ANIMAL LOVERS PROTEST CRUELTY TO ELEPHANTS DURING FESTIVALS

MYSORE, SEPT 1:
The Mysore chapter of People For Animals (PFA) has decided to campaign against the practice of making elephants carry the 750-kg golden howdah during the Dussehra celebrations. ``This amounts to cruelty on animals. Why should an elephant be forced to carry the huge weight for more than 4 km during Vijayadashami procession apart from having to practise carrying it weeks before the celebrations?'' Geetha Manja, PFA convenor asked.

Geetha said the matter had been discussed with the national PFA chairperson Maneka Gandhi on Sunday. ``We will not impose our will on the organisers or the people but try to convince them not to subject the elephants to such ardous tasks.''
The howdah is used to carry the idol of goddess Chamundeshwari during the festival. Suggestions to use a chariot to carry the howdah have been doing the rounds since an elephant, Arjuna, damaged it when he threw a tantrum four years ago. The death of another elephant, Drona, who had carried the howdah for 16 years, hasbolstered the idea. Meanwhile, speculation is rife that the scion of the Mysore royal family, Srikantadutta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, will not hand over the golden howdah to the State Government. Wadiyar had earlier gone on record saying he would hand it over as he did not want to be seen obstructing the celebrations. But with the President giving his assent to the take-over of the palace, Wadiyar is unlikely to stick to his words. The movables in the palace including the golden throne are listed as private collections of Wadiyar, with others are under joint management of the government and Wadiyar.

TAKA-MANGO PROCESSING

This is in response to the person from Iceland who asked about processing mangos in the absence of hot sun. Below is given a general description about mangos for pickles. Since I assume our reader has solved the problem of getting a green mango in Iceland, the only question is how to dry them. The best method is to purchase of household food dryer, available from or through health food stores. These blow dry air over the food without heating it, whereas an oven tends to cook the mango. Still, if nothing else if available, an oven on very low heat can work. One isn't trying to dry them to a crisp, just get excess moisture out till one has a solid flesh. In Hawaii, they dry in one day to this state during the summer.

Nearly all mango pickle recipes call for green mangoes, which are available from Indian stores at certain times of the year. The mango progresses through several stages as it ripens. Early on in its development it reaches nearly its full final size, and this is the point at which it makes the best pickle. A perfect green mango has a soft center, easily cut through with a knife, and a thin skin. As the mango ages, the seed casing becomes harder and harder, until it is not possible to cut through it with a knife, and the skin becomes thicker and tougher. Once the flesh starts to turn any shade of yellow from pale green, it is unuseable for pickles. They will go bad right away.

Salted whole mangoes called for in some recipes are apparently a different kind of mango, one which grows like a bunch of grapes. However, very small normal mangos seem to work fine for this purpose, in which the mango is not cut nor the seed removed first.

To process the green mango, one must cut it in half and remove the seed, but not necessarily the seed casing, which is stuck to the flesh. The seed is bitter, and this taste is not removed by pickling methods. The mango is then cut into large pieces (four or six), which do better through the salting and drying processes than small pieces or slivers. As the mango ages, the seed casing becomes harder and harder. At certain states it is easily scooped out, at later stages it is firmly attached to the flesh. It is acceptable to leave this seed casing, even though it is hard, and let the final consumer chew the mango off it. As the mango becomes quite mature, it becomes impossible to cut through this seed casing with a knife, and one can only cut the flesh of the mango away from the seed casing. This is a less efficient use of the mango, but acceptable. At the same stage, the skin is tougher. Eventually this becomes objectionable and the mangoes must either be peeled or rejected.

To summarize:
young mangoes: reached their full size, soft seed casing, thin skin not-so-young: seed casing is hard, but can still be cut with a knife getting mature: seed casing can no longer be cut, but pulp is green mature: pulp is green to yellowish, skin is toughÑnot useable

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