*From To Sathish* - Thread 3 - Page 71

Serial blasts rock Thailand killing at least 4

Yesterday was Varalakshmi puja day and as always me and pondatti drove to my cousin sister vanithas place for puja and lunch.

Puja,lunch and a great time with good,kind and loving people.A day well spent and in the end that is what all lives come to and that is how well you spent time and how well you lived your life.Sometimes,i think life is just a good commercial,masala,mass film with a few great moments,some so,so,okay moments, and like in the film when we walk out talking about the intro scene of the hero or the climax fight scene our lives too are just a handful of memories.A time will come when they will talk about just those few things and will try to hard to remember the rest and will fail.

REDEMPTION -143


To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into on or the other.

We are all warriors for we fight the good fight everyday.We go forth into this life fighting for our loved ones and their dreams and future.We go to work knowing that although mentally tired and physically weak,we still have a duty,a responsibility to work.A mother,a wife wakes up to make food for her family and a typical mother does this until her very old age.Think of the billions of mothers who have come and gone unnoticed,who have toiled in the kitchen,in the shadows to feed her husband and children and think of the billions of fathers who venture everyday in buses,cycles,bikes and cars and go to offices just to provide for their family.

Think and remember how young and old fought for their nations freedom and think of the millions who sacrificed their lives,dying in the shower of bullets and bombs on the battlefield and all in the name of a free,fair and just world.Rise now and breathe the free air and step out bold and clear vision of what is right and what is wrong.Redemption is the passage of your soul,in solitude when you did good knowing all too well that it did not bring any recognition or praise.Redemption is the ultimate goal of this human voyage as we travel from birth to death knowing that even though we are microscopic in size,we still are part of a web,a link in this life and together we make up this universe.


Time to hunt,to kill or be killed

The tiger sat up suddenly and stood facing the darkness of the forest although the sun was still high in the sky,blazing and bathing them with light.

The tiger suddenly looked at Rudran and its eyes filled with a strange glow and it whispered into his mind.

" Master,warrior,they are coming and they are coming in great numbers.They have made their camp not far from here and they are getting ready to unleash mayhem on this world.Time is running out for soon it will be too late."

Rudran heard everything " Who are you talking about?" and the tiger called Buddha whispered " your enemies are my enemies and our paths have crossed for a purpose for together we have work to do."

" But i am unarmed and we have no clue as to how many of them are there.So,how are we going to take them on."

The tiger's eyes twinkled with fire " with stealth and with cunning.We create diversions and panic them and take them as they scatter in ones and twos."

Saying this,the tiger looked at him and hurried towards the temple and Rudran followed.It was totally dark and the space inside quite deep.

Rudran switched on his mobile and used the flashlight which doubled as a torch and holding it high cast light on the surroundings.The tiger stopped at the statue of a beautiful and peaceful buddha and pressed the buddhas feet and a sudden grinding noise could be heard.

Rudran stood watching as the wall of the cave which he had assumed to be stone,moved and revealed a hidden compartment.He went towards it and saw that there were many weapons of war stacked there,but all ancient and yet deadly looking.

The tiger whispered " there is no time to tell you about the origins of these weapons and to whom they belong,but know this and use them in the knowledge that you are the rightful owner of all of them and they have been here waiting for you,singing to you,calling to you,to make use of them and put down evil as the previous owner once did."

Rudran looked at Buddha " Previous owner.when and who?"

Buddha smiled " Long ago,in an age of high adventure and in the age of angels and demons."

Rudran confused and not sure entirely of what his companion was talking about,gently cleared the cobwebs and shed light on the compartment and discovered some writing on the wall.

" Only he who is born of his blood and only he who knows right from wrong shall touch these.Only he whose blood travelled across stars can use these.Only he who lives for the universe and is willing to shed his own blood can place his hands on these.Answer with blood and take the weapons of light to shed blood or lose limbs and life."

Rudran stood still and then closed his eyes and meditated on the words and understood what they meant.

