Mohinder's proud possession : Sheru, Equus africanus asinus (the donkey)

Equus africanus asinus, a domesticated member of the horse family, Equidae – is also found in the city…. In villages, it could be a common sight – nearer VivekanandaCollege in Sivasami Salai, one can find a few donkeys, an animal used extensively by launderers. A male donkey or ass is called a jack, a female a jenny or jennet.  As beasts of burden and companions, asses have worked together with humans for millennia. Somehow, in many stories (and in life too) they are ill-treated !!

There is common belief that donkey’s milk boosts immunity in newborns; though Doctors disagree its curative property. Doctors say donkey milk is not harmful to babies, but lack of hygiene could pose the risk of infections.  Yet people do line up to buy little quantity of donkey milk and give it to children, especially new-borns.  That way, there is some demand for donkey (its milk !!)

Couple of years ago, despite economic meltdown riding ‘monkey on the back’ – the donkey market reportedly was alive and kicking.  A record number of donkeys - 2,000 to be precise - was sold on the opening day of the nine-day donkey bazaar in Ahmednagar district, and that too at record prices. The prices reportedly ranged from  Rs 7,000 and Rs 15,000-nearly 50% higher than the previous year.  The donkey bazaar, held each year in drought-prone Pathardi tehsil in Ahmednagar district, attracts traders from not only Maharashtra but also Gujarat and Rajasthan.  The price of a donkey, the official explained, depended on its physique, height, colour, age and the number of teeth. Donkeys from Kathewadi in Gujarat are the most expensive-between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000.

The official attributed the unprecedented demand for donkeys to the acute shortage of power and labour. In rural and hilly areas where construction work is in progress, labour is hard to come by, and workers are demanding higher wages. Under such circumstances, he explained, many builders were finding it more productive to use donkeys.   According to market experts, the output of a donkey was equivalent to that of seven to ten human labourers. "By and large, donkeys are used to move construction material such as bricks, metal and sand from one place to another,'' he said.

Donkey is a prized possession of a resident in Punjab – and why it would not be. Brought from Bikaner in 2012, Sheru, a donkey has turned on the fortunes of his owner Mohinder Singh-a resident of Punjab. According to a report in TOI, Sheru stands 54 inches tall and commands a hefty amount of Rs 3 lakh, equal to the cost of two Nano cars.

He was recently on display at one of Haryana's most popular animal fairs at Beri in Jhajjar. Many wanted to pay his price ­ that's Rs 3 lakh ­ but owner Mohinder Singh of Lehragaga, Punjab, refused, calling Sheru his prized possession. Singh said that he uses Sheru only for crossbreeding with horses to produce high-quality mules. He charges Rs 5,000 for one mating session and earn between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh a season, especially during summers.

Mohinder reportedly goes to almost every Punjab and Haryana cattle fair to “create a mating market“ for Sheru. "I stopped using him as a beast of burden once I realized I can make a neat packet from mating horses with Sheru,“ its proud owner says. He spends Rs 400 a day on Sheru's diet -five kg channa and one kg of jaggery . He also feeds the giant donkey 10 kg desi ghee over six months. Mohinder lives on the Punjab-Haryana border and Sheru's fame has travelled far ­ to Sirsa, Fatehabad, Jind and Hisar.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

30^th Mar 2015.

Spain and Western gory face ~ Toro Jubilo - bull burning festival

There are sports and there are some involving animals – some which men call sport – but end up torturing animals.  There are many misconceptions just as the belief that red colour angers the bull – remember Padayappa when bull charges at Ramya Krishnan and is stopped by the lance thrown on the ground by the superstar Rajnikant.   Matadors also use red colour.   Down south in Tamilnadu, there is one which finds its place in Sangam literature and considered a game of honour.  Jallikattu  (Aeru thazhuvuthal) is a bull taming sport played in Tamilnadu as part of Tamilnadu celebration.  Unlike its western cousin, the bull is seldom killed and here the matadors do not use any weapons.  It is also known as manju virattu – chasing the bull.

