The circus of life :-D

No, this is not a KANK (for the ignorant, Karan Johar's movie Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna) review. Hell, I haven't even seen the movie, am not sure whether I really want to. Not after seeing a review on every blog I read saying the movie is terrible!! Anyways why the heck am I talking about this? Hoping atleast mentioning the movie name will make me appear magically on google :-p. Shameless I am ;-).

Well, what I'm talking about is a circus. One which was called "Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus" and their caption being "The Greatest Show on earth". Well, it was ok, but not that really grand extravaganza that I expected. Anyways, the addiction to blogging resulted me in carrying my camera to the event and taking snaps so that I can "log" the experience :-D.

The Circus was held in one of the largest auditoriums in Lexington called the Rupp Arena.




Before we saw the show, we went and saw the animals. Acually it was only me who saw the animals as this "view" was provided from the top of the bridge next to a busy road. So Sri couldn't park the car. He stopped for sometime, while I went, looked and snapped away pics :)).







The animals really didn't look very good. But it was only later that I found out that the circus has a lawsuit against them regarding the treatment of animals. Well, the animals in US are lucky I guess, what with people constantly fighting for them. In India, they are probably treated worse and will still have nobody to even care (there maybe a few exceptions :-p).

Anyways, the show was supposed to start at 5 PM and we entered the auditorium by 4:45 PM. It was decorated rather prettily with colourful lights.




Our seat allocations were pretty far off, but there were hardly any people in the next section, so we shifted to a closer-to-the-show seats.




The show started off with an American anthem and an elephant with the rider carrying the American flag.




The march of the Titans :)).




There were different types of animals on the show. The people made horses and zebras(!!!) run around in a circle and made them do a few tricks.




Camels :-o too!!





And llamas, oxen etc :-o :-o :-o!!




There were also dogs doing various tricks. Thankfully all the animals looked well fed atleast. The lawsuit targets circus having animals, thats it, though they may not be ill-treated. But I don't know whether elephants made to sit, stand on stool, stand on 2-legs can be classified as ill-treatment. It has to be. Its not normal behaviour for them..







But you somehow had to admire the way in which everything was organized. I mean, one act over, everything was ready for the next act in a matter of minutes. This involved putting up of rings for the animals to run in, various stage settings for the clown. Even when some animals, including the elephants above, decided that err, that the stage was their own private loo, all of it was immediately cleaned with a professionalism that was really amazing!! Looks like running away to circus is not that romantic as its described to be :-p.

The most amazing part of them all were the tigers. They setup an iron mesh in a matter of minutes!! And there was a single guy in the middle of about 6 big tigers!! I know that they'll have all sorts of contingency plans and the tigers are all well trained, but it was something scary. Moreover there was this incident where an illusionist's white tiger turned on him and mauled him and caused him severe injuries. Looks like he's ok now. Anyways, nothing happened to this guy :). And none of the tigers decided to poop :-D.




Then there were acrobats. Some climbed poles like monkeys, jumped from pole to pole without any fear. Others were better than gymnasts in olympics, jumping through loops with different types of somersaults. Some skipped ropes wearing stilts. I've never seen so much talent under one roof before. 2 climbed onto this huge 2-looped giant wheel (dunno what else to call it) and performed various stunts!!





Another 2 climbed onto this highwire and crossed it with an umbrella riding a cycle!!. One even jumped on the rope where a fire was arranged without any airbags below. God!!




Lastly came the trapeze artists. There was net below them but the somersaults they execute in the air is truly a wonderful sight to see.




Well, it was all very nice. But I wasn't as much impressed as I thought I would be. Maybe it was the fact that they were making animals do all these things. I don't know the mindset of animals, so I can't say whether they were enjoying (or not) what they were doing. But err, it did look like the elephant enjoyed dumping digested food (hehehe :-D) on the stage :-p. It was as if it was laughing behind our backs :-D. Or maybe the poor thing had stage fright :-p. To me the main fact was that they were using the animals and that was somehow not very appreciable..

Secondly, the reason maybe Enid Blyton's book "Hurrah for the circus!". I read it when I was very young and maybe it left quite a big impression on my mind. I had imagined the circus to be a really grand thing then and imagination is far greater than reality :-p.

Also Sri has been to a circus in India and he was of the opinion that it was actually better than this American circus! That says something alright :-D. Well, it was an interesting experience nevertheless. But I'm not sure I'll go again. Somehow just doesn't seem right...