Salute to the Royal Animal..!

Saluting the royal animal...!
When I was a kid, I never knew what tigers are except for the fact that "Tiger is our national animal."

Being a pseudo-ecologist, I now know that tigers are keystone species of  an ecosystem (dominantly evergreen to  moist and dry-deciduous forests). With the population of tiger falling drastically, wildlife is undergoing a bottleneck. Reasons are many. However, the prime reason for the tiger-fall is poaching. Human are the biggest danger to these big cats today.

Taken this Sunday, at Dastkar Nature Bazaar, 2011 (@ Gayatri Vihar, Palace Ground, 5th-14th Apr'2011), this photo has a story to be told. While I was wandering for my subject (to be clicked) and  at the same time, wondering what to buy and what not, I over-heard the conversation between a 5-6 years old kid and his mom.
Boy: "Mommy, whats this?!?!"
Mom: "That's a tiger.."
Boy (chuckled): "Mommy, see see, a blue tiger..!"
Mom: "Nahi Beta (~son), its violet..!" (My eyes popped out hearing this)
 ----
Boy: "Mom, but the one we saw in zoo is yellow.. All tigers are yellow..It can't be a tiger, you are lying to me" (awww, I was awe-stuck with the kid's intelligence!) And with that he started crying..!
----
After a big silence,  mom gave a super-witty response..
Mom: "Beta, painting hai..! It's a mistake..We will ask the painter to make it yellow."
(lolz, I must say its so easy to make your kids satisfy when then are kids..")

(I think this is a gimmick for all of us to realize what we are up to and what we ought to do..!)

Friendship Day..!

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Every year, 1st Sunday of August is celebrated as Happy Friendship (Fren'ship) Day..! 

Friendship Day was originally promoted by Joyce Hall, the founder of Hallmark cards in 1919, and intended on first Sunday of august to be a day where people celebrated their friendships by sending cards. The first Sunday in August was chosen as the center of the largest lull in holiday celebrations. Friendship Day was promoted by the greetings card National Association during the 1920s but met with consumer resistance - given that it was rather too obviously a commercial gimmick to promote greetings cards. By the 1940s the number of Friendship Day cards available in the US had dwindled and the holiday largely died out there. There is no evidence to date for its uptake in Europe, however it has been kept alive and revitalized in Asia where several countries adopted the tradition of dedicating a day to friends. Today, Friendship Day is enthusiastically celebrated in a number of countries across the world.

^{More info on International Friendship Day @ Wikipedia}