Monday, February 28, 2005

Why Does My Heart Feel Soo Bad?!!

Today i was in jayanagar for some work. i was going in my vehicle and i passed my college, suddenly a wave of nostalgia gripped me.
i saw students coming out of the college...they had a sparkle in their eyesi could see them very enthusiastic, energetic and full of life. bryan adams "summer of '69"was playing in my car....i was suddenly thrown back in time.few years ago...i was coming out of the same gate of my college, careless and carefree as ever. dreams in my eyes and enjoying life to the maximum...our only concern and worry wasmarks!!!...come friday and, we used to bunk classes and ran to the nearest cinema theatre to stand in queue for tickets. sitting in the last bench and cracking jokes on our dearlecturers and getting thrilled whenever any girl giggles to our jokes.
my heart felt heavy and i became sad thinking of those days....where are those days gone?...what has happened to that sparkle in my eye?..people tell methat i have become more mature after my college days..what does that mean?..does that mean i have lost innocence? does that mean i have lack of emotion?
i and sisya aravinda talk about this soo many times..in college days we didnt have money or any other luxury but still we were happy now we are earning and can afford any kind of luxury still we are not happy, why?just as these thoughts were running in my mind..i got a call from my project leader, he was asking me about my reports and etc..i remembered that i had to run to office..there is lot of work pending... nowa days i spend my days thinking and waiting for weekend so that i can sleep on saturday and sunday (many will agree with me). this is life and we have to move on. someone had said "all good things must come to end!!" soo true...bryan adams "summer of '69" was still playing in the background " those were the best days of my life..."

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

The Ghost And The Darkness

Hi friends,
How was my first post? Hope you enjoyed it. In this post I will write about the Hollywood movie ‘ghost and the darkness’.The basic facts of the story are portrayed truly in the movie. In 1898 two large male lions attacked workers in Africa building a railroad bridge and devoured about 140 humans before being shot. The rogue lions were nicknamed the Ghost and the Darkness by the superstitious natives. In the movie Val Kilmer played the courageous Irish engineer Col. John Henry Patterson who was in charge of building the bridge. Hollywood brought in Michael Douglas as a great white hunter to assist Patterson, but in true life Patterson hunted and killed both lions himself. The biggest visual discrepancy between Hollywood and the true story of the man-eaters was the physical appearance of the lions themselves. In the movie the lions were great beasts with huge manes around their necks. In real life the Tsavo man-eaters didn’t have manes at all and resembled female lions. Their stuffed hides are on display at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History and their photos are on the museum website. They look quite unlike the fierce male lions in the movie. In the movie Patterson was hit in the head by a wandering owl and knocked off his hunting platform placing him in great danger from one of the lions. In real life he was hit by an owl on his stand, but fortunately maintained his balance and didn’t fall. Like in the movie the real life Patterson did have a misfire on a borrowed rifle and missed an easy opportunity to kill one of the lions. Patterson also did build a huge wooden trap in real life that was baited with Indian Workers armed with rifles and protected by metal bars. This scene was depicted in the movie and the movie trap looked identical to old pictures of the actual trap. The result in real life was very similar to the movie. One of the man-eaters did spring The trip wire and was trapped inside the trap. The workers were so frightened they fired wildly through the bars and finally a bullet broke one of the slats in the trap door allowing the lion to escape. Unlike the movie there was no fire in the real life incident. In the movie many of the victims were Africans. While by most accounts that is true, most of the labor to build the railroad was supplied by indentured Indian laborers and the Tsavo lion reportedly killed 28 of the Indians. These workers were nicknamed ‘coolies.’ By some accounts 90% of the thousands of Indian workers in Africa died from disease and injury.


An exciting discovery in the movie by Kilmer and Douglas was the den of the man-eaters. Patterson also discovered what he thought was the man-eater’s den (complete with scattered human bones) and took pictures of it. The location of the cave was lost for nearly 100 years until it was rediscovered by American scientists one mile from the Tsavo railroad bridge on April 30, 1997.The men used an 1899 photograph of the cave to confirm their finding. No bones were found in 1997 and there is some speculation as to whether it actually was a den for lions. It may have been an African burial cave Disturbed by animals or possibly was a hyena den. I also discovered an earlier 1952 film called Bwana Devils told the story of the Tsavo man-eaters. and his account of how he hunted and killed the lions is well worth reading. Hollywood did a good job of retelling the story about the man-eaters in The Ghost and the Darkness and I look forward to a future movie about the famous Bengal tiger in India and Nepal that killed over 400 people. This tigress known as Champawat killed 200 men and women before being driven out of Nepal. She moved to India and continued to kill bringing her total up to 436 before she was tracked down and killed by the famous hunter Jim Corbett in 1937 and also a great man-eating leopard of rudraprayag, which then had created a flutter in Indian parliament. It had killed 125 people (official figures). Even it was shot by the greatest hunter of all time jim Corbett.

Friday, February 11, 2005

LIONS OF TSAVO

Hi Friends,
Welcome to my blog. This is my first posting…since I have a passion for wild life and read lot of Jim Corbett books and Kenneth Anderson books. I will start with a posting on lions of tsavo
If I tell ‘LIONS OF TSAVO’ nobody will ever have a clue about it but when I say ‘GHOST AND THE DARKNESS’ then quickly you can remember that it is a 1996 Hollywood blockbuster movie
Starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. The movie is based on the true tale of man-eating lions in Africa .
I will give you the true accounts of the story that actually happened in Africa and in my next post I will write about how the Hollywood movie differs from the actual facts.
In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo (SAH-vo) River in East Africa. Over the next nine months, two large male lions killed and ate nearly 140 railway workers. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and thorn fences for protection, but to no avail. Hundreds of workers fled Tsavo, halting
Construction on the bridge. Before work could resume, chief engineer Lt. Col.John Henry Patterson (1865-1947) had to eliminate the lions and their threat. After many near misses, he finally shot the first lion on December 9, 1898,and three weeks later brought down the second. The first lion killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899. Lions Rarely Eat People We will never know why the Tsavo lions became man-eaters, but two factors may have contributed to their unusual diet. In the 1890s, an outbreak of rinderpest disease killed millions of zebras, gazelles and other African wildlife. Lions had to look elsewhere for food, and attacks on humans increased across the continent. Poor burial practices may have also contributed to the Tsavo tragedy. Railroad workers who died of injury or disease were often poorly buried, or not buried at all A scavenging lion coming across this easy meal might start going after live humans.



After completing the railroad, Patterson became chief game warden in Kenya and
Later served with the British Army in World War I. He published four books and
Lectured widely on his adventures. After speaking at The Field Museum in 1924,
Patterson sold the museum the lion skins and skulls for the then-sizeable sum of $5,000. The skins arrived in less-than-perfect condition--old and dry, they had been cut down into rugs. (In real life the lions were even larger than they appear as taxidermy mounts.) Gunshot wounds and thorn scratches also blemished the skins. Museum taxidermist Julius Friesser did an extraordinary job creating the life-like mounts you can see at The Field Museum. Call the Hair Club for Lions although both of these lions are male, neither has much of a mane. Lion manes vary from place to place in color and thickness; Tsavo-area lions are often mane less. This may be a "family trait" common in the area--although we don't know if these two lions were closely related. John Henry Patterson’s 1907 book THE MAN-EATERS OF TSAVO is available on the Internet and his account of how he hunted and killed the lions is well worth reading.