Thursday, July 21, 2005

Animal Stories

I was aimlessly surfing channels last night, when i stopped at a channel. A lady was screaming at the top of her lungs. The man was trying desparately to open the padlock, and free her from the transparent coffin like box. Then I saw the green lumps under her. All wet, energetic, green frogs. A glance at the corner of the screen proved my doubt right. It had to be AXN. And this was definitely Fear Factor.

The lady was now wriggling out of the green mess, and they both waded across a dimly lit pond. Don't even ask; the lake was full of jumping frogs much to their delightful scorn. Barely had the couple made it to safe ground, and the 'host' of the show ushered them to the table with 2 jars full of a gooey paste much like peanut butter...I would have let you hazard what that could have been.., but the host clearly was in no mood to hide the details..

"Contestants, what you have in front of you is freshly blended toad!!".


How yummy could that get. The contestants didnt even have time to wince. They had an ordeal to get through first. So they gulped down the seemingly unthorough blend of toads; evident from the blobs here and there, and an occasional webbed foot slipping out of the lady's mouth.

All this had taken just about 20 seconds, and I was more than glad to skip channels..to oh wow Animal Planet. Atleast somebody respects animals. Here the frogs would still remain the focus, but under a powerful nocturnal videocamera. Friendlier than a blender.

Animal planet's naturalist mercenaries were touring the mystic Land of India, where snake charmers were the 'regular scenery', and people still got around on elephants. The adventurer had chosen to highlight cruel practices in India, where some gypsies were using a defanged cobra to entertain passers-by. The guileless spectators would stare at the show with open mouths, finally toss a coin and move on. Business by the tune. Yet another creative gypsy had snatched a monkey's baby away from her, and promised to give it back only in return for a trick. The monkey promptly performed a full somersault. All this had apparently grieved the adventurer
.

"Such inhuman acts of cruelty just for a few cheap pennies! This is really really shameful." he averred.

Almost as if warning us, he said "If you see something like this happening in your town, dont stop and watch the cruelty, dont give money. Either walk away, or save the monkey by buying it for a huge sum, like I just did."


What's the point, you ask? Animal Planet has clearly no idea about AXN. Hope they see Fear Factor. They might just end up saving a few hundred toads from the blender.

1 comment:

Sampath Krishna said...

NIce one here swaroop. i liked the description of fear factor and the stark inhumanity which i never had noticed..