Bull Runs

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Bull is a very good word with a variety of meanings such as:

the bovine animal, papal edict, a cheap boast or even a blunder.

But the bull I have in mind is the ferocious animal. Some of them like the Gaur bull can stand their ground against predators like tigers and lions and even gore them to death. Tigers think twice before molesting them.

Bulls are in the news nowadays.

The Spanish Bull Run festivals are on and DC is full of pictures, gory and funny...gory comes from gore, of a bull typically.

Hemingway wrote an absorbing book: Death in the Afternoon.

It is all about Bull Fighting. His enchantment with the sport is because the matador, after teasing the bull to its boiling point has to stand very close to it as it charges past him with its aggressive head bent. And he has to 'kill' by bending over it and plunging his short sword in its neck.This split second is called the moment of truth, because if the matador makes a wee mistake in timing and the bull lifts its head, the matador is killed outright on the spot.

So, in theory at least, there is an even chance for the bull to kill its tormentor (so different from the pleasure hunters of tigers, sitting cozily on their machan up a tree and shooting the poor animal drawn to its meal).

There is a milder sport called Jallikattu in Tamilnadu...nowadays there is an outcry to ban it.

I talked about my first frightening experience of watching fighting bulls in our Village earlier:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2011/06/titanfights.html

Talking of ESP and stuff, I had this funny experience with a bullock cart at KGP:

One afternoon, I parked my TVS moped by the side of a lonely road well away from the tarmac and went into my friend's house for a chat.

And on returning to pick up the moped, I saw a double-bullock cart driven by a teenager coming my way.

I then had a premonition that the kid will now thrash the left bull urging it to speed up, the bull will get enraged and go haywire, turn left all the way down the road, hit my moped causing it to take a tumble and damage it sufficiently badly that I have to carry it on the bullock cart to the garage mechanic.

And it all happened in that precise sequence.

The probability of this chancy sequence of predicted events happening is as low as the chance of life on this planet.

Anyway, for those regulars who read this post up to this point, here is what I learned today:

KK was riding his TVS Scooty (with his Mrs on the pillion) on the main road of Jamshedpur about a month back, and met with a freak and nasty accident involving a roadside bull.

Lucky that he was wearing his helmet (his Mrs wasn't wearing one).

KK had a fracture in his pelvic region and was advised bed rest for seven weeks.

His Mrs escaped with a bleeding head injury that luckily didn't call for surgery, as revealed by a scan.

For those of you who know him well enough to wish him speedy recovery, here is his mail id:

kumar@phy.iitkgp.ernet.in


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