In this game (!) an agitated bull is set to run in an open space, where several youth, empty handed try to tame it by controlling its horns.  The winner gets a booty, becomes darling of the crowd.  The most famous ones are held in and around Madurai at Alanganallur, Avaniapuram, Palemedu, Thammampatti in Salem, Ponnamaravathi in Pudukottai,  Pallavarayanpatti near Theni to name a few.  In 2007, for the first time, both the bulls and the matadors of the famed Alanganallur Jallikattu were subjected to breathalyser test to ensure that they had not consumed alcohol.  Is it daredevilry ? a game ? or torturing bulls or losing men trying to prove their valour ? what happens to those who get killed ? and lose their limbs / senses ?  - answers depend on perception.  Animal lovers went to Court seeking ban and a Bench considered it barbaric involving cruelty of animals; Govt pleaded it a sport and now there are restrictions in place.

On 6th July every year rocket is set off in the morning to alert the runners that corral gate is open.  With the next one, six bulls and six steers are released.  If you are still debating jallikattu, the venue is different.  That is miles away in Spain and the event is the festival of  San Fermin, or the Pamplona bull running.   Thousands of people congregate in the square.  They claim its origin to 13th century.  The Running of bulls is a practice that involves running in front of six bulls let loose on a course of sectioned-off subset of a town’s streets.  This reportedly is held in many villages across Spain, Portugal and some in Mexico and France as well.   The sad part is that these bulls which are transported from their offsite corrals would get killed in the evening in a show of bravado. 

There is another gory game : Spanish bull fighting, a popular sport (!!) conducted in an arena where the bull enters the ring, then an assistance waves a bright yellow and magenta cape infront to anger it,  the top fighter called Matador and fighters Picadores weaken the bull by piercing spears.  The matador has a sword called espada; the bull eventually drops dead.  There could be rules and variations, which we may not understand much.

Spain is so much known for bull fighting – a famous breed is Toro Bravo, an Iberian cattle breed.  Fighting bulls are primarily selected to have combination of aggression, energy, strength and intelligence – states the document.  But it would appear that the bull would only crudely been an angry demon charging to get killed by a combination of people and things.  The bull goes down killed.  It is brutally stabbed between the shoulder blades and through the aorta.  The matador gets reward of ear, tail etc., for his bravery.   Recently, Lawmakers in Catalonia have outlawed bullfighting, making it Spain’s first region to ban the ballet between man and beast. 

Recently read in Daily Mail about “Toro Jubilo festival” – it has gory details of Spanish bull-burning festival where baying crowd straps flaming wooden horns to terrified animal. . . in the name of entertainment.  The sickening Joy of the Bull - or Toro Jubilo festival - is one of the 'cultural' highlights of the entertainment calendar for residents in the Medieval village of Medinaceli, in the province of Soria, north east of Madrid.

This sounds barbaric as the distressed bull writhing in pain is tied to a post and set alight to death, in front of a baying crowd.  The terrified animal has no escape route, gets pinned to the floor, men strap wooden stakes doused in flammable chemicals to its horns, and set it on fire with few more showing their  bravery by tormenting the terrified animal.  Daily Mail reports that in this year’s festival, which took place recently, more than 1,500 people crowded behind barriers and strained for a view of the cruel spectacle.

It occurred at  the village of Medinaceli, in the province of Soria, north east of Madrid.  A bullring was constructed in the main square and sand scattered on the floor. Several bonfires were built in preparation for the arrival of the bull. As fiercely hot sparks and embers drip from the burning torches tied to its horns, the bull looked around in stunned bewilderment; in the night the fires were lit using paraffin and the three-year-old bull, named Liebro, was dragged in on a rope held by many men dressed in grey uniforms. It was tied to a post by its horns and a plank of wood attached to a metal bar doused in pitch - a highly combustible mixture of turpentine and sulphur.  Fiercely hot sparks and embers dripped from the burning torches onto the bewildered animal; the  distressed bull was then released, thrashed around the ring to the cheers of the crowds.

You cannot call the tormenting a sport by any means.  When young locals took turns to provoke the terrified animal, public reportedly jumped into the ring, taunted the animal adding to its terror and confusion. Gasping for air, the bull finally reached a state of exhaustion after nearly 45 minutes of torment and was soon dragged out the ring by villagers and butchered.

Some campaigners against the game cry that this barbaric festival causes the animal phenomenal stress and fear – it is no sport, cruelty, thy name.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar.

15^th Nov. 2012  {Inputs of the gory Toro Jubilo festival taken from www.dailymail.co.uk}

insane human intrusion into animal zone !! - who pays the price ?

