a mention here perhaps related to Human Rights rather animal rights.

In Indian Movies we might have witnessed a number of scenes where the babies were held in hand and the melodrama continues for nearly 15 to 20 minutes dragging the child both by the mother on one side, and the rest of villains like in-laws, southeli maa, the real maa, and so on.

Even in calm and quite scenes through out, the baby would be crying and yelling but still you can not make out. The reason is clever editing. We can imagine how much of total rushes and shooting time they would have spent in total or even days? Is not it? How cruel are our own fellow humans towards these hapless babies for the sake of entertainment?

 Now let us turn our attention to the young and would be veer Sepoy  and  Jawans of India.

Innumerable stories of youngsters dropping dead in the hot scorching and blazing Sun, on the running-way during physical endurance test.

We remain a mute witness to this abuse. I wonder how our Indian youth is enduring enough to run 5 km distance when their nutrition intake is palpably low. It is such a pity they eat that stale hostel food through out their primes, or else end up in Mangalorian Hotels where we will not find a curry other than Dondakai (Kolaska) or else the roadside eateries where they end up eating the Veg Fried Rice ( we find hardly some dry leaves and few milligrams of capsicum). Even Indian meat is horribly low in fat and protein and full of toxins.

Jacky Chan once in his interview narrated his thrilling experience while shooting somewhere in US. The shoot was about to take place then, a couple of Federal Government agents landed there! Surprised for what?

Ha ha! If it were to be India we would have easily anticipated what is in store!

They would have made hue and cry, demanded the permission letter, and threatened to stop the shoot if not? If not??? Hmmmm ….we know well ..Chungi?? ha ha! Pay chungi and resume your shoot.

But those agents were present through out the shoot observing whether the crew was following safety norms??

Fine! We can not expect it to happen in India in near future but such frustration would kill our enthusiasm so let’s be optimistic and fight against the maladies.

Finally before concluding let us learn from our fellow animals itself what is kindness and concern?

When a pregnant elephant was trapped in the railway track the accompanied elephants tried their best to push it to safety but failed miserably. The speeding train hit them and all the elephants were crushed to death. This was reported in news papers a few day’s ago!

 Any message to humans?

 KRISHNA BAALU/03-05-2008

Copyright © Krishna Baalu 2008

Photo Courtesy cnn-ibn