There is a certain trend in the news coming out of India for the past two weeks. Even though I am an animal lover, it was a few days before I really noticed it. News about animals. Yes, weird, wacky and just plain sad news about Indian wildlife and not-so-wildlife. If you haven't been paying attention, here is a list to update you.

1. Dead Tigers at Nandankanan Zoo: From Orissa comes the strange and distressing story of 12 tigers (including the rare white tiger variety) dropping dead in the space of two days. Theories about the death came fast and furious and the buck was passed all around. A strange virus, an inexperienced vet, overdose of medicine, tigers fed medicine past expiry date, and so on. Finally, nobody assumed responsibility as the poor dead animals were tied up upside down to a long thick stick and carried to a (hopefully) decent burial. The Supreme Court of India is in the fray now and is asking for a report. Any guesses on who is to blame?

2. Dead Peacocks in Rajasthan: It seems 70 peacocks perished in Rajasthan after eating pesticide-contaminated bajra. There is no news of an investigation. By the way, the peacock is India's national bird and killing it is illegal.

3. Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan make a court appearance: On the "there is some justice in India" front, the male actors who were involved in the shooting and killing, of the nearly extinct and protected, black buck in Rajasthan last year made an appearance in court. I wonder why the actresses didn't show up. Neelam, Tabu and company didn't seem to consider chasing and murdering innocent animals an unwomanly thing to do, but the idea of coming to court - Indian women don't do that, do they? This story actually received coverage in major US newspapers as did the dead tigers story. The New York Times seems to have developed a great interest in any weird news from India and regularly has articles on the kind of things every Indian would much rather forget.

4. Mad Bull in a Hyderabad Galli: The Deccan Chronicle had an article about a bull that terrorized a narrow Hyderabadi galli one early morning last week. It seems around 5 am, a passing police constable came face to face with an enraged bull. He could not subdue it and called for help. For two hours, the cops tried all kinds of cowboy antics including trying to ride the bull and lassoing it into submission. They finally shot it dead when nothing else worked. I know Hyderabad has a great zoo. Didn't the zoo have any tranquilizer guns that the police could use?

5. Uttar Pradesh bans plastic bags: The UP government is planning to ban plastic bags on the grounds that people throw the bags on the streets, and then innocent cows eat them and die terrible deaths from all the plastic in their bellies. A noble thought indeed - banning plastic. But what about the other aspects of this issue the government obviously ignored. So much litter on the streets means that a) people need to be educated on the concept of not throwing trash anywhere they please b) every city and town needs to actually COLLECT the trash and not leave it lying around to form mountains on the street corners c) cows should not be wandering around the streets of the cities and towns - it is dangerous and unhygienic to both humans and cows.

6. Child married to dog: From West Bengal comes the wacky story of a little four year old girl being married to a stray dog. It seems that the child was accident-prone and hurt herself so often that the parents went to visit a roadside tantric. His advice was that the child was cursed and the only way to rid the child of it was to marry her off to a dog. And the parents did!! It never ceases to amaze me to what depths humans can sink in their ignorance and superstition.

7. Elephant races in Germany: News far away from India, from Germany actually. It seems the mayor of a major German city (Berlin) is of Indian origin and he hit upon the idea of having elephants race down the street of Berlin. A crazy idea at the best of times and I'm sure, even in India this sort of a thing does not happen. Sure enough, animal rights organizations threw their arms up in protest and there is a standoff going on between the mayor and the activists. The Indian embassy in Berlin has wisely decided to stay out of this fight.

8. Laloo and Infotech: If you are wondering why Laloo shows up in this list, there are two reasons. Humans are animals too and I wish Laloo had been born as some other form of life (a palm tree maybe) and not a human. To paraphrase his (in)famous quote - "What is this IT (Information Technology)? I am totally against it. IT is only for America. We have a lot of people in India. We don't need IT."

And on that rather encouraging note, I end my list.

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