 (Bihar Times) The aphrodisiac market claims more and more animal victims every year as the quacks proclaim more and more animals to be the key to a human male sexual drive. As one animal fails , then another is taken up.After monitor lizards and bear gall bladders it is the turn of sparrows.
Like vultures, sparrows have simply disappeared. One reason could be pesticides, another that they are city birds and are no longer fed by unfeeling city denizens,. And yet another reason is that they are being caught and sold for aphrodisiacs to the minorities.
Crawford Market in Mumbai is one of the biggest trading centres for illegal animals and birds in the world. The Mumbai police get a weekly hafta from poachers and traders – and the sum runs into lakhs because the animals being traded range from snow leopards to butterflies. So they do nothing. No animal welfare organization in Mumbai dares to raid the market because the traders are killers as well and well connected to the mafias that rule Mumbai. No forest department officials raid at all – like any forest department in any city , they also get their weekly payments at home from the traders. If at all they venture out of their offices it is to kill animals themselves. I have just caught the DFO of Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh killing a deer in Dudhwa National Park and roasting it with his colleagues on August 30th. The Chief Wildlife warden has not arrested him because he says that killing by his own officials is not in his jurisdiction ! I have also found a group that hunted , sold and ate snakes in Amravati and getting the forest department to raid them took one month and a huge amount of political pressure. In fact People for Animals finds one poacher a day and last week a number of them got together to do a dharna against me and PFA , on the grounds that we raided them repeatedly. They were encouraged to do so by a senior official in the forest department of Delhi who attended their midnight meetings.
So the sparrow has suddenly found shelf space in Crawford Market along with the other illegal birds sold there, the eagles, the owls and the mynas. On an average 50,000 birds come to Crawford Market a day and many of them find their way to Pakistan – through our Customs.. Volunteers of the Plant and Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) stumbled upon the sparrow trade during a routine visit to the market last week and found thousands being openly sold.
According to the animal welfare groups the demand for the bird has shot up only recently after some hakims claimed to have prepared a potion from the bird’s meat which works as an aphrodisiac. Hakims in Pydhonie, Bhendi Bazaar, Nagpada and Mohammed Ali Road are known to prepare the medicine and the clients include rich minorities who want a tenth child with their second or third wife, industrialists and film stars.
The birds are easily trapped in urban areas and unlike other birds , the catchers do not have to move into the jungles and depend on unemployed tribals . They are caught all over Maharashtra’ cities using nylon nets. However since sparrows are so tiny, it takes many of them to make one dose of aphrodisiac.
The sparrow joins the ranks of the other animals that are slaughtered for aphrodisiacs in these sleazy illegal bazaars run by the same mafias that sell guns and bombs. You can see turtles upside down with their stomachs slashed and blood being taken out to sell to Bengalis and Keralites. Small nutlike brown hard objects which are the gallstones of the bears , dug out with knives while the bear is still alive. Bhasma which claims to be crushed tiger teeth, powder which is made from the rhino killed relentlessly for their horns till there are only two hundred left in India, snall shriveled creatures that were once bats.
Every town has a thriving market of wild animals that are being killed for aphrodisiac purposes. And as the chosen animals get rarer , the aphrodisiac industry will simply target another animal and build the mythology round them with the help of some easy- to-please doctors. From the crushed deer antler pills recommended to increase sexual desire and improve performance at eight capsules a day now the hakims recommend cow gallstones which are now much easier to get from the slaughterhouses. As seahorses who are dried , crushed and eaten become rarer , the hakims will simply switch to squirrels. Already bats are being hunted down to take the place of tiger claws.
Even rare trees are not spared. One of the most expensive attars -- and one recommended as an aphrodisiac by Mohammed Zakir of Minar Perfumers, Memonwada Road -- is ood, made from a tree bark found in Assam, which ranges from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per tola. It is illegal to take the bark of this tree as there are very few left in the world. But it is sold openly in the same wildlife bazaars.
None of these animals can make you a man. All they supply is calcium or protein and you can get much more if you simply eat well and sensibly. As the body feels better so does the libido. A high fat , heavy cholesterol diet blocks arteries . What does Viagra do ? It simply releases nitric oxide, which causes blood vessels to open allowing more blood to flow in. Anything interfering with blood circulation leads to dysfunction; After all if I stop blood circulation to my finger , it will also not be able to move. The body is a machine run by blood . Foods that are high in carbohydrates and the wrong kinds of fats block up arteries. If the blood vessels cannot carry the blood/oxygen properly because they are narrower and full of fat , then the body starts breaking down. And, just as blockages in the arteries to the heart can cause a heart attack and choked-off blood to the brain can lead to a stroke, when the arteries to the genitals are clogged, that part of the body will not work well either.
You want to be a man ? Sparrows won’t do it. It has to be a change of diet and lifestyle. A combination of a low-fat vegetarian diet, moderate exercise, stress management, and no smoking lets the arteries begin to clean themselves out.
Leave the sparrows alone. This is the one bird who carries the generic name of Chidiya and for it to disappear as food for your inefficient genitals will bring bad luck all over the country.
To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in |
