Snub fins.

The tiredness of the day's activities and the lull induced by the predictable contents of the daily,was pressing on my eyelids begging me to take a short nap when the programme on Dolphins of Chilka lake in Orissa aired on a TV channel on Animals,made me sit up bolt right and rub away the sleep from my eyes.I couldn't afford to miss a programme on our animals ,could I ? I wish I had !

The one long hour programme was drab and boring.Instead of concentrating on the dolphin , the camera was concentrating on a gigantic bearded character with ear rings , goggles and a cap clamped over a flowing mane and the odd crew!I was forced to watch the humdrum details of their work. How their under water camera broke and how difficult it was to get electricity for their submarines and how odd it felt with 100's of villagers breathing down their backs every second of their month long stay in India.

They seemed to be aghast by the numbers of their audience and disparaging of their presence.Statistically speaking the 100 or so of their real time audience is only a drop in the ocean of our billion plus population.Those poor conscientious villagers were milling around in all probability to keep a watchful eye on these chaps lest they drain the lake of its resources , fish , porpoises and even the brackish water. The memory of these animal specialist's ancestors,siphoning off all our wealth , still fresh in every one's mind.

The dolphins living in the Chilka lake are an endangered species. They are closely related to Orca or killer whales. They mainly feed on shrimps!They are very friendly with the local fisher men often guiding them to shoals of fish ,in return of a catch or two.They are also known as snub fins.
I didn't get this information from that show .

I very much wanted to see this rare species of in land dolphin and there fore persisted on watching the show though my finger hovered several times on the red button of the remote , as I was hoping willy nilly that the cameras would focus on that mammal in succeeding frames than on the various facial and hand movements of that bearded character.

There seems to be no end in sight to my unwary and unwarranted brushes with grey beards behaving as Blackbeard in real, cyber and digital world.

There were moments of hilarity when the channel ran sub titles when a Indian expert on River dolphins explained its unique characteristics in English. I could follow his accent very well and found it difficult to decipher,only when the filming crew spoke in their thick European and biting British accents. The sub titles should have run then.

Finally when my patience started running out and was on the verge of switching off the TV a lone dolphin was shown ,diving up and down, for few minutes.Could I enjoy this graceful spectacle?No ! By now I was on tenterhooks, expecting that bearded character to pop back into the screen any second and irritate me all over again.


The supposedly hero of the show , the rare dolphin had its close ups abruptly clipped off within a few seconds on being aired and the credits started rolling.Again the crew filled the screen,now with their full blown bio data as well.

It exasperated me on no end that I had sacrificed my noon siesta for this buckwaas.Will I ever learn?