He knelt before Buddha and taking the tiger's huge paw,scratched his palm on one of its deadly claws and quickly stood up and let his blood drip all over the weapons.

Drop,drop after drop fell on the many weapons and suddenly a brilliant green light flared up in the darkness of the cave and the light engulfed both Rudran and Buddha.

Rudran bowed to the weapons and took the long sword and tied it to his waist.He then reached for a huge shield and flung it effortlessy across his back and reached further in and grasped the huge spear and took it out.

Rudran looked at Buddha " time to hunt,my friend."

Man and beast,both mighty warriors ran swiftly out of the cave and into the darkness of the forest.

"Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya Glanirva Bhavathi Bharatha,
Abhyuthanam Adharmaysya Tadatmanam Srijami Aham'.
Praritranaya SadhunamVinashaya Cha Dushkritam
Dharamasamsthapnaarthaya Sambhavami Yuge-Yuge."

"Whenever there is decay of righteousness O! Bharatha
And a rise of unrighteousness then I manifest Myself!"
"For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked and
for the establishment of righteousness, I am born in every age."

A moment in the passage of time

Sometimes,i just sit quietly,shunning known faces of various degrees of friendship and yet out in the open,under the sun,no one can be on their own.First,dogs and i have no clue as to how they zero in on me and they come in ones and twos and somehow sensing my need to be on my own,they do this down dog yoga pose and with a few to and fro wagging on their tails,they go on their way or in the least sit quietly a few feet away giving me the privacy and respecting my private space.Then come those two legged creatures which are supposed to possess six senses and which are on top of the food chain and it goes like this.

Good morning,no shooting with all the enthusiasm the person can mutter and muster.

sometimes,just a raise of the hand like a nazi salute and a cheerful,what boss,no work?

Seriously,fellow human being,is this a question or a question that is forming into the question you really want to ask.

And then there is that usual,mundane and cliched " What's wrong,why do you look so thin? when i reality i have put on a few pounds on my face cheeks and butt cheeks and am feeling all guilty about it.

Just a stubble and it prompts "Are you okay? you look sick.fever.viral and you can guess so on and so forth.

After the verbal assaults,i look at the dog or dogs in most cases and they open their mouths in various degrees of laughter and seventh sense knowledge and whisper " quiet,solitude.fat chance."

Threat to wildlife-A companion piece to Redemption

Tiger-On the edge of extinction and hanging on by just its claws



Tigers, the largest of the world's cats, are the heart and soul of Asia's jungles, grasslands, and deserts. They're so adaptable that they even thrive in the frigid Himalayan foothills and the mangrove water-world of the Indian/Bangladeshi Sunderbans"and they are the dominant predator, literally the kings and queens, of every ecosystem they inhabit. But Asia's exploding human population is eating away their forest home, and both tigers and their prey have been caught in the crosshairs, killed in vast numbers by trophy hunters and more recently, by poachers.

Tigers have lived in these lands for millennia; like all modern cats, they originated in Southeast Asia. The great roaring cats, Panthera were the first to branch off the cat family tree 10.8 million years ago. It's a group that includes tigers, lions, leopards, jaguars and snow leopards.

The earliest tiger fossils are two million years old. That ancient ancestor eventually evolved into nine subspecies as they slowly adapted to Asia's various landscapes, prey, and climate. Three of the nine blinked into extinction over the last 80 years. The last known Bali tiger died out during the 1930s; the Javan and Caspian tiger both disappeared in the 1970s. Six subspecies remain: the Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan, Sumatran, Amur (Siberian)"and the South-China, which is gone from the wild, existing only in captivity. All are endangered. In 1996, the Sumatran tiger was reclassified as critically endangered, one step from oblivion.

Though tigers are in the emergency room, they're a resilient species. They were nearly annihilated 73,000 years ago when a massive volcanic eruption at Sumatra's Lake Toba plunged the planet into volcanic winter, wiping out scores of Asian mammals. The species rebounded from just a few individuals to repopulate Asia.

