rajeshvora’s blog

Dear Friends,

Pongal is one of the leading festivals of Tamil Nadu. It is celebrated after the harvest time of the crops. There is cheer and good feeling among the people in general after a bountiful harvest. Nothing wrong in celebrating it in good spirits.

Jallikattu is a sport that is played today in certain pockets of Tamil Nadu - the most famous being Alanganallur, which is about 20 kms from Madurai. It is inhuman to call it a sport itself.

Special Bulls are kept in isolation. They are made ferocious by giving it alcohol and steroids. They must be using other methods to make it antagonistic. A bull is let loose in an open air arena within which hundreds of men participate. The participants have to tame the bull and it is a bloody gruesome event. The bull is teased, taunted and harrased by the participants. This is a CRUEL event. Such mindless cruel “sports” have no place in a forward thinking and growing nation and the world. Just because the sport was played since a few hundred years back is no excuse to keep it running now. There are other ways to show human bravery. Teasing, taunting, hurting bulls is no bravery at all. It is cowardice in fact.

I request all my good friends to visit http://www.jallikatu.com to cast your vote to stop this cruel sport. This website is a Times of India intiative and the results of this poll will be submitted to the Supreme Court of India. If possible, please vote with as many email ids you have. Every single vote counts so go ahead and do it.

Please heed your conscience and vote against the event and help the animals.

Thank you my friends.

Few pics of this bloody gruesome sport:

Pic 2

Pic 3

Pic 4

We are in midst of the winter. Except for a few places down south, the northern
part of our country is pretty cold. Keeping yourself warm in a fur or leather
jacket sounds very cozy is it not? Great. Read on.

I had received an email from a friend. That email was in Spanish. I couldn't make
the head of tail out of it. But there was a link to an embedded video, which I
clicked, not knowing what to expect. (later I learned that the mail was an
online petition chain mail.)

And then, I was watching the most gruesome video of my life. My stomach was churned
and I was almost on the verge of throwing up. My mind a turmoil and I was at my
depressive best.

Friends, please do not get deterred by my experience in watching that video. I want each
and every one of you to watch the video till the LAST. No matter if your
stomach churns, no matter if you get depressed. No matter if your mind becomes
numb and a mental mess. Still do watch it.

Clicke here to watch the Video

The fur ads you might see in magazines and commercials portray fur coats as a
symbol of elegance and fashion. But these ads fail to show how the original
owners of these coats met their gruesome deaths.


Millions of fur-bearing animals including foxes, raccoons, minks, coyotes,
bobcats, lynxes, opossums, nutria, beavers, muskrats, otters, and others are
killed each year on fur farms by anal and vaginal electrocution and in the wild
by drowning, trapping, or beating.

On fur farms in China, where most fur originates, minks, foxes, rabbits, and other animals are kept in
tiny wire cages in all weather extremes. They are strangled, bludgeoned, and
often skinned while they are still alive. Since fur is often deliberately
mislabeled, if you wear fur, there’s no way to tell whose skin you’re in?it
could even be cat or dog fur.

What You Can Do

Compassion is fashion!
You can discourage trapping by discouraging fur-wearing. When you see people in
fur, tell them the facts about trapping; many people incorrectly assume that
animals are killed humanely. If we stop using fur and leather products, the
manufacturers / sellers will automatically stop manufacturing / selling them. Please
have some conscious friends. Please allow the beautiful animals to live too.

You value your liberty and freedom so much.

So do they.

You love to live life.

 So do they.

You have pain when you get hurt.

So do they.

So why kill?

(major inputs from PETA website- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)

We have taken the word Environment and Ecology totally for granted. Thats because, we are bombarded by the sound bytes of Global warming and Environment disaster day in and day out by media etc.

 Forgive me for taking you people back to school by giving definitions. But what exactly is Environment and Ecology. And why should we care or worry about its state of affairs? Let us first  take a look at what we mean by it.

 The following is the definition I got in dictionary.com

1. Environment - The aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or
   influences; surroundings; milieu.
2. Ecology - the air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other
   external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time.

 As you can see it is the sum total of ALL the factors surrounding you. Another aspect of the sum total would include all that was the past, the present and more importantly the FUTURE. So it does concern us in a big way.  

Imagine you have guests in your home this weekend. After they have left, what will be the state of your Home? Exactly the same as before they had come? Or a little dirty? Or way too too untidy? Am sure the answer will be either second or the third. And what will you do when it is untidy? Leave it as it is or clean up the mess? Ah yes.. I do hear a lot of ayes. Good. 

Now that was just a small analogy ' the Earth being your house. When you take so much pains to keep your home neat and tidy and more importantly “livable” wouldn”t you like to keep this bigger house that we call the earth the same? Of course we would like to. But are our actions in our daily course of life in line with that? A big No here. 

As mankind has progressed over the centuries (I would hate to use the term developed here), we have literally plundered the earth. Nature being benevolent as it is ' it has been able to absorb things till now. But not anymore. Now it is in such a state - just like a person in an ICU on ventilator.