It is a rare phenomenon of human relations with animals – in some zoos, the animal keepers become so friendly with the animals, that they respond to human language and calling by names ! In life – sometimes there would be options ~

there have been occasions of man intruding in to the enclosure of wild animals and .. .. ..

o   in more than a couple occasions in Western World, the animal (though not at all faulty) was shot dead and humans saved !

o   in a Delhi incident, a man jumped into the cage – a 200 kg Tiger mauled him, while the gory incident was caught on mobile video and circulated widely.

o   Is there any other possibility ? .. . .. ??

 lion at Nandankanan zoo

Thiruvananthapuram Zoo is one of the oldest of its kind in India. Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma, who ruled Travancore between 1830 and 1847, established a menagerie where royal tigers, panthers, cheetahs, deer, boar, and other wild animals were kept. His brother Uthram Thirunal and British Resident William Cullen formally establish the zoo in 1857 as an annex to the Napier Museum.

The Zoo is in news as media reports and mobile phone footage shows a man jumping  into an open enclosure housing lions at the Zoo on Wednesday. The footage, filmed by a visitor at the zoo, shows the man crawl towards a lion's cage.  But unlike the earlier cases where either the animal was shot dead or the man getting killed, here was a happy ending – man saved by the alacrity of zoo workers.

Police say the man, scaled a barbed fence, jumped over a short wall and crossed a moat towards what appears to be the lion's cage this morning around 11 AM. On seeing this, another visitor immediately alerted zoo workers.  One media writes perhaps with a tinge of sadness that the alleged  face-off was not caught on camera.  In the footage, the insane mane is seen crawling towards the animal – however, the alert staff keeper of the animal, risked his life, entered the cage, lunged to grab the man and dragged him away with more workers helping them out.  It could have ended rather sadly, if the animal had attacked any of them.  

It is stated that the keepers acted with alacrity and good presence of mind, in trying to divert the attention of the lioness.  Further reports put the lioness as ‘gracy’ – which perhaps exhibited its  usual behaviour of running away at the sight of humans when she spotted a stranger  in her open enclosure.  It was gracious that  she didn't get time for her second act; lurking somewhere and pouncing back with all the might.

In an interesting story, TOI reports quoting Vimal, the zoo-keeper who has taken care of the lioness since she was born saying -  had the zoo-keepers been even a teeny bit late to act, she would have come back and attacked Murugan.“Whenever we get to the enclosure with her daily diet, she would run away first, only to come sprinting towards us from somewhere. May be, it was the presence of lot of men that dissuaded her from doing soon Wednesday or else it would have been tragic for that person,'' said Vimal.

The CCTV visuals in the enclosure show the intruder  crawling on all fours and the lioness running off on seeing him. The foolish person kept following the lion but in a  matter of few minutes zoo keepers entered the enclosure and dragged him out. It is further reported that Gracy, one among the two remaining lions in the city zoo was raised by the zoo vet and the keeper after her mother Aiswarya died of cancer. Nursing became essential as the cub used to be attacked by Ayush, its biological father.“She was born with deformed limbs. As a cub she was under incubation and had to be fed with goat milk and supplements through a syringe by the vet,'' said the other zoo keeper.  Till she was one year old, Gracy would gambol around Vimal as he prepared feed for other lions or cleaned the cages. When she was released into the open enclosure she would follow the familiar zoo staff whenever they walked by the enclosure.

They concluded - “For all her pet-like behaviour, she is still a lion and I have often experienced the animal instinct in Gracy even though I had raised her.'' Looks a real miraculous escape ! – happy ending for the person did not lose his life and the animal too was not harmed.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

22^nd Feb 2018.

'krishnoil' ?!? ~ German top court rules 'heavily polluting vehicles can be banned' !

Have you seen or used ‘Krishnoil’ (there is no divinity attached to it !) ~ though not All India Motor Tariff parameter, some Insurers do distinguish between petrol and diesel versions of the same make model vehicle !!

Volkswagen was in news for wrong – as it is alleged to have been cheating in emission tests by making its cars appear far less polluting than they are. The US Environmental Protection Agency discovered that 482,000 VW diesel cars on American roads were emitting up to 40 times more toxic fumes than permitted - and VW has since admitted the cheat affects 11m cars worldwide.

In case you are baffled ‘krishnoil’ was a household name of 1970s – it is the ‘kerosene oil’ – which according to a study by researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Illinois – the Globe has  been overlooking a significant source of black carbon pollution: Kerosene lanterns, used as a primary light source for millions of people worldwide.

