ABYTE OF LIFE

FREE CIRCULATION

Vandalur Zoo will soon allow itsinmates to be adopted by animal lovers.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Vol. 2No. 219

DANCING TOTS

dont underestimate them, these kids canput reality tv stars to shame

PHOTO : R. RAVINDRAN.

PAGE 03

ERGO

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

NAMMA CHENNAI

Dial a mechanic

Need help in changing a ﬂat tyreor when your vehicle refuses to start? Some of these mobilerepair stations could be of help.

Kwik Fitt Motors

Address: 4th Avenue, Ashok NagarTime: 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., Ph: 4203 3399All four-wheelers

TVS Express

Address: Poonamalle Trunk Road, PorurTime: 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., Ph: 2476 8818All four-wheelers

Bike Zone

Address: Next to Royapettah GovernmentHospitalTime: 9 a.m. – 7.30 p.m., Ph: 4232 6262All two-wheelers

Bike Point

Address: Shenoy Nagar, Anna NagarTime: 9 a.m. – 9 p.m., Ph: 2622 3511All two-wheelers

Jains Car Shoppe

Address: Near Kasi Theatre Bridge, EkathutangalTime: 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., Ph: 98419 33332All four-wheelers

(The services of some of these repair stations are restricted to a speciﬁc locality)

ore than 200 software en-gineers from different ITcompanies on the IT cor-ridor (Rajiv Gandhi Salai) joined hands on Monday evening to voice their support to the ‘stopthe war in Sri Lanka’ campaignthat has been gaining momen-tum over the past few weeks inNamma Chennai. Actors Suriya and Karthi werethere along with the softwareprofessionals, as was Ma Foi ma-naging director K.Pandia Rajan.The participants wore t shirts with the slogans: “Stop the War.Guns don’t have hearts. Do you?”One of the participants, Ra-mesh Balasubramaniam, said theprotest was strictly “non-politicaland entirely humanitarian” in ap-proach.He said all the participants were sent emails over the wee-kend to participate in the protestand every one had participatedvoluntarily. Among various demands, theprotesters urged the Indian go-vernment mount pressure on theSri Lankan government to ceaseﬁre in the island nation. As a con-tinuing mark of protest, some of the software professionals havedecided to wear the ‘stop war’ t-shirts to their ofﬁce on Friday.Fridays are usually the days whennon-formal dressing is permittedby most companies.

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Software professionals join hands to condemn theSri Lankan government offensive against the Tamil rebels

ERGO CORRESPONDENT

feedback@goergo.in

PHOTO: M.KARUNAKARAN

Guns don’t havehearts, whatabout you?

hy I took five years to com-plete B.Com, when my debutventure bombed, when my part-ner cheated me, how I formed my company … ?Some of these are probably se-crets that nobody would like todiscuss, let alone bring up infront of a gathering. But on Sun-day, many gave way to their in-hibitions to share what it was tolearn from their failures.The Knowledge Foundation,initiated by Kiruba Shankar, con-ducted the FailCamp on Sunday,at the aesthetically-designed of-fice of Tenth Planet Technolo-gies, in Anna Salai. The otherwiselazy Sunday saw entrepreneursall charged up to talk about thehow they started out, why theirventure failed and what they learnt from their failures.Gogineni Kalyaan Kumar’s, VP-Marketing of Quads IT Solutions,first venture failed when he was23. “For an entrepreneur failure isnothing new, it is part of life,”says Kalyaan. “But, what wasmore interesting was to hear why one makes mistakes and the dif-ferent viewpoints people have tosay from one’s failures.”Shivakumar, for example, in hisblog, www.mindinspiration-s.com, writes that listening to Su-resh (founder of Orangescape) was full of experiences and in-sights. “He sounded like a reser-voir of information, and put fortha lot of his thoughts in very sim-ple terms that people could un-derstand.” At the end of the day what mostpeople took home is that “many have goofed up in life” but failureis about fighting all those hurdles.Though tech start-ups dom-inated the gathering and it wouldhave been nice to hear from moreexperienced entrepreneurs, asmany had to say, events like Fail-Camp should only get the start-up community closer.

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Sunday’s FailCamp succeeded on many counts

ERGO CORRESPONDENT

feedback@goergo.in

Learning from failures

Antenatal workshop

LifeCell International is organising an antenatal workshopby Rekha Sudarsan, child birth educator and lactationconsultant. The class will be held on November 23 at HotelAccord Metropolitan, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.For registration call 24892798 / 28171385/ 99410 18210.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

our dreams of playingwith a chimpanzee orfeeding an elephant calfcould well become areality, if a proposal from theauthorities at Arignar AnnaZoological Park gets the stategovernment nod. Followingthe footsteps of the modernzoos worldwide and also fewof its national counterparts,the zoo has plans to introducean animal adoptionprogramme for the public.A wildlife enthusiast or ananimal lover can just walk inand adopt one of the manylions or tigers in the zoo for asless as Rs 350 for a day. Anelephant adoption will cost abit more at Rs 500 a day. Thezoo will make specialarrangements for the “fosterparents” and they can be restassured to get a privilegedtreatment and a much closerinteraction with “his or her”animal (as close as the safetyrequirements would permit).“We don’t want to makemoney out of this,” explainsZoo Director and ChiefConservator of Forests (TamilNadu) P.L.Ananthasamy. “Oursole aim is to make the peoplemore involved and for themto understand how fragile ournature is and also thedifficulties conversationalistsare facing to protect wildlife.”“But while introducing theprogramme, we are makingsure that we just don’t handover the zoo to commercialinterests. Welfare and comfortof the animals are our mainpriority and we will take everystep keeping that in mind. Iwant corporates, individuals tocome and help us in doing ourduty better but I won’t allowthem to virtually run the showfor any commercial benefits.”The authorities have alreadyset up a specific guideline andprocedure for the adoptionprogramme and are onlywaiting for a green signalfrom the state government toimplement the project. Anindividual or a corporate orany institution can adopt ananimal for a day, a week, amonth, six months or a year.The money will be used inonly buying the feed for theanimals. Keeping that in mind,the officials have fixed thecost for a lion or a tiger at Rs350, with each animalconsuming seven kg of beefevery day for six days a week.The zoo buys around 700 kgof beef daily at a market priceof Rs 50 per kg.Ananthaswamy is evenconfident of getting anIncome Tax rebate for theproject. “I have talked withthe IT department and theresponse has been positive. Ithink we will be able to offersome tax rebate to the peoplewho come forward to putmoney to provide for theanimals. That would be agreat step forward.”The Nandankanan Zoo inOrissa already has an adoptionprogramme and also offers atax benefit to its patrons. Fewother Indian zoos that have anadoption programme areMysore, Hyderabad, Darjeelingand Ranchi.

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Vandalur Zoo authorities are awaiting the state government nod on anadoption programme for wild animals in captivity. They evenhope that the patrons will get an IT exemption

AYON SENGUPTA

ayon@goergo.in

Theadoptionmoney willgo towardsfeeding theanimals. Sonaturallyadoptingtheelephantwill be a bitpricey.

My foster child is a beast!

PHOTOS: R.RAVINDRAN