When it comes to poaching, no one should be above the law

0 Comments read Environment & Development

By Neena Bhandari

As humans and animals vie for space, a lot can be learnt from the Bishnois and other rural communities in India, which have for generations co-existed with the wildlife forming an integral part of the ecosystem. When in 1998 five Bollywood film stars from Mumbai went hunting in the forests on the outskirts of the historic city of Jodhpur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan and killed two black bucks and a chinkara (Indian Gazelle), they had expected to bag trophies not trouble.

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Australia’s filmi connection with India

0 Comments read Arts, Entertainment & Lifestyle

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 15.09.2007 (IANS) Book clubs are popular in Australia, but Bollywood Clubs? Yes, they too exist, with more and more Australians cued on to Hindi films.

Curator Rebecca Bower, whose bedside table doesn’t have books but a laptop and Hindi film DVDs, has formed a Bollywood Club where a group of women watch and discuss Indian films.

“I watch a Bollywood film for half hour or so every night to unwind before sleeping,” said the curator of the Bollywood and Australia section of “Cinema India: The Art of Bollywood” exhibition, running at the Powerhouse Museum here. She is learning Hindi so she can turn off the subtitles.
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Polio never far away in the jet age

0 Comments read Disability, Health & Science, Poliomyelitis

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 28.07.2007 (The Australian): On a sweltering February day in 1951, one-year-old Maura Outterside’s tiny body was gripped by high fever and muscle pain. As she became non-responsive, her parents wrapped her in cold towels and took her to St George Hospital in Sydney. A lumbar puncture confirmed every parent’s worst nightmare in those days — poliomyelitis, the viral disease responsible for crippling hundreds of thousands of children during the 20th century. Polio epidemics from 1930 to 1970 afflicted 40,000 Australians, including media tycoon Kerry Packer, talkback radio host John Laws and former Labor leader Kim Beazley.

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