Amelie !!!

Hi everyone !

I saw this french movie 'Amelie' last weekend. ( with subtitles ofcourse ! ).This movie was absolutely delightful and a joy to watch! This post is not a review of the movie , but to tell you all to not miss this one, if you can lay hands on it. It is very original , warm and funny and it will leave you with a big smile on your face .It will even teach you how to appreciate life more . The actress whos played Amelie, Audrey Tatou wow !!! You will fall in love with Amelie in the movie !

This movie has currently made it to the No 2 spot in my list of most loved movies .(In my English movies list)

The No 1 spot is occupied by the 'Before Sunrise' and 'Before Sunset' combo!

Jallikattu

This is an article that i wrote in January 2008.

A couple of my friends asked me what is the cruelty that the bull is subjected to in jallikattu? And why shouldn't it be conducted? Here are my answers and arguments.

The cruelty to animals :

The Bull is made to drink alcohol , chilli powder is rubbed on its eyes and genitals to make it ferocious, it runs crazed with pain and fear among the crowd. On ndtv today ' Not much changed with cruelty to the bulls. Bull tamers pulled the animals by the tail and many treated the bulls just like a football and officials did nothing to stop this.'

For the people?

Today's news says 'At least 129 people were gored by rampaging bulls'.Jallikattu bulls are owned by rich landlords who let the animals lose on the poor villagers. Their sons do not join in. Then, how many educated villagers take part? None. It is the poor and disposable villagers who take on the bulls in the hope of earning some money.Villagers need education and jobs, not jallikattu which merely keeps them backward

Culture and bravery?

Jallikattu belongs to a Paleolithic period when man fought animals with bare hands as he tried to domesticate them. True, it has probably been practiced for a long time. But neither history nor culture is static.Man must evolve from one stage to a higher one. The modern-day jallikattu is a farce, a commercial venture. Where is bravery in a violent mob harassing an animal? Can cruelty be condoned in the name of entertainment and sport? This is not Tamil culture .We ought to feel ashamed.

My opinion:

The Supreme Court had taken a bold decision in refusing to allow jallikattu.It was not surprising that the ban was followed by wide spread protests and resentment by the villagers. It is a major event and has been a source of entertainment for them . But Doesn't our chief minister know what is good for the state? Him sending a team to delhi to file a review petion can best be seen as a vote-bank politics to appease a segment of people .Their argument that they would take all the 'safety measures and precautionary steps' holds no water. Where were their safety measures if 130 people were injured yesterday ? And the famous Alanaganallur jalliikattu would be going on right now, today. Wonder how many will get injured? It is impossible to hold a sport of this nature and magnitude without harm to human and animal life. The SC , under the threat and pressure of the state government had no other go but to relax the ban. While the ruling DMK has played it safe, for thousands of bulls in the state it has been another season of trauma.

( Other than the 'My opinion' part, the rest is compiled from various articles from the Hindu )
Thiruvalluvar, in 200 B.C., who said "Diverse are the teachings of the religions of the world, but in all will be found that compassion is that which gives men spiritual deliverance.'

Important

Please have a look at this comprehensive report on Jallikattu, which was presented in the Supreme Court in the following link :

www.scribd.com/doc/6659313/Jallikattu-Report orhttp://www.pfachennai.org/docs/JALLIKATTU(BULL%20FIGHT)-REPORT.pdf

This report was prepared by my friend and animal welfare activist J.Pragadeeshwaran, whom i currently work for .Below is a section from the report that provides an observation on the image at the top of this post:

A close observation of the above image taken at a Jallikattu event clearly shows the following:At a single point of time:

• A huge crowd pulls the neck of the bull with a rope towards the front direction. Thesudden pull with huge force cuts the throat of the bull.
• Its tail is twisted and pulled harshly towards the left direction.B
• oth its hind legs are lifted and pulled towards back direction to immobilize the animal.
• A group of people jump on its hump. To get a grip on the running animal people use theirsharp finger nails to hold the body of the bull resulting in bruises all over the animal’sbody
• Another group pulls its horn. People attack the animal with non stop blows

Can an animal be subjected to more cruelty than this?
The animal suffers with extreme pain because at a single point of time its body, limbs, tail and
horn are pulled in multiple directions, scratched with nails and thrashed to the ground by the
huge angry mob.

Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu Review

This review might come a bit late , but i felt like writing it. This movie is what happens, when u cross successful sports movies with a heart like Chak de ,Lagaan with the recent crop of movies that depict rural village life realisticly. And the debutant director has more than enough talent to pull it off successfully. Well does he ? Almost, untill the climax , that leaves you wondering 'wat was the director possibly thinking '? If it were not for that one mistake, we would have had a sure winner !! Theres one trend that ive noticed in our tamil movies . Why do even very good directors think they need a dramatic,tragic end( read 'someone dies' ending) for their movies ? Examples are

Kalloori - a truly wonderful movie, but i would have been happy if the director dint go in for a 'ending' but just left the movie as it is .