Kerosene, also known as paraffin, lamp oil, and coal oil (an obsolete term), is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum, widely used as a fuel in industry as well as households. Its name derives from Greek: κηρός (keros) meaning wax, and was registered as a trademark by Canadian geologist and inventor Abraham Gesner in 1854 before evolving into a genericized trademark.  Kerosene is widely used to power jet engines of aircraft (jet fuel) and some rocket engines and is also commonly used as a cooking and lighting fuel and for fire toys such as poi.  I have heard of roadside mechanics using kerosene to power their two wheelers !!  The research claims that  the black carbon soot from kerosene lanterns is twenty times higher than is currently assumed when factoring in this light source into calculations of total black carbon emissions.  Black carbon is increasingly being cited as a significant factor in global warming, as well as in glacier melting.  So Scientists would want to poor to phase out kerosene stoves and look for a costlier alternative !

The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel which is injected into the combustion chamber is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression.  This contrasts with spark-ignition engines such as a petrol engine that  uses a spark plug to ignite an air-fuel mixture. The diesel engine has the highest thermal efficiency (engine efficiency) of any practical internal or external combustion engine due to its very high expansion ratio and inherent lean burn which enables heat dissipation by the excess air. Diesel engines may be designed as either two-stroke or four-stroke cycles. Since the 1910s they have been used in submarines and ships. Use in locomotives, trucks, heavy equipment and electricity generation plants followed later.  Since the 1970s, the use of diesel engines in larger on-road and off-road vehicles in the US increased.  Production diesel car history started in 1933  with Citroën's Rosalie, which featured a diesel engine option; Mercedes-Benz 260D and the Hanomag Rekord were introduced in 1936.  The biggest single step forward for mass-market diesel cars came in 1982 when PSA Peugeot Citroën introduced the XUD engine in the Peugeot  ~ and this type of  cars started the diesel boom in Europe spreading to other continents as well.

Now comes the news that – one  of Germany’s top courts has ruled that heavily polluting vehicles can be banned from the urban centres of Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, a landmark ruling that could dramatically hit the value of diesel cars. Environmental campaigners had sued dozens of German cities, arguing they have a duty to cut air pollution to protect people’s health.

The Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig found that authorities in Stuttgart and Düsseldorf, two of Germany’s most polluted cities, can now legally ban older, more polluting vehicles, but the ruling will have an impact on the whole country, paving the way for other cities to introduce bans.  The court did not impose any bans itself, leaving that up to city and municipal authorities. The judges did however urge them to “exercise proportionality” and said any curbs should be introduced gradually and allow for certain exemptions.

About 70 German cities including Munich and Cologne recorded average nitrogen dioxide levels above EU thresholds in 2017, according to the federal environment agency (UBA).  The car industry has been vocal about its opposition to a ban, as has the German government, fearing it would hugely disrupt the lives of diesel car owners, who will not only find themselves unable to drive their cars but also in possession of vehicles that will plummet in value.

In a nod to concerns about the affected cars’ resale values, judge Andreas Korbmacher said “certain losses will have to be accepted”. Eager to reassure anxious car owners, the government insisted that nothing would change right away and stressed that bans were not inevitable. “The court has not issued any driving bans but created clarity about the law,” said Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks. “Driving bans can be avoided, and my goal is and will remain that they do not come into force,” she added. Chancelor Angela Merkel also weighed in, saying the ruling concerned only “individual cities”. “It’s really not about the entire country and all car owners,” she said.

But the outcome marks a huge victory for the environmentalist group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), which sued Stuttgart and Duesseldorf to force them to take action against the toxic nitrogen oxides and fine particles emitted by older diesel engines.  Concerns over the harmful effects of diesel have soared since Volkwagen’s “dieselgate” scandal in 2015, in which it manipulated the systems on 11m vehicles worldwide to fool regulators’ emissions tests.

Industry giants such as Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler have responded to “dieselgate” by offering updates to engine control software to reduce emissions, but the decision in favour of diesel bans could up the pressure on them to provide hardware fixes to heavily polluting cars. Car companies have already seen the market share for diesel vehicles in Germany fall from 48% in 2015 to about 39% last year.

'

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

27^th Feb 2018.

Pic and news credit : Guardian.co,uk