Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 16 April 2018 | Page 20

IN & AROUND
THE SUBCONTINENTAL MENU
CONJUGAL WRONGS
with their legal spouse in order to
have sexual relations—judges have
obs­erved that it reduces recidivism
and encourages good behaviour.
But AP Prisons IG G. Jayavardhan
said that the state had no plans to
allow such visits at the moment.
When asked about “unnatural sex”
in jails, he replied that AP jails were
not overcrowded like those in other
states, and thus that they only saw
“very few unnatural sex incidents”.
‘Nature’ prevails once again!
A
NDHRA Pradesh’s prisons
have no plans to encourage
sex, either natural or unnatural.
Conjugal visit is a concept that
has been adopted by various
countries and recently by some
Indian states, including Rajast-
han and Tamil Nadu, following
a parliamentary resolution that
deemed them to be a prisoner’s
right, not a privilege. It allows
a convict to spend some time
A SMOKING TRUNK
FECUND IN OLD AGE
L
AZILY lifting her trunk to her
mouth, the elephant blows out
a cloud of smoke. The video, shot by
Vinay Kumar of the Wildlife Con­
s­ervation Society in Karnat­aka’s
Nagarhole National Park, went viral
recently. Kumar was doing fieldwork,
studying tiger and prey populations,
when he came across the elephant in a
partly burnt area of the forest. It “alm­
ost appeared as if the elephant was
smoking,” Kumar said. According to
a biologist, she was trying to eat wood
charcoal, which animals recognise as
having medicinal properties (it has
“toxin-binding” properties and is also
a laxative). “That made sense as the
elephant appeared to be picking up
someth­ing from the burnt for­est floor,
blo­­­wing away ash that
came along with it in
her trunk, and consum-
ing the rest,” he said.
S
WASH OUT
YOUR BRAIN
“T
HIS village comprises
only Hindus,” begins a
board outside Kesalingayapalle
village in Andhra Pradesh’s
Kadapa district. It goes on to
warn of “strong action” against
anyone of other religions who
enters the village or preaches
there—and it’s signed “Villagers
of Kesalingayapalle”. P.S. “If a
person converts to other [sic]
religion, it amounts to cha­nging
one’s own mother.” This board
was put up on Ram Navami last
year, when the village commit-
tee decided to act after a Chris-
tian missionary had managed
to convert a few villagers, who
were taken to a popular seer,
Swami Achalananda, “who got
them brainwashed to stay back
in Hin­duism.” Yes, “brain-
washed”. That’s how a villager
described it matter-of-factly. Or
that’s how a newspaper, which
presumably translated his
comments from Telugu,
chose to put it.
TILL fruitful after centuries, three
trees in the Golden Temple com-
plex have become a tourist attraction.
A ‘ber’ tree (Ziziphus mauritana) has
a normal lifespan of 80–100 years, but
two of these—Dukh Bhanjani Beri and
Baba Budha Sahib Beri—are believed
to date from the era of Guru Ram Das
(1534-1581), the fourth Sikh guru. And
all three have borne a good selection
of fruit this season after a few disap-
pointing years—the result of being
carefully nurtured by a team from the
Punjab Agricultural University (PAU).
The experts perform regular nutrient
analyses of the bers and have worked
to remove concrete and marble from
the site to give the roots space and air.
Devotees are warned against plucking
the fruits or climbing the trees, but
many sit underneath, hoping for a
fruit to fall as ‘parshad’.
Illustrations by SAJITH KUMAR
20 OUTLOOK 16 April 2018