Paruthiveeran - I still havent seen this movie but i heard the ending is so very tragic.

Veyil - Is Pasupathi dying the only way for his father to learn his lesson?

Pattalam- Please dont watch this movie, but it has one of the worst endings you can think of , for a movie for and with school kids.

Positives

• Another refreshing film that transports you to the rural heart of TamilNadu ,Kanakkanpatti near Pazhani to be exact :). You get to see their lives,their thiruvizhas and ofcourse their 'Kabadi'
• Good characterisation of the entire cast ( except the hero, surpisingly ).
• All the characters look their part. No lighting , makeup or camera angles to gloass them up. They are so raw and believable.
• I would say the characters that truly livened up the movie were the pencil thin guy with a ravenous appetite :) and appukutty. The mill owner and the coach had also performed well. Saranya Mohan was cute. But the hero Muthu , sorry ,not much acting there. He looked the part, but thats about it. Anyway my favourite 'Muthu' will always be Kalloori's hero (Akhil).
• The humour thats part of the screenplay .
• The two songs "Pada Pada' and 'Lesa Parakudhu'

Negatives

• The climax !! Undoubtedly ! Cant forgive the director for this one.
• Editing could have been better. In the first half, too much emphasis on the romance, both the duets closely placed, etc
• The small characters in the movie have not acted well.

Verdict

• Its a very good enjoyable game, that you should go for , but the game is lost in the end !

Hoping for good movies to come from this promising director , Susindran .

Zoos in India : Pitiful Prisons

This bear has gone mad, reaching out with his paws and gnawing at the bars.

Most of us have visited zoos in our lives. We just went around,watched the animals and had a good day out. “Yes, we know that animals are better off in the wild. But where else do we get to see these amazing creatures at such close proximity ? Our kids would want to see the different animals , that they have only seen in their books. Besides they seem well looked after. Looks like they have food and water and a place to live. Now, isn’t that enough ? They have probably gotten used to being in an enclosure . No harm in us having a look at them in zoos". Havent we all thought this way, while visiting a zoo.Sometimes to our naked eye things may seem fine in some of the bigger zoos, when in reality they are not. That is because we are no animal experts , we don’t have the knowledge about the animal behavioural psychology, animal biological sciences or ethology to know whats wrong and the sad thing is ,neither do the zoo keepers.

So its time to get our facts straight about zoos in India .

No budgets :
They run on tight budgets, leading to food-shortage for animals.Not having enough money to operate, results in atrocious conditions and numerous deaths. Some cases:

• Nandankanan Zoo, Bhubaneshwar: In 1998, because the zoo failed to make payments on the electricity bill, the power was shut off. The situation became critical for the animals, whose only source of water in the extreme heat was electric pumps.


• Prince of Wales Zoological Garden, Lucknow: Within five months (from December 1999 to April 2000), 23 animals died. The zoo director blamed several factors, including a financial crunch.


• The Padmaja Naidu Zoo: In 2000, five tigers, six snow leopards, 16 Himalayan wolves and 10 leopards nearly starved to death because, according to the food supplier, the zoo was three months behind on payments.

Unnatural and Miserable Lives
Zoos restrict natural behaviours of the animals, such as flying, swimming, running, hunting, climbing, scavenging, foraging, exploring, and partner selection. Research carried out by scientists show that animals are psychologically affected by the lack of space and the constant intrusion of people. The miserable living conditions and the lack of privacy often lead to animals indulging in abnormal behaviour known as 'zoochosis'. They bang their heads against the wall, bite cage bars and even bite their own limbs! Some animals like the big cats simply go insane from boredom. The physically and mentally frustrated animals spend much of their time pacing, walking in tight circles, swaying or rolling their heads, pulling out their hair and feathers and self-mutilation

• In 1999, Lalita, a lion being kept at the Heera Golden Zoo, resorted to licking herself all day long out of sheer boredom. After she was seized from the zoo, a veterinarian extracted two huge balls of hair that had led to a 5-foot block in her intestines.
  
  Imagine what confinement in a cage could do to a magnificent beast like the cheetah, which runs at 114 km per hour and roams an average area of 37 sq. km in the wild!

Education? No!
Although zoos claim to educate people and preserve species, they do neither. Instead they are teaching the wrong lesson—that it is acceptable to tear animals away from their
families and homes and put them on display for our amusement.Most zoo visitors usually spend only a few minutes or seconds at each display, seeking entertainment rather than education.. Most zoo enclosures are quite small, and labels provide little information .

Insensitive Visitors
Every zoo has a sign board about rules for visitors among which one prominent rule is not to tease or feed the animals.The zoo visiting public,who are not educated about the significance of these rules and they pay little heed to them. In many sad cases people deliberately antagonize a zoo animal to get it to “do something, throwing objects at the animals or poking them, often resulting in their deaths.