The good news: A female can birth 15 cubs in her lifetime, and there's still enough habitat to support healthy populations. If both the cats and their prey are given boots-on-the-ground protection, there's hope, they'll bounce back. But it will take committed, targeted action and creative strategies.


Tigers are walking gold, worth a fortune on the black market. The demand is huge and prices continue to skyrocket. The cats are being slaughtered across India and their entire range, mostly for their bones and their magnificent pelts.

The bones are smuggled almost exclusively to China, used in tiger bone wine"a pricey traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) tonic thought to impart the tiger's great strength and vigor. But almost every part of the tiger is valued in TCM. Most of the skins end up in China, too, used for high-end luxury dcor.

It's rarely poor locals that are poaching tigers"it's organized gangs. Tigers are part of a massive wildlife trade that's run by sophisticated international crime syndicates, the same trade that's wiping out elephants, rhinos and so many other species. It's a 19 billion dollar a year business.

For centuries, tigers have inspired awe, reverence and sometimes, terror, in the humans they've lived beside. They command the Asian landscape as the top predator"immense, magnificent, muscular animals armed with razored claws and massive canines. They can kill with one swipe of their dinner plate-sized paws or with a strangling bite to the throat of their victim. But they also shimmer with radiant, auburn beauty in the sunlight; sometimes they seem to materialize out of nowhere, hunting under a blanket of night or appearing suddenly from a stand of bamboo, silently stalking their prey at dawn or dusk, shrouded by ghostly mists or by failing light, the jungle's apparition.

With this great power and mystery, tribal cultures worshipped tigers, bestowing them with powers that extend far beyond those of any worldly creature. Tigers became gods"and healers. For millennia, medicine men have ascribed magical powers and medicinal properties to them, and somehow, this cat became a universal apothecary. Many believe (and some still do) that by ingesting it, you absorb an animal's life force, its vigor, strength, and attributes.

Nearly every part of this cat, from nose to tail (eyes, whiskers, brains, flesh, blood, organs and more) has been used to treat a lengthy list of maladies. Tiger parts are purported to heal the liver and kidneys, to cure everything from epilepsy, baldness, toothaches, joint pain and boils to ulcers, nightmares, fevers, and headaches. They're also used to treat rat bites and laziness and are thought to prevent possession by evil demons. Tiger penis is said to have aphrodisiac powers.

The hu gu (Mandarin for bones) are the parts that are most highly prized in Oriental medicine, a favored treatment for rheumatism and arthritis"and for impotence and flagging libido. But the humerus is the most coveted section of a tiger skeleton: That upper front leg bone is believed to contain the most potent healing powers.

Once they're stripped of flesh, the bones are ground into powder, then used in pills, plasters, and as part of remedies containing other ingredients. A standard oral dosage for rheumatic pain is three to six grams a day. Over a year, that's somewhere between six and a half and 13 pounds of bone"which is also used in wine.

There is a growing, clamoring demand for tiger bone wine, a tonic made by steeping a tiger carcass in rice wine to produce an extremely expensive elixir. It's thought to impart the animal's great strength, a status symbol product bought or gifted by the elite: government officials, military officers, and wealthy businessmen.

Although China banned the use of tiger bone in 1993 and removed it from the list of approved medicines, manufacture and sale of tiger bone wine never stopped. Labels may picture a tiger, bottles may be tiger-shaped, but the word "tiger" has disappeared from packaging, replaced by "lion" ingredients"or it's called "bone-strengthening wine." Without DNA tests on any bone bits that might have remained in the liquid, there's no way to know what exactly it's made from, but ongoing media reports coming out of China document dealers offering tiger bone wine to customers.

Some of these are ancient remedies prescribed for well over 1,000 years"some say traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) originated perhaps as long as 5,000 years ago. According to legend, as human civilization emerged, Heaven sent a number of "sage-kings" to teach the people how to survive in a hostile world. One of these sage kings, Shen Nong Shi (3000 B.C.), created medicine by ingesting plants and discovering which served as drugs. As Chinese medical practice evolved, circulation of qi"energy"became paramount, along with balance of yin and yang, the opposite principles in nature, and a focus on the function and the intricate relationships between five organs: kidneys, lungs, liver, heart, and spleen.

