Cats tale.

Loneliness crept into me from all corners of the empty house. To combat it,I flipped open the TV , hurriedly switching channels away from the news one's, that are either shouting matches between politicians, journalists, activists and anchors or umpteen number of discussions on the on going world cup cricket. The panelists and comperes are all the perennial, permanent fixtures.The same old faces.

I landed on a piece on the South Pacific ocean,that was being aired on a Animal channel.It was about the migration of whales and was also simultaneously tracing the voyage for survival undertaken by some English seamen ,stranded 200 years earlier in the same expanse of this vast ocean in a small boat.

The photography was good, Probably taken from air by both, plane and satellite.

Seeing well picturised animals and birds , without too much of blood and gore ,tranquilises me. Animals are free of the noxiousness that humans are prone to.

The narrative that those men in the boat resorted to cannibalism,by drawing lots, reminded me of the case I studied long long ago, in IPC . In similar circumstances, the issue before the court was whether such an act constituted murder? Should the survivors be tried for murder?It was held ,yes it did.

The photography was only of the blue ocean, the whales and picturesque and empty coast lines. It was so good that I fell for the bait, snared in my lair and forgot my resolve ,never to see any programme on this channel.

So I sat through the next with a relaxed heart , full of trust without the slightest premonition to that which was in store for me.It was about a elusive big cat in the forests of South America.

There was this explorer as washed out and dead beat like the one's I keep bumping into in my daily rounds.In my apartment complex,park, super market, beach [early mornings] and in the temple.

He was straddling a speeding motor boat on a river., like one of those ex- Bonds.Even the good looking stars of holly wood and bollywood can be seen only in bits and not in long stretches.On some of these animal shows the camera focuses on these weird hero's close ups ,out and out, giving a wide berth to the animals they are supposed to be filming.

Once I sat fuming watching a duo , the bulky, loutish baloo and his companion, vaguely reminding me of the Ad guru[only vaguely,it would be a insult to our Bharatwasi to be compared to that Baloo in bermudas and bandana] who keeps shuffling into TV news studios on and off,tagging along with an expert on all matters , the one with a shaggy hairdo , a sonorous voice and blasphemous views ,who [ the animal duos] would often get dangerously close to a lion or hyena in the wild and then start whispering incomprehensible gibberish into the camera, on and on ,looking more scary than the fierce and hideous animals they were ostensibly filming!

OK, back to our ageing Bond. I endured his motor boat antics for the sake of that cat. Did he show it after that . No!Instead he was shown ,next ,prancing slyly along the river at night , shining his torch and by getting into unholy raptures over the light reflected back , not from that cat's eyes but off 100's of alligators, swarming the river! A sight that sent shivers down my spine.

This was the last straw. Unlike the last time where I sat through the show stubbornly to see the Chilka dolphin only to be taken for a ride, I decisively cut it short by switching off the TV as I was sure that my patience to see the cat would have been rewarded only with a glimpse of that fabled cat's' tail' and no more.

PS .In order to cheer myself after this wretched episode,I looked up the Internet for some pleasant pictures of our own felines . And here they are----
The leopard is one of the five big cats found in India. The others being the lion , tiger, snow leopard and the clouded leopard. They are found in all types forests,up to 6000feet, in India except in the mangrove forests of Sunderbans.Its nearest cousin is the tiger.The Indian leopard has been classified as 'Near threatened' species.
The snow leopard is a moderately large cat , living in the upper reaches of Himalayas ,above the tree line -- 10000 to 18 000 feet. It is closely related to the tiger.Its body is well adapted for the harsh life in cold mountainous regions. It has a thick ,long and a flexible tail that helps it to maintain its balance in high and steep terrain.It preys chiefly on Bharals or the Himalayan blue sheep . The snow leopard is an endangered species numbering barely 300 in the wild.
The clouded Leopard is a medium sized big cat found in North Eastern Indian states like Arunachal pradesh, above 6000feet . It is a very secretive cat living mostly on tree tops.The cloud like markings on its coat is the reason behind its name. It is listed as an endangered species.


Photo courtesy: Wikki.