• At the Alipore Zoo in Calcutta some years ago, three endangered giant Al Debra tortoises were killed after visitors repeatedly pelted them with stones
• Few years ago, a hippopotamus had died after swallowing a shoe thrown at him at the Alipore Zoo
• Delhi Zoo, New Dehli: A bird died after his eye was poked out by an umbrella tip. Several other animals died after eating food containing razor blades that was tossed to them by visitors.
• In 1999, a hogdeer became the third animal to die from ingesting plastic bags discarded by zoo visitors.

Zoo Staff Shortage, Incompetence and Negligence
There are few or no security personnel to enforce the rules in the zoos .The zoo keepers are ignorant and unqualified . Zoos in India echo with examples of animal deaths caused due to sheer callousness. Consider this:

• At the Darjeeling Zoo, a snow leopard, an extremely endangered species hailing from the Himalayas, was made to stay out in heavy downpour . It contracted pneumonia and died.
• Jaipur Zoo: During a three-month period in 2000, 125 animals died.
• Chhatbir Zoo: Asia’s largest zoo has never had a veterinary hospital, not even one on-site veterinarian.
• Lucknow Zoo: In 1999, 53 animals died.
• Nandankanan Zoo, Bhubaneshwar: In 2000, in just two months, 13 tigers, three deer, a mongoose and one crocodile died.
• Delhi Zoological Park, New Delhi: There is only one veterinarian responsible for the health of more than 1,200 animals.
  These people do not have even the basic training in taking care of animals ... but they are there taking vital decisions.’ –Ashok Kumar, former vice president, Wildlife Protection Society of India, on managers of Indian zoos.

Zoos serve the people rather than the animals
"The cardinal principle of any modern zoo is to serve the needs of the creatures it exhibits. But zoos in India do just the opposite; they serve the needs of the visitors. While the lawns are manicured, the paths pebbled and the waiting areas equipped , the animals are housed in cramped, dingy enclosures" says Vijay Jung Thapa in his article in the Hindu.

Some Statistics

• Since July 2005, PETA investigators have visited over 30 zoos throughout India and found appalling neglect, decrepit facilities and animal suffering on a massive scale.
• The Indian Zoo Yearbook lists 230 recognised zoos with an estimated 65,000 animals belonging to at least 643 different species. Of these, only 15 are big zoos with some semblance of order. The others have been classified as medium and mini zoos, most running on paltry funds and in appalling conditions!!

What can we do

• Lets boycott zoos and other attractions that exploit animals and instead lets support the groups and the people labouring for these voiceless animals.
• Lets teach our children to respect all of Gods creation. Lets not give them the wrong message that its ok for the most powerful species (man) to do as he pleases the less powerful ones .
• Children can surely learn a lot more about our magnificient animal kingdom by watching the educational wildlife programmes on Channels like animal planet and the discovery than by looking at animals behind bars in zoos.

Sites to visit:
PETA Literature on zoos: http://petaliterature.com/prodinfo.asp?number=ENT120
PETA India : http://www.petaindia.com/zoos.html
PETA Kids : http://www.petaindiakids.com/wycd.html

Caring Consumer

Ever wondered if your shampoo has blinded a rabbit? Not many consumers are aware that multi-national cosmetic giants outsource grotesque animal torture to India because it’s less expensive here. Gandhi would’ve been repulsed, and so will anyone who learns what ‘testing’ involves.

Sample this eye-irritancy test for shampoo: “Laboratories use albino rabbits because they have large, sensitive eyes. Their eyelids are held open with clips while workers drip chemicals into their eyes. The rabbits are usually not given any pain killers - some rabbits break their backs as they struggle to escape the pain.

After placing the chemical in the rabbits’ eyes for the Draize test*, the testers write down the damage it causes, which includes swelling, burning, blistering, and blindness”. Glossy commercials for shinier hair or softer lips wouldn’t dare tell their consumers about the horror that takes place behind the scenes.

What’s the alternative?

“Alternatives to animal testing include cell cultures (just a collection of tiny cells, not a whole animal). They’re cheaper and produce faster, more accurate results than animal tests, which means they’re safer for people too. Companies can also use ingredients or combinations of ingredients that have already been proven harmless, or use natural ingredients,” says PETA.
Look for the rabbit Check the labels of all cosmetics and detergents you buy – some will have a ‘rabbit’ sign that says ‘not tested on animals’. Some cruelty-free companies are yet to adopt the ‘rabbit’ symbol.