TCM ingredients include a wide range of plants, herbs, minerals, and parts from over 1,500 animals, including tigers and other endangered species"more than 6,000 substances in all. Demand for some of the most highly prized items, including rhino horn, pangolin scales, and tiger parts, has nearly hunted these creatures off the planet. The first reference in China to tiger bone medicine dates to 500 A.D., published in the Collection of Commentaries on the Classic of the Materia Medica.


The appetite for animal parts used in TCM skyrocketed in tandem with China's expanding industrialization in the 1980s. As the country's population approached 1.2 billion, newfound wealth and greater spending power fueled the demand as interest in traditional cures resurged: Their use garnered prestige.

Initially, tiger parts came from huge local stockpiles. In 1950, some 4,000 South China tigers roamed the country; but at the end of that decade, as part of the People's Republic of China's Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong declared the cats to be one of the four pests that threatened progress. He organized and championed eradication campaigns, and within a few years, just 1,000 remained. The remaining population dwindled and ultimately crashed. A South China tiger has not been spotted by biologists or government officials in the wild for over 35 years.

China's stockpiles of tiger ingredients eventually ran low and beginning around 1986, the cats began to mysteriously disappear elsewhere. Professional poachers fanned out, shooting, snaring, and trapping their way across tiger range. India was a prime target, with close proximity to China"which is still, by far, the largest consumer of tiger parts and at the time, was the largest manufacturer and exporter of medicines containing tiger derivatives. In 1986, China's People's Daily newspaper reported that 116 factories were producing medicinal wine.

Poachers targeted locations where corruption was rife, enforcement weak, and where there were few other economic opportunities. They hired locals to hunt the cats or act as guides, then ran the parts and pelts over borders to Chinese TCM manufacturers and dealers. A huge pipeline was shipping wildlife to East Asia, especially China, the trade run by international crime syndicates"and driven by monstrous, staggering economics.

But it wasn't until the early 1990s that field biologists and conservationists realized that TCM was responsible for what had become a precipitous decline in tiger numbers. It was a shocking seizure of tiger and leopard bones in Delhi, India in 1993 that revealed the severity of the threat and the mushrooming trade: 882 pounds of tiger and leopard bones (about 30 animals' worth), eight tiger skins and 43 leopard skins. A Tibetan refugee arrested in the sting had agreed to supply an undercover agent with 2,200 pounds of bones"about 80 tigers.

Tigers were classified as globally endangered in 1986. The following year, a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) treaty banned cross-border trade in tiger parts. From 1990 to 1992, China exported some 27 million units of tiger medicines and wine to 26 countries, according to TRAFFIC, a nonprofit that documents illegal wildlife trade. Tiger remedies were seen in pharmacies in Asian communities all over the world.

China formally banned domestic trade of tiger bone in 1993. The next year, some Chinese medical practitioners publicly repudiated the use and efficacy of tiger remedies; today, very few pharmacies still openly carry remedies containing tiger products. But the market slipped underground and shadowy networks still thrive. Though tiger hunting is illegal everywhere, the killing has continued, and in some places, it's accelerated.

Prices for tigers, dead or alive, continue to soar as populations collapse. Poaching for their bones (and skins) has become a primary threat to their survival.

Young, healthy tigers jump through rings of fire, sit upright on cue, clawing at the air, and perform other well-choreographed circus tricks. Enthusiastic crowds cheer. After the show, some pay extra to hold small, cuddly cubs.

But those who visit these tiger attractions in China have no idea of the suffering behind the scenes or the dark commerce that keeps them afloat.

