The Mask Unmasked

Some things are more contagious than the coronavirus. Like not wearing a mask in public. Here’s the deal. Anyone caught without adequate facial covering would be fined Rs 5,000 in Una district, Himachal Pradesh. That’s too stiff a penalty to escape a debate in the state assembly. Congress leader Mukesh Agnihotri demanded the amount slashed. To this, party colleague Harshwardhan Chauhan asked the speaker to punish CM Jai Ram Thakur for not wearing a mask in the assembly. Speaker Vipin Singh Parmar was all ears without a mask and Chauhan, for his part, had pulled his cover down to the chin to speak—a fault that didn’t escape the assembly’s eyes. Laughter echoed inside the Vidhan Sabha.

The Zoo Zoom

Chimps at two Czech zoos are providing a moment of levity to a pandemic- and Zoom-fatigued world. They are in fact starting to enjoy their new live online linkup. To make up for the lack of interaction with visitors because of COVID-19 restrictions, the chimpanzees at Safari Park Dvur Kralove and the troop at a zoo in Brno, 150 km away, now watch one another’s daily lives on giant screens. The sound is off, but there has been plenty of interest in what the distant cousins are up to. When they see tense situations, it gets them up off the couch—like humans watching live sport. The chimpanzees have also adopted other human behaviours such as grabbing nuts to chew on while watching the action.

In His Jeans

Uttarakhand CM Tirath Singh Rawat’s verbal missteps could fill a blooper reel of gaffes. He tripped over “ripped jeans”—when he asked how women wearing torn denim could uphold culture. He lost a step when he said people should have produced more children to get extra pandemic ration. “Those having 10 children got 50 kg (every household was given 5 kg of ration per member). Those with 20 got a quintal…Now you are jealous. When there was time, you produced only two. Why didn’t you produce 20?” he asked. He fumbled again when he confused Britain with the US, saying America ruled India for over 200 years. Before that, oh my! “Just like Lord Ram had done good work and people started considering him as god, in future, the same thing will happen with our beloved PM,” he said. The way words are tripping him up, he could have a foot permanently in his mouth.

Fastest Rodeo Jockey

He is the real bolt from the blue of Kam-bala, the buffalo rodeo race in Karnataka.? He is Srinivas Gowda, who last year ran faster than Usain Bolt—at 9.58 seconds, the current land record holder in the 100 metres. Gowda ran the distance in 9.55 seconds, but a rival broke his record some time later. Gowda set it right this year, covering 125 metres at Venoor-Permuda in 11.21 seconds. By calculating the speed and distance, officials concluded that he covered 100 metres in 8.96 seconds. For the record, unlike polyurethane surfaces and spiked shoes at international track and field, Kambala makes the sprinters, or jockeys, run off their bare feet as they sprint alongside two angry bulls on a slushy paddy field.??

Death By Safari

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—the world is one family. But corralling an extended family, with members picked from the Andes to Australia, in one place by the sea in Gujarat is relatively hazardous. The state assembly was told that 46 of 149 animals and birds brought to the Jungle Safari near the Statue of Unity in Kevadia have died in two years. Two alpacas, two llamas and a wallaby were among the dead foreign imports. The remaining 41 casualties—including a marmoset, a ring-tail lemur and 39 birds of varied species such as the Lady Amherst’s Pheasant and the Conure and Macaw parrots—were sourced from other states. The Rs 5.39-crore Jungle Safari is officially known as the Sardar Patel Zoological Park swaddling 375 acres.

Brevis

Illustrations: Saahil, Text curated by Alka Gupta