*The Draize Test is an acute toxicity test devised in 1944 by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) toxicologist John H. Draize. Initially used for testing cosmetics, the procedure involves applying 0.5mL or 0.5g of a test substance to the eye or skin of a restrained, conscious animal, and leaving it for four hours.The animals are observed for up to 14 days, for signs of erythema and edema in the skin test, and redness, swelling, discharge, ulceration, hemorrhaging, cloudiness, or blindness in the tested eye. The test subject is commonly an albino rabbit, though other species are used too, including dogs.The animals are killed after testing.
Some companies that do test on Animals
Axe (Unilever)

Clean & Clear (Johnson & Johnson)
Cover Girl

Close-up (Church & Dwight)
Colgate-Palmolive Co.

Dove (Unilever)

Garnier (L'Oreal)

Gillette Co.(Procter & Gamble)

Head & Shoulders (Procter & Gamble)

Johnson & Johnson
L'Oreal USA
Lakme(Hindustan lever )

Lancôme (L'Oreal)
Listerine (Johnson & Johnson)

Lubriderm (Johnson & Johnson)

Lux (Unilever)

Max Factor (Procter & Gamble)

Maybelline (L'Oreal)

Neutrogena (Johnson & Johnson)
Olay (Procter & Gamble)
Old Spice (Procter & Gamble)
Palmolive (Colgate-Palmolive Co.)

Pampers (Procter & Gamble)

Pantene (Procter & Gamble)

Ponds (Unilever)

Procter & Gamble

Sunsilk (Unilever)

Tide (Procter & Gamble)

Unilever Vaseline (Unilever)

Veet (Reckitt Benckiser)

Wet Ones (Playtex Products)
Some Companies that do not test on animals

Estee lauder
Oriflame
Revlon
Himalayas
Bodyshop
Foreverliving products
Lotus Herbals Ltd.
Biotique
Fabindia

Nike (deodrant) etc
Himalaya Products are cool :
I find the himalaya products really good , also we need not feel guilty about hurting animals for our personal care products. All their products are great, be it cosmetics,soaps, shampoos , toothpastes.. etc
Check out what the Himalays say about animal testing. I got it from their website.
Against Animal Testing:

Himalaya opposes animal testing. Cosmetic products should never be tested on animals. There is no way to justify pain for profit. The notion that a cream or lotion which makes us look and feel good, has been developed by testing on animals is sad and in this day of scientific progress, absolutely unacceptable. None of our cosmetic products are tested on animals and they never will be.We Respect Life. All life.
Isnt that a cool company ? They also follow some practices that are good for the environment and also support local communities. Check out the details, if you are interested at :
http://hgh.com.ky/about/whatwestandfor.htm
Sites to visit :

Check out www.caringconsumer.com for an exhaustive list of companies that do and don’t test (in downloadable pdf format).

You can also visit http://breakshearts.peta2.com/ , http://www.petakids.com/testing2.html

Beauty without cruelty India - http://www.bwcindia.org/
-Sandhya
(A part of this post is taken from an article published in the Ergo)

Corrs - Everybody Hurts

the youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flvuy5vC4vk

One of my favourite songs by the Corrs

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,

When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on

Don't let yourself go, 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along

When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)

If you feel like letting go, (hold on)

If you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on

'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends

Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand.

Oh, no. Don't throw your hand

If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone

If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,

When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes,Everybody cries.

And everybody hurts sometimesAnd everybody hurts sometimes.

So, hold on, hold onHold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

Everybody hurts. You are not alone

He wastes nothing

Hey everyone,
I chanced upon this article from Ergo , June 24th 2009 edition. I thought its a must share . I think we all have to learn from Dakshinamoorthy how to waste nothing ! Heres the article...
- Sandhya

Have you ever seen the dogs on your street jump up, wag their tails in excitement and run to hug the litter collector who works in your area? I have. Dakshinamoorthy is the Sembakkam Panchayat’s litter collector whose routine is to feed all the community dogs every morning when he is on duty. He starts as early as 6.30 a.m.
We call him the pied piper of Rajakilpakkam. What’s heart warming about his story is not just his popularity amongst the four-legged ones but the means he uses to do what he does. He never wastes any of the food or bread loaves collected from various houses or bakeries in our area.
Instead, he makes an effort to divide them into equal quantities and offer it to all the homeless dogs. He is a true champion of this cause and makes sure that he at least guarantees them one meal a day.
Even though I feed these dogs on the way to work and on my way back home, the tiny tots don’t even give me a second glance if Dakshinamoorthy is around. The ever-smiling man often tells me proudly that “they have all eaten”. I can sense the exuberance and satisfaction he feels when he says those words.
We are told that charity begins at home and Dakshinamoorthy is our live example, doing whatever he is capable of, his financial status notwithstanding. I draw inspiration from his choices. Offering even a handful of food to a cat, dog or a crow is a process so rewarding that it’s hard to describe. After all, helping animals is a way to stay close to God.
Compiled by Mahalakshmi Parthasarathy. mahaaparthasarathy@gmail.com