Friday, May 18, 2007

Shiva and the star tortoises

I spent this morning at the Sanjay Gandhi National Park at Borivli. A batch of over 2000 star tortoises confiscated by the customs department are being looked after there waiting for transport back to Tamil Nadu. I had gone to help arrange for this and inspect their condition. The staff were cleaning and feeding them well, all little babies poor things. They were laid out in plastic trays, about fifteen to a tray and two rooms were filled with these trays while two boys sat chopping vegetables into tiny bits for them, and another two were cleaning them one by one.

I didn't take a picture of them, since that wouldn't be right. But here's one of Shiva the tiger, majestically wandering about in the safari enclosure. Some years ago, he was a drab bored circus tiger rescued from Kankavali with all over skin infection. Now he is more handsome than John Abraham.

3 comments:

Shaji.k said...

A very beautiful camera shot of the tiger in a natural setting. he looks stately. and the picture of the innocent young dolphin is really poignant!
star tortoises were confiscated by the customs at cochin airport while they were being illegally transported to SriLanka. i met a young lady, kalpana from delhi, on a flight a few months ago and she was travelling to kerala to shoot a documentary on the smuggling of star tortoises.if i am right, it was the wwf or the british council that was supporting her. we had an interesting conversation which made me aware of this illegal trade. it's nice that u r spending a lot of time and energy on protecting our precious animal kingdom.
'kerala open' concluded today with the dark horse, marinne giraud from mauritius winning the title defeating agnes szatszmari of rumania. marinne and many other players r flying to mumbai to take part in the $10,000 mumbai open to be played at cci and mslta.
i conveyed your regards to bhadra and she was delighted to learn that u still had not forgotten her. bhadra is married to an engineer, with two grown up children and she is an officer in the accounts wing of the state electricity board. she too doesnt play tennis any more.
thanks for ur advise on sponsorship and for the itc mail id. we did sign an agreement with stumpvision, a company owned by anil kumble but it's executives were not able to perform.

Anonymous said...

...developed into a stately young woman...still innocent enough to fight unending battles...

Anonymous said...

u deserve it :)