First a fall, I would like to specify that circus here doesn’t mean an album from Britney Spears. Next it is a salute to all artists and all species of Kingdom Animalia for entertaining me for following 10 reasons:
1. Joker and again not the ‘The dark night’ joker. An eternal part of circus. Life of the circus. Made me laugh till I fell from my seat. Most vivid memory-One joker strikes the arse of another joker with a bat so that a small fountain of water comes out of his zip which I thought as a small kid as if he was urinating in public in front of all.
2. Elephants- for playing cricket and Doctor-Patient. Elephant injections really frightened me.
3. Aerobatics- For all those men and women who performed remarkable feats high above the ground. Fantastic synchronization!(Synchronisation sounded fantastic till Microprocessors came to haunt me)
4. Tigers and lions- They were seen in action till I was in 5th Std. Ring master showed dare-devilry in taming them. Sight of tigers and lions were attraction at the end of all shows. Maneka Gandhi bought halt to this show. They remained as a burden to circus as they couldn’t be released in wild.(never saw a Liger at circus though the lions and tigers were kept in same cage)
5. Stunts performed by bikers in the round sphere(Centrifugal force reminded my teacher in school-again enjoyment crashed like a computer hard disk)
6. Colourful parrots. They were imported( Off course illegally)
7. Dogs for performing doggy tricks.
8. Artists for riding one tyre bicycle.
9. Various artists for doing tricks that I hardly remember
10.The circus managers and all backstage performers for doing a perfect job and delivering high quality entertainment at INR 70 only
‘Rambo’, ‘Jumbo’, ‘National Circus’ are the few names that I remember even now. The real question here is the entertainment that we got from animals was cruelty or not? Did I enjoy this at the cost of the poor animals? Once I saw a Hippopotamus at a Circus. Hippo’s are not even found in India. How did the Hippo live in a small tank of a truck? Some questions remain really unanswered…
