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Showing posts from January, 2017

Jallikattu and the modern world

Every person in the world loves one sport or another. When it is a native sport, it gets more supporters and followers and one such attention grabbing sport is Jallikattu, also known as Embracing a Bull in English. Mainly practiced in Tamil Nadu state in India, it is an indigenous sport, that has enthusiastic fans all over the state. Jallikattu is essentially a bull-baiting event, where bulls are let to run freely and whoever manages to hold on to it and retrieve the prize is considered to be of great gallantry. Traditionally conducted during the Pongal festival, which falls in the mid-January, youngsters, mostly men, gather in a large open arena where the bulls are held. A piece of cloth is tied to the bull's horns along with any other prize material. The name 'Jallikattu' itself was derived from the very act practised during the ancient times, where 'jalli' or 'salli' means a gold coin and 'kattu' refers to a stack of the coins or 'tied to...