If they were to slip behind the scenes, they'd see concentration-camp level suffering. Huge numbers of tigers are crammed into barred, concrete quarters or packed into dusty, treeless compounds behind chain link fences. Most of the cats are gaunt, wasted to striped skin and bone. Some are grossly deformed by inbreeding or poor nutrition. Some are blind.

Tiger Farms

Many of these operations are run as tourist destinations"and may masquerade as conservation initiatives"but these facilities are essentially factories that breed tigers for the commercial sale of their parts.

The country's 200 or so "tiger farms" are working overtime to meet a new, growing market: Tiger products have become coveted status symbols among China's elite, much like sporting a Rolex watch or serving a bottle of Dom Prignon.

Tiger farms are supplying a shadowy underground trade, which "serves only to stimulate consumer demand, creating a massive enforcement challenge and wholly undermining the efforts of the international community to protect tigers," says Shruti Suresh, a wildlife campaigner with the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency.

A tiger carcass is now worth a small fortune. With just 3,000 tigers (from six different subspecies) left in the wild, this luxury market could be the death knell for wild tigers.

Buying or gifting expensive tiger products has become a fashionable way to gain favor or flaunt wealth and power among China's most influential people, a group that reportedly includes wealthy businessmen, government officials and military officers. China is, by far, the largest consumer of tiger and many other endangered species parts.

It's created a growing clamor for tiger pelts that are used in high-end dcor and for tiger bone wine, made by marinating a tiger skeleton in rice wine"which can sell for $500 a bottle. Tiger meat is sometimes served at fashionable dinner parties where guests may have been treated to a "visual feast" before eating: watching their entre killed and butchered before them.


A partial list of traditional medicine uses for tiger parts:

Bile: Used to treat convulsions in children

Blood: Used to strengthen the constitution and build willpower

Bone: Used as an anti-inflammatory to arthritis, rheumatism, back problems, general weakness, or headaches; also considered a powerful tonic

Brain: A treatment for laziness and pimples

Claws: A sedative for sleeplessness

Eyeballs: A treatment for malaria and epilepsy, nervousness or fevers in children, convulsions and cataracts

Fat: Prescribed for dog bites, vomiting, hemorrhoids

Feces: A cure for boils, hemorrhoids and alcoholism

Flesh: Used to treat nausea and malaria, to bring vitality and tone the stomach and spleen

Feet: Used to ward off evil spirits

Fur: Is burnt to drive away centipedes

Nose leather: Used to treat bites and other superficial wounds, for epilepsy and children's convulsions

Penis: Used as an aphrodisiac or love potion

Skin: Used to cure fever caused by ghosts and mental illness

Stomach: Prescribed for stomach upsets

Teeth: Prescribed for rabies, asthma, and genital sores

Tail: Used to cure skin diseases

Whiskers: Used to treat toothaches

MOHENJO DARO REVIEW by Rudy singh

The Lost City of Truly Bad Actors by Rudy singh

At the end of "Mohenjo Daro", my daughter learned that ancient civilisations are full of bronze people in bizarre headgear and I learned that picking the worst actor was not easy.


Last month, my daughter was reading Subhadra Sen Gupta's excellent Let's Go Time Travelling. After reading about the Mohenjo-daro civilisation, she wanted to see what the ruins looked like. I knew what was coming, but tried to evade it by looking up Google Images. We saw the standard pictures from the 5,000-year-old city - the Great Bath, the dancing girl statuette, the bearded priest/king, and the Pasupati seal. But when a dhoti-clad Hrithik Roshan came up in our expedition, my fate was sealed.

Mohenjo Daro the film, also known as "three hours of my life that are never coming back", is based on the novel concept of killing off anyone who displays anything near decent skill in acting (or any department of cinema). The tone is set early when Hrithik Roshan, or Sarman, kills a method-acting CG crocodile in the first sequence. As the corpse is carried back to the village, the actors speak a weird gibberish that grates on your nerves, shredding them like cheese. That is until the language transforms into a hideous lovechild of Bhojpuri and Hindi, and you yearn for the gibberish with acute longing.

