Remember seeing a live tiger for the first time??? It's arguably one of the most humbling experiences!!! The poise, the gait, and the sheer presence of the largest member of the 'Cat' family are both captivating and intimidating.
During school vacations, visit to Calcutta was an accepted ritual. At the Alipore Zoo, alongside other animals and birds, I saw a live Royal Bengal Tiger for the first time. Boy, wasn't it absolutely impressive!!!! One can easily gauge the excitement. We didn't have access to the likes of Discovery Channels and National Geographics back then. And jungle safaris (costly affair) were beyond imagination. All I had seen till then were photographs of the apex predator in magazines, and library and school textbooks. Hence, the transition from paper to reality was overwhelming, to say the least!!! However, it was equally sad to see such a force of nature in a cage.
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Back then, we didn't have to worry about organic/inorganic colours during Holi... Even the harmful chemicals used were not that toxic... We used to start the celebration with bright colours... Red, pink, purple, green, yellow. Then, some punk kid (yours truly, most of the times 😬) used to turn up with that dreadful black colour (known as "Badure Rong" in Bengali), which eventually turned all the faces and the colourful water in the buckets abysmally black!!!
The bathing session (rather sessions) that followed was indeed painful - with all the scrubbing, rinsing, and washing... Shampoo/Soap mixed with paints running down your face, entering your eyes (unbearable 😖😖😖), blackening your teeth, etc. One body part that was almost impossible to clean in the first attempt was the back of the ears!!! Turning up in school the next day with colourful/black palms was commonplace... In fact, it was considered extremely cool... Darker the colour of your palms, more the cool quotient!!! There's a reason why Holi is described as the Festival of Colours (mind you, Colours, and not Colour). In today's context, a bit of introspection won't hurt. Food for thought, perhaps...
During my childhood days, we didn't have to worry about organic/inorganic colours... Back then, even the harmful chemicals used to prepare colours were less harmful... We used to start celebrating with bright colours... Red, pink, purple, green, yellow. Then, some punk kid (me sometimes 😬) used to turn up with that dreadful black colour, which eventually turned every bucket water and every face abysmally black!!! The bathing session (rather sessions) that followed was indeed painful - with all the scrubbing, and paints running down your face, entering your eyes, blackening your teeth, etc. Turning up in school the next day with colourful/ black palms was commonplace... In fact, it was considered pretty cool... More the darkness of colour, more the cool quotient!!! |
ConceptOnce in a while, we all reminisce about the good ol' childhood days. Back when the lifestyle had a carefree rhythm. Archives
August 2020
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