So you might be wondering what you can do about it, right? You alone are not responsible for this mess. Agreed. But you and me are partly responsible. Theres this saying about every drop adds to the ocean, right? Well, now thats what we have to do. We have to do our own bit - let it be the smallest gestures and acitivities. I shall post
a separate detailed blog about small small changes that we can do to chip in
for this. Here i would like to give you a macro picture and the guiding principles which we all can follow.

Remember the Five R”s.

(Not difficult when you can remember my name.. lols)

(As suggested by the Environment NGO Kalpavriksh. The five R”s are theirs, the elaboration is my own.)

Reduce

Refuse

Reduce the overall consumption that you are currently involved in. Reduce the
amount of motorized travel that you undertake. Reduce the usage of power at
your home and office. Reduce your over-all carbon footprint that you leave on
this world.

Re-use. Not to be confused with recycle. Re-use means try to use your existing
appliances/assets/articles further. Don't just discard them at the slightest
provocation. Remember the more you reuse, the less you buy new and the less you
buy new the less it is manufactured and the less it is manufactured the less
resources are used. Ah, I know you are very smart in figuring out such things.
How dumb of me to stress this point so much, ain't it?

Recycle. Recycling is going to be the order of the day and one of the most
important factors for utilizing our limited resources to the maximum possible
extent. I would give 100 marks to the rag picker who has picked up that bit of
polyethylene from the street and 0 marks to you for throwing it there. All
those people who eke out a living picking up all sorts of things from the piles
of garbage that we tend to accumulate are the real but unsung heroes of today.
They won't win any Nobel's. But thanks to them they are helping our planet a
great deal. By picking up all types of metals, plastics, paper, card board, etc
etc. they ensure that we dig the earth that much less for all those resources.
Please keep all your garbage separate so that it is fit for recycling. Don't
mix different kinds of garbage. If possible keep separate bins for paper &
metals and kitchen waste.

Rethink. Ah!! Now comes the easiest part, aint it? We are all great thinkers
and the most conscious people living on planet earth. So what's the great deal
about rethinking, you asked? Well, if we really were such great thinkers, our
world would not have come to this sorry state of affairs in the first place. We
consume all the news and data thrown at us by the mass media and the corporates
at its face value. Have we ever given a second thought while performing any
activity? No, we haven't. Well it's high time we did so. Rethink all your priorities
and actions and most importantly use common sense.

Refuse. A bit confusing again, isn't it? Well it got me stumped too. Well keep
this for your homework and enlighten me when you get your brain working.

And don't you think that I am letting you off the hook with this one. One more blog will follow and I would like to see some affirmative action on those counts and you will report to me on those.

Friends,
 Today, 5th June, is the World Environment day.

Wanted to write on this topic since a long time . But never got around to do it. So I guess today is the perfect day to write on this topic.

I am again posting this blog in a two part series. This first part gives links to some of blogs on iLand. In the second part, I will share with you how to be more environment friendly. And mind you, I will be writing how I AM doing it. Not just preaching, but following it myself and then sharing it with you people.

I have seen many iLanders write on this topic.

One iLander has been relentlessly crusading and bringing about awareness about Environment issues. She says that the sole purpose of blogging has been to create awareness on these much touted about, but less acted upon topics. And when a person who not only creates awareness but also passionately makes a career out of working towards those issues, it definitely calls for genuine appreciation.

She is none other than my dear friend, el amor : http://elamor.rediffiland.com 

I request you to go thro some of her posts on environment related issues. And yes, please do visit her iLand regularly. A comment would be more in order and would acknowledge the fact that you have read her posts. But even if you don't comment, please do read her stuff. Some posts and some information is amazing. You are a truly dedicated person amor.

India Today recently carried a cover story on global warming and how it is going to affect us. India Today has millions of readers. And would of course have made a huge impact on many a reader. But one iLander went a step ahead and posted some points given there in, in the form of a blog. I too subscribe to India Today and I too hold this issue close to my heart. But I dint do anything about it and he went ahead and did it. And it was just great to see him on the rediff main page for that blog. Congrats Saurin.

Link to Saurin Parikh's blog: Saurin Parikhs Blog


And to those of you who still have nagging doubts as to what an individual can do to make a difference, please definitely read this blog. My friend, Nilesh has blogged on this subject. A small deed on our part can create an avalanche of good.

Here is the link : Courage of Conviction


The last link is from another iLand friend.
She writes passionately about her pet subjects ' environment being one of them. Please do read her recent post on this topic. Sahitis Blog
Hope we all emulate her and continue to inspire each other too.




Note: I am disabling comments on this blog. Please do not post any comment related to this blog on the guest book too. It will be promptly deleted. If you really like me even 1%, my sincerest request would be to read the above blogs. For many of you, I know time is a big constraint, coz I too have the same problem. But this one time, I request you people to either forgo reading some other blogs and read the above ones. And not just read but try to contribute to a safer and greener future for this world in your own little way. And when you do that, that would be the biggest comment for me. More valuable than even a thousand comments on this blog.


For a clean, green and a sustainable future.