Hrithik is given a good run for his money in the bad acting stakes by Nitish Bhardhwaj. Bhardwaj has long been trying to do worse than his portrayal of an ever-smiling, permanently-stoned Krishna in the late eighties. As indigo farmer Durjan in this film he comes close. But Bhardwaj is far from being the clear winner. There is such fierce competition for the title of worst actor in this film that Bhardwaj only managed a consolation prize.

Just like Rahul Gandhi, it comes off as a film that is wholly unsure of itself (for good reason!), petrified that people will discover that it actually has very little substance behind all that hype.

Hrithik's sidekick Hojo, who tries to channel Samwise Gamgee, stands a good chance. Hojo is what Yash Birla would look like if he laid off the gym for a couple of years. As Sarman and Hojo travel to Mohenjo-daro, they meet a few more truly bad actors, and the competition gets fierce.

Lothar, a city guard, takes wooden acting to California Redwood heights and Chaani, portrayed by Pooja Hegde, gives up acting fairly early in the game since her ensemble, which includes a pheasant nesting in her hair, occupies most of her headspace. Mooja (Arunuday Singh), snared in a similar fate, snarls menacingly in an effort to draw attention away from the towel on his head. But believe me, both the pheasant and the towel are more compelling than either of the actors.

In Mohenjo Daro, the Bad Acting category, feeling rather weighed down by bearing the burden of carrying the film alone, is joined by Tepid Storytelling, and Ridiculous Characterisation, which includes two of the film's most complex characters - man-eating White-trash Rastafarians from the Tajik hills dressed in traditional jhinga-la-la-hum chic. Sadly, Hrithik dispatches them before they are allowed to fully express themselves.

The greatest threat to Sarman winning the award for bad acting is provided by Kabir Bedi, who plays a geographically-challenged Viking called Maham. Maham has killed anyone who has acted moderately well by the time Sarman gets to Mohenjo-daro. Sarman, meanwhile, joins every dance with the practiced ease of a "Jhalak Dikhlaja" contestant while leading a communist revolution 5,000 years before Karl Marx hit the scene.

The conflict between Maham and Sarman is presented as a competition between two PWD engineers. One builds a dam and the other builds a bridge. In what may be a fitting metaphor for the film, none of the structures survive. The population of Mohenjo-daro moves to the banks of the Ganges and establishes the civilisation that will eventually appoint Gajendra Chauhan as FTII chief. Pahlaj Nihalani khush huya!

I sat through the movie trying to view it as a subversive attempt to portray the entirety of the Indus Valley civilisation as a gigantic acid trip (after all, Hrithik does keep seeing a unicorn and at one point even becomes one) but even that failed. Mohenjo Daro, with its big budget, big stars, and big weekend release, failed spectacularly to seize the day. Just like Rahul Gandhi, it comes off as a film that is wholly unsure of itself (for good reason), petrified that people will discover that it actually has very little substance behind all that hype.

At the end of the movie, my daughter learned that ancient civilizations are full of people who wear an unhealthy amount of bronzer and love bizarre headgear, and I learned that such a profusion of bad acting makes it abundantly difficult to pick a winner and that one has no choice but to turn the award around and pass it on the one did the least damage.

That would have to be the CG method-acting crocodile.

Rudy Singh is an independent filmmaker, photographer, poet, and the president of the Film and Arts Guild of Uttarakhand. He is a serial meditator and the founder of Naini Photofest.

I had to share that for it was just too funny and too precious not to be read and enjoyed alone,on my own.I beg forgiveness for i have yet to venture to the cinema hall to catch a film and i confess that i have been watching some great films by downloading them or what has been given to me.

I saw 24 and theri and my eyes crossed over and i was left in a daze.My saving grace has been a few good malayalam films and yes Sultan,a film i liked very much for its content and the down to earth acting of Salman and Randeep hooda.I am yet to get over Anushka's botox filled fat lips.

My body keeps trying to lead me towards Kabali but my soul says " No bro,soon on tv.just wait a couple of months."